Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Many thanks to the 186 people who registered for yesterday's webcast "Solving the Storage Capacity Crisis -- Tools and Practices for Effective Management!" We had some excellent questions posed during the live Q&A:

1. Do you recommend moving to a SAN before implementing the management techniques you described, or will these tactics work just as well on direct-attached storage?
   
   
2. How does data center tiering differ from hierarchical storage management?
   
   
3. How do you recommend decisions about data priority be made when there are multiple stakeholders competing for attention?
   
   
4. You didn't mention deduplication. Does that have much impact on capacity management?
   
   
5. When outsourcing to a storage service provider, do you have any recommendations of the merits of wholesale outsourcing vs. partial outsourcing?
   
   
6. What are the dangers of giving end-users the ability to manage their own storage? What kind of education should be put in place?

The webcast was recorded, so in case you missed it, or just want to hear it again, the recording is now available in the [On24 archives].

technorati tags: IBM, Midsize Insider, storage, capacity, crisis

A lot was announced yesterday, so I decided to break it up into several separate posts. This is part 2 in my 3-part series, focusing on: Storwize V7000 Unified, LTO-6 tape, and the SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center.

(to read the rest of the series, see [Part 1-Enterprise Systems: DS8000, TS7700 and XIV])

IBM Storwize® V7000 Unified disk system

The Storwize V7000 Unified is a product that consists of a 2U-high Storwize V7000 control enclosure that provides block-based access, combined with two 2U-high File Modules that provide file-based NAS protocols: CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, SCP and FTP. The problem was that when it was introduced, it was based on Storwize V7000 v6.3, so when the Storwize V7000 v6.4 features were announced last June, they did not apply to the Storwize V7000 Unified.

That is all fixed now, so the Storwize V7000 Unified now supports the full v6.4 features, including Real-time Compression for both file and block-based access to primary data, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) for block access.

The two File Modules are no longer limited to a single Storwize V7000 control enclosure, you can now connect to up to four control enclosures clustered together. Combined with up to nine expansion enclosures for additional disk raises the total maximum to 960 drives.

If you don't already have an Active Directory or LDAP server, the Storwize V7000 Unified now offers an embedded LDAP server, for smaller deployments that want to reduce the number of servers they need to purchase for a complete solution.

Like the [IBM XIV Gen3 storage system], both the Storwize V7000 and V7000 Unified now also support the OpenStack Nova-volume interface.

Lastly, if you have a Storwize V7000 v6.4, you can upgrade it to a Storwize V7000 Unified by simply adding the two File Modules. This can be done in the field.

IBM LTO-6 for tape libraries and drives

IBM introduces the sixth generation of Linear Tape Open (LTO-6) drives, which can be used as stand-alone IBM TS1060 drives, or in IBM tape libraries. As with previous models of LTO, the LTO-6 can read two older generations (LTO-4 and LTO-5) tape media, and can write to previous generation (LTO-5) tape media. You can buy the LTO-6 drives now, and use the older media until LTO-6 tape cartridges are available (hopefully later this year!)

My friend, Brad Johns, from Brad Johns Consulting, has a great post on this [LTO-6 Announcement]. While you expect the new drives to be faster with a denser tape media format, the key advantage to the LTO-6 is that it improves the compression algorithm, from the previous 2:1 to the new 2.5:1 compression ratio:

Level	Uncompressed		Compressed
LTO-5	1.5TB	140 MB/sec	3.00TB	280 MB/sec
LTO-6	2.5TB	160 MB/sec	6.25TB	400 MB/sec

Thus, with the improved compression, the LTO-6 is 40 percent faster, with double the tape cartridge density. This can reduce backup times by 30 percent, increase the amount of data that sits in your automated tape libraries, and reduce the courier costs sending tapes off-site.

IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center v5.1

Last year, IBM coined the phrase "Storage Hypervisor" to refer to the underlying technology in the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and Storwize V7000 disk systems.

At the IBM Edge conference last June, my colleague Mike Griese presented [SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center]. Back then, it was a pilot program (beta test), and this week, IBM announces that it will be formally available as a product.

The idea was simple: take the basic storage hypervisor, and add the necessary software to make it a complete solution.

If all of your disk is currently virtualized behind IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), or you want to put all of your data behind SVC, then SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center is for you. Basically, for one per-TB price, you get all of the following:

• The software features of SAN Volume Controller v6.4, including FlashCopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror.
  
  
• The full advanced features of IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v5.1, including the Storage Analytics Engine that does "Right-Tiering", recommending which LUNs should be moved entirely from one disk system to another, based on policies and access patterns.
  
  
• IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager v3.2 which manages FlashCopy with full coordination with applications, including Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, SAP, and VMware. This ensures that the FlashCopy destination copies are clean, eliminating the need to run backout or redo logs to correct any incomplete units of work.

If this combination sounds familiar, it was based on IBM's previous attempt called [Rapid Application Storage] which combined the Storwize V7000 with Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Midrange Edition and FlashCopy Manager.

The key difference is that SmartCloud VSC does not include the SVC hardware itself, you buy this separately. If you want Real-time Compression, that is charged separately for the subset of TB of the volumes that you select for compression.

Confused? You can read all the details in the [IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center - Announcement Letter].

To learn more about all of the announcements today, see the [Storage Landing Page].

technorati tags: IBM, Storwize V7000, Unified, storage, NAS, FCoE, Real-Time Compression, OpenStack, Nova-volume, Brad Johns, LTO-6, SmartCloud, Virtual Storage Center, Storage Hypervisor, SVC, FlashCopy

Wrapping up this week's theme on the future, fellow blogger David Spark has a great post on his SparkMinute blog titled [20 Brilliant Minds on the future of Hyperconnectivity].

(What does this have to do with Storage? When IBM got back into networking in a big way, they had to decide whether to combine it with one of the existing groups, or form its own group. IBM decided to merge networking with storage, which makes sense since the primary purpose of most networks is to access or transmit information stored somewhere else.)

Last April, the Wharton School and the Institute for the Future convened a one-day [After Broadband] workshop in San Francisco, California, that brought together a group of leading technologists, entrepreneurs, academics and policymakers to explore the future of broadband over the next decade.

At the event, David interviewed 20 people for 10 minutes, and the videos are now available online. Here is one I particularly liked, [David interviewing Bran Ferren of Applied Minds] on Vimeo.

In addition to the [rest of the interview videos], you can find a [gallery of drawings], and the 26-page [report] in PDF format.

technorati tags: IBM, networking, After Broadband, David Spark, Bran Ferren, Applied Minds, Hyperconnectivity

Here are some upcoming events related to IBM Storage!

If you sell IBM and/or Oracle solutions, please join me for IBM Oracle Virtual University 2013!

A few weeks ago, I recorded a session on IBM Storage: Overview, Positioning and How to Sell that will be available on demand starting tomorrow, February 26th, at the IBM Oracle Virtual University 2013.

It's one of 65 new sessions that will help IBM to surround Oracle applications with IBM infrastructure, services and industry solutions. Oracle software, after all, runs best on IBM hardware. Other highlights of Oracle Virtual University include a live executive State of the Alliance session with Q&A, Oracle keynote, updates by Oracle product managers, sessions on PureSystems, Selling IBM into an Oracle environment, Cloud, and much more.

Visit the [Orace Virtual University 2013 Registration page] to register.

(Update: For employees of IBM, Oracle and their respective business partners, the replays for this event is available until Feb 26, 2014. Visit the [Orace Virtual University 2013 Replay page])

There will be live technical teams on hand throughout launch day to answer your questions in real time, so I hope you can carve out 30 minutes or more on February 26th to take advantage of these available resources.

After helping launch the first Pulse back in 2008, I have sadly not been back since. Last year, I was invited to attend as a last-minute replacement for another speaker, but I was busy [having emergency surgery].

This year's [Pulse 2013] conference looks amazing. It will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada. Guest Speaker Payton Manning, NFL 4-time MVP football player, and Carrie Underwood, 6-time Grammy award winner, join IBM's Software Group executives and experts on how IBM Tivoli can help optimize your IT infrastructure.

Sadly, once again, I will not be there at Pulse. This time, I will be on the East Coast visiting clients instead, but my on-premise correspondent, Tom Rauchut, has informed me that he will be there. Hopefully, he will provide me something to write about.

Later in March, I will be in Brussels, Belgium for the Storage Expo. This is held March 20-21, at the Brussels-Expo venue. I will be presenting several topics each day, as well as visit clients in the area. This event comes on behalf of IBM Belgium in association with IBM Business Partner IRIS-ICT.

If you plan to participate in any of these events, let me know!

technorati tags: IBM, Oracle, Pulse, Storage, Expo, Payton Manning, Carrie Underwood, Las Vegas, Brussels Belgium