Well, it's Tuesday again, but this time, today we had our third big storage launch of 2009! A lot got announced today as part of IBM's big "Dynamic Infrastructure" marketing campaign. I will just focus on the disk-related announcements today:

IBM System Storage DS8700

IBM adds a new model to its DS8000 series with the [IBM System Storage DS8700]. Earlier this month, fellow blogger and arch-nemesis Barry Burke from EMC posted [R.I.P DS8300] on this mistaken assumption that the new DS8700 meant that DS8300 was going away, or that anyone who bought a DS8300 recently would be out of luck.  Obviously, I could not respond until today's announcement, as the last thing I want to do is lose my job disclosing confidential information.  BarryB is wrong on both counts:

• IBM will continue to sell the DS8100 and DS8300, in addition to the new DS8700.
• Clients can upgrade their existing DS8100 or DS8300 systems to DS8700.

BarryB's latest post [What's In a Name - DS8700] is fair game, given all the fun and ridicule everyone had at his expense over EMC's "V-Max" name.

So the DS8700 is new hardware with only 4 percent new software. On the hardware side, it uses faster POWER6 processors instead of POWER5+, has faster PCI-e buses instead of the RIO-G loops, and faster four-port device adapters (DAs) for added bandwidth between cache and drives. The DS8700 can be ordered as a single-frame dual 2-way that supports up to 128 drives and 128GB of cache, or as a dual 4-way, consisting of one primary frame, and up to four expansion frames, with up to 384GB of cache and 1024 drives.

Not mentioned explicitly in the announcements were the things the DS8700 does not support:

• ESCON attachment - Now that FICON is well-established for the mainframe market, there is no need to support the slower, bulkier ESCON options. This greatly reduced testing effort. The 2-way DS8700 can support up to 16 four-port FICON/FCP host adapters, and the 4-way can support up to 32 host adapters, for a maximum of 128 ports. The FICON/FCP host adapter ports can auto-negotiate between 4Gbps, 2Gbps and 1Gbps as needed.


• LPAR mode - When IBM and HDS introduced LPAR mode back in 2004, it sounded like a great idea the engineers came up with. Most other major vendors followed our lead to offer similar "partitioning". However, it turned out to be what we call in the storage biz a "selling apple" not a "buying apple". In other words, something the salesman can offer as a differentiating feature, but that few clients actually use. It turned out that supporting both LPAR and non-LPAR modes merely doubled the testing effort, so IBM got rid of it for the DS8700.

Update: I have been reminded that both IBM and HDS delivered LPAR mode within a month of each other back in 2004, so it was wrong for me to imply that HDS followed IBM's lead when obviously development happened in both companies for the most part concurrently prior to that. EMC was late to the "partition" party, but who's keeping track?

Initial performance tests show up to 50 percent improvement for random workloads, and up to 150 percent improvement for sequential workloads, and up to 60 percent improvement in background data movement for FlashCopy functions. The results varied slightly between Fixed Block (FB) LUNs and Count-Key-Data (CKD) volumes, and I hope to see some SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmark numbers published soon.

The DS8700 is compatible for Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, and Metro/Global Mirror with the rest of the DS8000 series, as well as the ESS model 750, ESS model 800 and DS6000 series.

New 600GB FC and FDE drives

IBM now offers [600GB drives] for the DS4700 and DS5020 disk systems, as well as the EXP520 and EXP810 expansion drawers. In each case, we are able to pack up to 16 drives into a 3U enclosure.

Personally, I think the DS5020 should have been given a DS4xxx designation, as it resembles the DS4700 more than the other models of the DS5000 series. Back in 2006-2007, I was the marketing strategist for IBM System Storage product line, and part of my job involved all of the meetings to name or rename products. Mostly I gave reasons why products should NOT be renamed, and why it was important to name the products correctly at the beginning.

IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller hardware and software

Fellow IBM master inventory Barry Whyte has been covering the latest on the [SVC 2145-CF8 hardware]. IBM put out a press release last week on this, and today is the formal announcement with prices and details. Barry's latest post [SVC CF8 hardware and SSD in depth] covers just part of the entire announcement.

The other part of the announcement was the [SVC 5.1 software] which can be loaded on earlier SVC models 8F2, 8F4, and 8G4 to gain better performance and functionality.

To avoid confusion on what is hardware machine type/model (2145-CF8 or 2145-8A4) and what is software program (5639-VC5 or 5639-VW2), IBM has introduced two new [Solution Offering Identifiers]:

• 5465-028 Standard SAN Volume Controller
• 5465-029 Entry Edition SAN Volume Controller

The latter is designed for smaller deployments, supports only a single SVC node-pair managing up to 150 disk drives, available in Raven Black or Flamingo Pink.

EXN3000 and EXP5060 Expansion Drawers

IBM offers the [EXN3000 for the IBM N series]. These expansion drawers can pack 24 drives in a 4U enclosure. The drives can either be all-SAS, or all-SATA, supporting 300GB, 450GB, 500GB and 1TB size capacity drives.

The [EXP5060 for the IBM DS5000 series] is a high-density expansion drawer that can pack up to 60 drives into a 4U enclosure. A DS5100 or DS5300 can handle up to eight of these expansion drawers, for a total of 480 drives.

IBM System Storage Productivity Center v1.4

The latest [System Storage Productivity Center (SSPC) v1.4] can manage all of your DS3000, DS4000, DS5000, DS6000, DS8000 series disk, and SAN Volume Controller. You can get the SSPC built in two modes:

• Pre-installed with Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Basic Edition. Basic Edition can be upgraded with license keys to support Data, Disk and Standard Edition to extend support and functionality to report and manage XIV, N series, and non-IBM disk systems.
• Pre-installed with Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM). This can be used to manage the Full Disk Encryption (FDE) encryption-capable disk drives in the DS8000 and DS5000, as well as LTO and TS1100 series tape drives.

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager v2.1

The [IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager V2.1] replaces two products in one. IBM used to offer IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services (TSM for CS) that protected Windows application data, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Advanced Copy Services (TSM for ACS) that protected AIX application data.

The new product has some excellent advantages. FlashCopy Manager offers application-aware backup of LUNs containing SAP, Oracle, DB2, SQL server and Microsoft Exchange data. It can support IBM DS8000, SVC and XIV point-in-time copy functions, as well as the Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) interfaces of the IBM DS5000, DS4000 and DS3000 series disk systems. It is priced by the amount of TB you copy, not on the speed or number of CPU processors inside the server.

Don't let the name fool you. IBM FlashCopy Manager does not require that you use Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) as your backup product. You can run IBM FlashCopy Manager on its own, and it will manage your FlashCopy target versions on disk, and these can be backed up to tape or another disk using any backup product. However, if you are lucky enough to also be using TSM, then there is optional integration that allows TSM to manage the target copies, move them to tape, inventory them in its DB2 database, and provide complete reporting.

technorati tags: ds8000, disk, ds8700, exn3, svc, cf8, 2145-c58, DS5000, DS4000, DS3000, DS5020, DS4700, DS5100, DS5300, SSPC, TKLM, FlashCopy+Manager, Tivoli, Storage+Manager, TSM, DB2, Oracle, SAP, SQL, Microsoft+Exchange, VSS, Windows, AIX, N+series, XIV

I am proud to announce we have yet another IBM blogger for the storosphere, Rich Swain from IBM's Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina will blog about [News and Information on IBM’s N series].

Rich is a Field Technical Sales Specialist with deep-dive knowledge and experience. He's already posted a dozen or so entries, to give you a feel for the level of technical detail he will provide.

technorati tags: IBM, Richard Swain, N series, NAS, disk, storage, system

There are really two separate items being announced for the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC):

SVC v5 software

The software moves from a 32-bit kernel to a 64-bit kernel. Fortunately, IBM had the foresight to know that would happen back in 2005, so models 8F2, 8F4 and 8G4 can be upgrade to this new software level and gain new functionality. This is because these models have 64-bit capable processors. Those with six-year-old 4F2 will continue to run on SVC 4.3.1, but should consider it's about time to upgrade soon.

New 2145-CF8 model

The CF8 is based on the IBM System x 3550M2. Each node can have up to 4 Solid-State Drives (SSD) that can be treated as SVC Managed Disk Groups. Virtual disks can be easily migrated from hard disk drives (HDD) over to SSD, processed, and then move them back to HDD. By treating the SSD as managed disks, rather than an extension of the cache, we are able to support all of the features and functions in a seamless manner.

As Barry says, IBM has been working on this for quite a while, and based on initial responses looks to be quite successful in the market!

technorati tags: IBM, SVC, SSD, 4F2, 8F2, 8G4, CF8, 64-bit kernel, disk, storage, system, SAN,

(Note: I have been informed that this week the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has [announced an update] to its [16 CFR Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising]. As if it were not obvious enough already, I must emphasize that I work for IBM, IBM provides me all the equipment and related documentation that I need for me to blog about IBM solutions, and that I am paid to blog as part of my job description.  Both my boss and I agree I am not paid enough, but that is another matter. Beginning December 1, 2009, all positive mentions of IBM products, solutions and services on this blog might be considered a "celebrity endorsement" by the FTC and others under these new guidelines.  Negative mentions of IBM products are probably typos.)

At a conference once, a presenter discussing tips and techniques about public speaking told everyone to be aware that everyone in the audience is "tuned into radio station WIIFM" (What's In It For Me). If a member of the audience cannot figure out why the information being presented is relevant to them individually, they may not pay attention for long. Likewise, when it comes to archiving data for long term retention, I think we have many people are tuned into KEFM (the Keep Everything Forever methodology). Two classic articles from Drew Robb on the subject are [Can Data Ever Be Deleted?] and [Experts Question 'Keep Everything' Philosophy].

(Note: For those of my readers who do not live in the US, most radio stations start with the letter "K" if they are on the left half of the country, and "W" if they are on the right half. See Thomas H. White's [Early Radio History] to learn more.)

Contrary to popular belief, IBM would rather have their clients implement a viable archive strategy than just mindlessly buying more disk and tape for a "Keep Everything Forever" methodology. Keeping all information around forever can be a liability, as data that you store can be used against you in a court of law. It can also make it difficult to find the information that you do need, because the sheer volume of information to sort through makes the process more time consuming.

The problem with most archive storage solutions is that they are inflexible, treating all data the same under a common set of rules. The IBM Information Archive is different. You can have up to three separate "collections".

• Each collection can have its own set of policies and rules. You can have a collection that is locked down for compliance with full Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable (NENR) enforcement, and another collection that allows full read/write/delete capability.
• Each collection can consist of either files or objects. Unlike other storage devices that force you to convert files into objects, or objects into files for their own benefit.
• IBM Information Archive is scalable enough to support up to a billion of either files or objects per collection.
• Each collection can span storage tiers, even across disk and tape resources.

Object collections are accessed using IBM System Storage Archive Manager (SSAM) application programming interface (API). People who use IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) archive or IBM System Storage DR550 are already familiar with this interface. An object can represent the archived slice of a repository, a set of rows from a database, a collection of emails from an individual mailbox user, etc.

File collections can be used for any type of data you would store on a NAS device. This includes databases, email repositories, static Web pages, seismic data, user documents, spreadsheets, presentations, medical images, photos, videos, and so on.

The IBM Information Archive solution was designed to work with a variety of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software, and is part of the overall IBM Smart Archive strategy.

technorati tags: IBM, Information Archive, SSAM, TSM, DR550, ECM, files, objects, NAS, disk, tape, storage