Tony Pearson IBM Master Inventor, Senior IT Architect, and Event Content Manager

 

 

Earlier this month, at the SHARE conference in Pittsburgh, my predecessor, Glenn Anderson, received the John R. Ehrman award for sustained excellence in Training Education. John Ehrman was "the father of High Level Assembler (HL-ASM)" which is still used today.

 

 

Here is SHARE president, Jason Bastin (left), with Glenn Anderson (right).

Here is a close-up picture of the award itself.

For the past 18 years, Glenn was the Content Manager for IBM Z and LinuxONE at IBM Systems Technical University (TechU) events. He also was active at SHARE and other Z-related events.

Here is a nice [video shown at the SHARE conference about the award, including some of Glenn's contribution to the IT industry].

But managing IBM Z and LinuxONE content was not all he did. Several years ago, Glenn also launched "Leadership and Professional Development" track at TechU. This track helped IT leaders, and those aspiring to become leaders, to learn technical direction to implement projects from proof-of-concept into production. He also included soft skills, such as how to be a better public speaker, how to lead projects, or how to run meetings better.

After retiring from IBM last December, he has launched his own public speaking practice, and has spoken at a variety of events. Check out his website [Glenn Anderson The Performance Catalyst Speaker].

Next month, [NewEra Software] starts a monthly webcast featuring Glenn called "Up your game".

Glenn has been an excellent mentor to me, as I take over his responsibilities at IBM TechU events, and I am glad he is doing well in retirement!

For more about IBM TechU, visit the landing page for upcoming [IBM Technical Events], my latest Systems Magazine article [Extend Your Skills Into Adjacent Spaces at TechU] or watch [my latest video].

Tony Pearson IBM Master Inventor, Senior IT Architect, and Event Content Manager

 

 

Last week marked the 50th anniversary of landing a human on the moon. Over 4,000 IBM employees were involved. So much has been written about this, that I thought it would be better to point you to some articles and interviews I found of interest.

 

 

(While most people focus on the single day, July 20, when Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin stepped foot on the moon, the entire journey lasted a week, from take off July 16, to splash down on July 24.)

The [Apollo missions were highlighted during IBM's Centennial Anniversary] in 2011. Here is an excerpt:

"The Real-Time Computer Complex (RTCC) in Houston, Texas, was an IBM computing and data processing system at NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center—now called the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center—that collected, processed and sent to Mission Control information to direct every phase of an Apollo mission. The RTCC was so fast, there was virtually no time between receiving and solving a computing problem. Initially, IBM 7094-11 computers were used in the RTCC. Later, IBM System/360 Model 75J mainframes, and peripheral storage and processing equipment were used."

Those peripheral storage were IBM tape and disk systems, of course. IBM Tape systems were developed in 1952, and disk systems in 1956, in time to be used for the Apollo missions.

Jason Perlow has a great series on the Apollo missions. His post, titled To the Moon: IBM and Univac, Apollo 11's integrators] focuses on IBM's contribution. Here are some excerpts:

"As a system integrator, IBM's involvement in the Apollo program was extensive. No other vendor, Boeing included, touched virtually aspect of the Apollo program.

IBM's involvement in the US Space program dates back prior to the 1950s, where a number of early IBM computer systems were used for missile trajectory and satellite orbital calculations.

These were the modern forerunners of today's zSeries systems as far as their very basic systems architecture is concerned. (The IBM Z mainframe is still backward compatible with software written for the S/360, S/370, and the S/390 through machine virtualization and software emulation.)

IBM's legacy in the Space Program lives on in not just its continued involvement in NASA's current and future efforts with its computer systems and support services, but also in some of the software that was built for the Apollo program.

The IMS suite of hierarchical database management applications, which is still an important part of IBM's mainframe software portfolio, was originally designed by IBM in conjunction with Rockwell and Caterpillar so that the huge Bill of Materials (BOM) for the Saturn V, composed of hundreds of thousands of parts, could be inventoried and managed."

NPR commemorated [The 50th Anniversary Of Apollo 11's Moon Landing] on their "Fresh Air" radio program. This radio program includes previously recorded interviews with:

• Chuck Yeager, test pilot who broke the sound barrier.
• Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space. (Of course, Russia takes the prize of first man to orbit the earth, with Yuri Gagarin's flight back in 1961.) Later, Alan would be the first man to hit a golf ball on the moon.
• Michael Collins, the third astronaut of the Apollo 11 mission. While Neil and Buzz were down on the surface of the moon, Michael kept the command module in orbit, effectively "driving around the block" to pick them up when they were ready to head home.
• Chris Hadfield, a modern-day astronaut, famous for his cover of the [Space Oddity] song.

As I mentioned in my infamous blog post [ IBM Watson -- How to replicate Watson hardware and systems design for your own use in your basement], you can build your own [Apollo Guidance Computer].

Real-time images from the moon were sent in 10-frames-per-second format to three places on earth, two in Australia and one in California. Television cameras pointed at those monitors were then used to for the live feed to the rest of the world. The live feed was also recorded in Houston Texas, to capture the best parts from each of the three sources, in case there were problems with the live feed. However, since there were no problems with the live feed, these video tapes were never used.

Years later, Gary George, a NASA intern, would purchase a whole bunch of surplus video tapes for just $218 dollars, which included three of the video tapes from Houston of the Apollo 11 landing. Today, they happen to be the only remaining recordings of the event, and [were sold last week for $1.82 Million dollars at Sotheby's auction!

This whole episode exposes the [Digital Dark Age]. Created on perishable plastic, film decays within years if not properly stored. According to [National Film Preservation Foundation], the losses are high. The Library of Congress has documented that only 20 percent of U.S. feature films from the 1910s and 1920s survive in complete form in American archives; of the American features produced before 1950, about half still exist.

To learn more on IBM's impressive capabilities to pull of projects like this, or just how to store data for long term retention, attend one of the [IBM Systems Technical University] events we have coming up in Bangkok, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Las Vegas, Sydney, and Prague.

Tony Pearson IBM Master Inventor, Senior IT Architect, and Event Content Manager

As promised, I am back to the topic of storage. We had a lot of announcements in storage this week. Here is a quick recap:

IBM Spectrum Discover, IBM Spectrum Scale, and IBM Cloud Object Storage

When it was first launched, IBM Spectrum Discover was able to track metadata of all files and objects in IBM Spectrum Scale and IBM Cloud Object Storage. This announcement adds some new capabilities:

• Extends support to other sources of data, including Dell/EMC Isilon, NetApp filers, Amazon S3, and Ceph (part of IBM's acquisition of Red Hat).
• Content-based tagging, based not on metadata but the content of the files and objects, including classification of personal-identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data.

Additionally, IBM Spectrum Scale has been enhanced to support tested blueprints for hybrid configurations with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM Cloud.

Lastly, this week marks the General Availability of the new [IBM Cloud Object Storage v2 models].

 

IBM Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus

Lots of changes in the latest releases of IBM Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus, respectively. Enough perhaps to save for a future post. I will point out a few key changes that I think are quite significant:

• Cloud-based protection for currently supported databases hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) including IBM Db2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and MongoDB databases
• Tier from disk-based storage pools to tape. Tape is less expensive than disk-based SAN, NAS or object storage. This features moves older backup copies that are not likely to be recovered to lower cost storage.
• Internationalization: User Interface (UI) translations for Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, and Chinese languages.

IBM FlashSystem

IBM's FlashSystem products are recognized by the industry as the "World's Fastest Storage™" Here are some of the enhancements:

• FlashSystem 900 now supports Remote Code Load and Remote Code Update. This is a feature we have already for the IBM DS8000 Storage System, and it has been wildly popular, eliminating the need to send a human being from IBM to your data center to update your firmware.
• VersaStack™ Cisco Validated Design (CVD) for IBM FlashSystem 9100. This provides a converged system, a single rack with the leading-edge x86 servers and switches from Cisco, with IBM FlashSystem 9100 all-flash arrays.
• FlashSystem 9100 and Storwize V7000/V5000 models, can be used to [store Blockchain off-chain data].

IBM Storage Networking switches

From IBM's partnership with Cisco also comes new IBM-branded switches: the IBM SAN48C-6 and SAN96C-6 for the latest 32Gbps Fibre Channel support, supporting up to 48 and 96 ports, respectively.

We will cover these and more at the upcoming IBM Systems Technical University [TechU] events. We will have upcoming events in:

• Buenos Aires, Argentina -- July 17-18
• Bangkok, Thailand -- August 7-9
• Sao Paulo, Brazil -- September 3-5
• Johannesburg, South Africa -- Sep 10-12
• Las Vegas, NV (USA) -- October 7-11
• Sydney, Australia -- Oct 15-17
• Prague, Czech Republic -- Oct 21-25

For more details, [watch the replay] or read the [landing page]

Tony Pearson IBM Master Inventor, Senior IT Architect, and Event Content Manager

 

 

Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means? IBM Announcements!

It's official -- IBM has acquired Red Hat! The deal was announced in October 2018 [IBM to Acquire Red Hat], and completed today [IBM Closes Landmark Acquisition of Red Hat].

(Note: We'll go back to storage tomorrow, but for today, I will talk only about the IBM Red Hat acquisition)

Back in 2007, my blog post [Double Happy Wedding] compared IBM's acquisition for a company that produced data migration software to the practice in Japan of waiting until the bride is five to seven months pregnant to have a wedding.

In business, the best acquisitions are the ones where both parties have been working together already. IBM and Red Hat have been working together for the past 20 years!

From 1999-2002, I was part of the team that help port Linux to the mainframe, based on Red Hat components. I was the first person to install Linux on a mainframe in Arizona, on a z800 machine, if you can remember that far back. My involvement with Linux was three-fold:

• Back then, I was the chief architect of DFSMS on the MVS operating system (now called z/OS). We needed a way to backup Linux data on the mainframe, so I helped develop the "Compatible Disk Layout" (CDL) which made the disk volume compatible between MVS, z/OS and Linux operating systems. Linux would read and write data on the volume, and then the Linux volume could be backed up or dumped to tape using existing DFSMS utilities.
• I led a team to test and debug all of the disk and tape storage drivers for Linux on the mainframe. One of my colleagues, who worked with Tom West, gave me a copy of Tracy Kidder's book [The Soul of a New Machine] as it seemed similar to our efforts. I highly recommend this book!
• I ran a series of roadshows, traveling to promote Linux. At each event we had two speakers. I was the key speaker, and one of my teammates would be working the keyboard to run all of the live demos. I played the role of a reporter, hot on the story of Linux, and my teammate would play the role of my newspaper editor/boss who would ask me questions from a script. I would then answer the question by showing off a Linux demo, while my teammate hit the appropriate keys to make it happen.

At the time, many in IBM did not understand the concept of "open source", or the idea of an operating system written by people on the Internet. I saw that Linux and Open Source was the future, but not everybody I worked with at that time shared that vision. Today, open source is the default choice for business.

(Note: If you are unfamiliar with [open source], I highly recommend Eric Raymond's book [The Cathedral and the Bazaar].)

On the surface, the deal appears fairly straightforward. IBM paid $34 Billion, and in return gets 13,000 new employees and $3.4 Billion in new annual revenues. But this deal is more than that. This acquisition redefines the cloud market for business. Here are some excerpts from the press release:

"Red Hat's open hybrid cloud technologies are now paired with the unmatched scale and depth of IBM's innovation and industry expertise, and sales leadership in more than 175 countries. Together, IBM and Red Hat will accelerate innovation by offering a next-generation hybrid multicloud platform. Based on open source technologies, such as Linux and Kubernetes, the platform will allow businesses to securely deploy, run and manage data and applications on-premises and on private and multiple public clouds.

Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and its current management team. Whitehurst is joining IBM's senior management team, reporting to Ginni Rometty. IBM will maintain Red Hat's headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, its facilities, brands and practices. Red Hat will operate as a distinct unit within IBM and will be reported as part of IBM's Cloud and Cognitive Software segment.

Most enterprises today are approximately 20 percent into their transition to the cloud. In this first chapter of their cloud journey, businesses made great strides in reducing costs, boosting productivity and revitalizing their customer-facing innovation programs.

The collective ability of IBM and Red Hat to unlock the true value of hybrid cloud for businesses is already resonating among customers moving to the next chapter of digital reinvention.

With Red Hat, IBM has acquired one of the most important software companies in the IT industry. Red Hat's pioneering business model helped bring open source – including technologies like Linux, Kubernetes, Ansible, Java, Ceph and many more – into the mainstream for enterprises. Today, Linux is the most used platform for development. Red Hat Enterprise Linux alone is expected to contribute to more than $10 trillion worth of global business revenues in 2019. By 2023, an additional 640,000 people are expected to work in Red Hat-related jobs.

IBM has committed to scaling and accelerating open source and hybrid cloud for businesses across industries, as well as preserving the independence and neutrality of Red Hat's open source heritage. This includes its open source community leadership, contributions and development model; product portfolio, services, and go-to-market strategy; robust developer and partner ecosystems, and unique culture."

This independence and neutrality works both ways: Red Hat will continue to work with other hardware manufacturers and IBM Power, Z and LinuxONE servers will continue to support all of the same distributions of Linux it did before, including Canonical Ubuntu Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES).

To this day, I still run Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on my work laptop. This blog post was written using "gedit", a text-based editor that is part of the GNOME platform.