
IBM developerWorks including this blog being Sunset Dec 31 2019
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Visits (312)
Well this week is Thanksgiving Holiday here in the USA, and I personally am thankful to all my readers of this blog. Here are the rankings pulled last month. Thanks to all of you, this blog has been ranked #1 since 2011 and has remained number one every since.
While I have been blogging for over 13 years (since September of 2006!) the number of views were not started tracking until mid 2013. Of 70 million listed above, this blog got about 15 million views in the past 12 months. (Internally, IBM values each blog at $5.00 USD per thousand views, or 0.5 cents per view, in marketing value to the company. At that rate, this blog provided about $75,000 USD in marketing value to the IBM Systems and IBM System Storage brand these past 12 months!) Sadly, IBM has given notice that this blog, and thousands others, will be going away at the end of this year. At least this blog will retire as a champion, joining the likes of retired athletes Mark Spitz, Rocky Marciano, Joe DiMaggio, Michael Strahan, Pete Sampras, and John Elway. If you read blog posts through an RSS feed reader, you may not have noticed the ominous IBM warning that looks like this:
For those who have not read this FAQ yet, here is the TL;DR summary:
Over the past 13 years, this blog has been moved from one software platform to another. We went from Roller, to Akamai, to IBM Connections. Each time, the developerWorks team had lined up a new software platform, and helped to move each individual blog from old to new. In the process, we lost some of the formatting and external media, like photos and graphics. I have found in some cases new-line characters that separate lines were removed, causing some words to get merged together. I use a spell checker to find them. This time is different because [IBM Connections software was sold to HCL Technologies] and I suspect IBM did not want to pay to have them continue. (The phrase "consolidating major content portals to improve the customer experience" reminds me how countries like Russia and China simplify news for their citizens by having a single state-run newspaper and and a single state-run television station. Can you imagine an American say they want fewer choices, fewer television channels, fewer radio stations, fewer books to read?) Instead of thousands of individual blogs focused on specific topics, each reflecting the un-edited voice of the blogger in his or her own style and personality, the alternatives proposed for new content are now reduced. Officially, IBM recommends comm
If neither of these two alternatives strike you as the most obvious place to move "Inside System Storage", you are not alone. Many of you have told me that particular blog posts helped you close a deal, address a particular client situation, or inspired you to learn new skills. If you want to download any of the posts from this blog, or the posts of any other blogs on IBM developerWorks before they disappear, you can do this from your browser and use "Save As" to create an HTML file for each post or view. (Or better yet, I have done much of this for you, which I have collected in a series of books, Inside System Storage Volume I through V, available from my publisher Lulu, available here: [Books published by Tony Pearson].) If you run Red Hat Linux like I do, the "wget" command can help automate this for you. Here is an example script that pulls down monthly HTML files (all the posts for the month in a single HTML file) for the year 2018, resulting in 12 HTML files in total:
Chris, Lloyd and I are reviewing various options, in discussions with marketing and other teams, and hope to announce something before December 31. |
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Prepare for the everyday and the unexpected with IBM Storage for Cyber Resiliency
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Visits (358)
(Guest Post: This is a guest post written by Tony Sater, IBM.) Cyber resiliency is an organization’s ability to continue delivering the intended outcomes despite adverse cyber incidents. Cyber resiliency, Business Continuity and Disaster Recover share a common goal of protecting your data. Where cyber resiliency stands out is the confidence that the copy of revenue producing data, that would be used to restore a business from a cyber incident, has not been modified since it was ingested and can be reliably used to reduce the impact of a business outage due to a compromising attack. Organizations are beginning to understand that traditional device-centric and technology-centric security measures, such as firewalls, fail to provide security in a Hybrid Multicloud cyber ecosystem. Moving forward, one must take a holistic approach across their data, applications, and the entire infrastructure to defend against and recover from a cyber-attack. In order to more effectively deal with cyber events, the National Institution of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a policy framework of computer security guidance for how organizations can assess and improve their ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber-attacks. This framework is an industry accepted methodology for building a plan to develop and implement safeguards to ensure delivery of critical business services. Storage has for a long time played the role of “data custodian” in enterprise operations. In addition to providing containers where data goes when not in main memory, the system storage layer has traditionally provided protection solutions to recover from unusual events such as natural disasters, deliberate cyber-attacks, or accidental data loss or corruption. Over time, the range and sophistication of storage-based cyber resilience solutions has grown:
Let’s take a look at some of the IBM Storage for Cyber Resiliency capabilities and solutions. IBM DS8880 Safeguarded Copy prevents sensitive point in time copies of data from being modified or deleted due to user errors, malicious destruction or ransomware attacks. Here’s how it works. Safeguarded Copy provides functionality to create up to 500 recovery points for a production volume. These recovery points are called Safeguarded Backups. The Safeguarded Backups are immutable, hidden and non-addressable by a host. The data within these backups can only be used after a Safeguarded Backup is recovered to a separate recovery volume providing a "logical air gap" functionality. Finally, these recovery volumes can be accessed using a recovery system and used to restore production data, providing a rapid and operational recovery capability. IBM Tape Storage offers a cost effective, long term backup and archive WORM storage, with a true physical air gap and total separation from ransomware and cyber-attacks. Tape is used to optimize data protection costs and mitigates the risk of ransomware for data-centric organizations. At a cost of less than a half a cent per GB (Gigabyte), it is also an extremely cost-effective solution. IBM Spectrum Protect and IBM Spectrum Protect Plus can store backup data in all storage pools such as disk, tape, object and more. IBM Spectrum Protect Operations Center using backup data analysis can alert admins for any suspicious activity. Our Spectrum Protect portfolio delivers pervasive, end to end encryption capabilities. Customers utilize Spectrum Protect Node replication to replicate the spectrum protect data to the isolated location such as WORM Tape media. Furthermore, these backup copies can be sent to a physically secure off-site location. IBM Spectrum CDM also supports snapshots as well, which is the traditional backup and recovery method that delivers the lowest RTO (Recovery Time Objective). IBM delivers four key capabilities of cyber resiliency that delivers across block, file, object, tape, software-defined storage, and cloud.
The pain points that organizations face are evolving as cyber-attacks increase. There is a need for a more precise, immediate response to cyber events. This response, to be effective, needs to be planned, prepared and tested well before experiencing a live attack, where the stress and pressure of the attack overwhelms the organization as it tries to recover. Data storage systems and technologies lie at the heart of efforts to build IT environments that are resilient to logical data corruption in all its forms. IBM Storage offers a broad spectrum of market-leading cyber resilience solutions that help 21st century business survive and thrive. For more information about IBM’s Storage for Cyber Resiliency, please read [Mainframe Storage for IBM Z]. |
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Introducing the new IBM DS8900F
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Visits (1206)
Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means? IBM Announcements!
These last few weeks saw some pretty significant action, the [IBM z15], and with that the [IBM DS8900F] as well. The DS8900F is the next in DS8000 family with even more features to support performance and security. It is built off the IBM POWER9 processor technology, the same processors that run in [Summit and Sierra], the two most powerful supercomputers in the world. The new [DS8900F] series introduces two new classes for clients to leverage, the Flexibility class leveraging the DS8910F, and the Agility class with the DS8950F. These two classes provide a variety of configuration options and introduce new capabilities in the physical design and the functions available.
Here is a quick comparison table:
One option that has been added to the new DS8900 platform is the 32Gb FC Host Adapter. It can support both FCP and FICON as you would expect, and it can auto-negotiate between 32Gb, 16Gb and 8Gb connectivity. At 32Gb and 16Gb speeds it also has the capability to perform Forward Error Correction (FEC). It can also enable Encryption of Data in Flight (EDiF) for FC Endpoint Security. Flash card sizes range from as 800GB to 15.36TB capacities. Now, lets talk about some of the capabilities, and security is a huge focus. Some of those highlights include;
If you want to learn more about the IBM DS8900 and its integration with IBM Z15 and IBM POWER systems you can also watch this [announcement video]. If you read our blog post [Storage Insights for Spectrum Control], and are looking to leverage Storage Insights, then you'll be happy to hear that the DS8900 is supported. If your looking for some in-person sessions on the new DS8900, consider attending one of the [IBM Systems Technical University] events. |
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IBM Systems Technical University in Johannesburg 2019 - Day 3
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Visits (670)
This month, I was in Johannesburg, South Africa for IBM Systems Technical University, or TechU for short. This event was held at the Hyatt Regency in Rosebank, walking distance from the [Gautrain station], allowing local attendees to commute easily to the event.
Here is my recap of Day 3.
It was great to come back to Johannesburg for this event. I have been coming here since 1993, and the city keeps improving and evolving over that time. I do not know if TechU will be in Johannesburg or Cape Town next year, but I hope to come back to South Africa either way! IBM has several more TechU events planned for October and November at: Bogota (Columbia), Las Vegas, NV (USA), Sydney (Australia), Prague (Czech Republic), Pernambuco (Brazil), and Bali (Indonesia). Check out the [IBM Technical Events] landing page for details. |
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IBM Systems Technical University in Johannesburg 2019 - Day 2
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Visits (698)
This month, I was in Johannesburg, South Africa for IBM Systems Technical University, or TechU for short. This event was held at the Hyatt Regency in Rosebank, walking distance from the [Gautrain station], allowing local attendees to commute easily to the event.
Here is my recap of Day 2.
Did you know that Johannesburg is the largest city in the world that is not situated on a river, lake or shoreline? Its location was determined by gold found in the 1800s. The elevation of 5,700 feet (1,700 meters) is comparable to the mile-high city of Denver, Colorado! IBM has several more TechU events planned for October and November at: Bogota (Columbia), Las Vegas, NV (USA), Sydney (Australia), Prague (Czech Republic), Pernambuco (Brazil), and Bali (Indonesia). Check out the [IBM Technical Events] landing page for details. |
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