Wrapping up my week's theme on "Innovation that matters", I would explore how sometimes innovations are inspired by thinking differently in solving problems, and observing howothers solve similar problems in other domains.

Take for example this little Shell Oil[RealEnergy "Eureka"] video webisode. It's about eight minutes long, and helps explain a recent innovation Shellmade to help extract oil from awkward locations. Look for how the engineer was inspired by observing something his son did, that he in turn applied to innovatively solve this challenging problem.

Thinking differently has helped IBM innovate as well. Today, IBM announced it has shippped its 10,000th Storage Virtualization Engine, which coincidentally happens to correspond with today's GA date of SVC 4.2.1 release. From the [IBM Press Release]:

"IBM has been delivering virtualization capabilities for more than 40 years and today we unveil a milestone in the area of data storage virtualization with the shipment of 10,000 storage virtualization engines -- a fact no other storage company in the world can claim," said Kelly Beavers, Director, Storage Software, IBM. "By working across multiple platforms, IBM's storage virtualization helps to lower energy costs and unlocks the proprietary hold that other storage vendors have had on customers for years -- which IBM believes makes storage virtualization the killer application in the storage industry over the next decade."

SVC helps improve flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructures, such as creating a single virtual pool of information across the enterprise, enabling IT departments to respond more quickly to business needs and manage resources more flexibly. Benefits including increased resiliency, better application availability, simplified data migrations, and improved resource utilization can all be achieved through storage virtualization and these benefits are increased further when SVC is coupled with server virtualization such as through IBM System p LPARs and VMware ESX Server.

IBM's storage virtualization helps to unlock the proprietary hold that vendors such as EMC, HP and Hitachi have had on customers for years. With IBM SVC, customers can choose any combination of supported EMC, IBM, HP, Hitachi or other devices, virtualize them, and manage and deploy them easily and with greater flexibility and independence than ever before.

You can also read this[MarketWire] article.

I've posted before on IBM's [history of storage virtualization], but there are still a few folks not convinced.Dr. Kevin McIsaac has an article on ComputerWorld[Vendor Claims on Storage Virtualization] that warns against vendor hype. Dr. McIsaac feels"network-based storage virtualization results in a lowest common denominator view of the infrastructure, eliminating the value-added features of the array." This is really not a "network" issue, as this applies equally to Hitachi's USP-V directly cabled to external storage, no network required.IBM BarryW gives his take [Lowest Vendor Neutral Denominator] on his blog.

The concern that adding SVC (or USP-V) in front of other disk arrays adds complexity or eliminates the value-added features of older technologies, can be addressed simply by observing how similar problems were solved by the automobile industry.

• In 1911, the automobile industry introduced the "electric starter", eliminating the value-added features of the "hand crank".Instead of standing in front of the vehicle turning a hand crank over and over until the engine started, the driversat inside the vehicle and turned a small key or pressed a button, and let the "electric starter" do it. Yes, this meant thatcars were more complicated by adding a battery and electric system, but it also made cars easier to start and drive. Despite manufacturers arguing why their hand cranks were better than the hand cranks of other manufacturers, automobile models with hand cranks disappeared by 1920.

• In 1934, the automobile industry introduced the "automatic transmission" eliminating the value-added featuresof the "stick shift" and "clutch pedal". Before, people had to know when to shift gears manually, depending ontheir speed, engine RPM, and steepness of the hill they are driving on, pressing the clutch pedal at the same time, requiring skilled hand-foot coordination. Yes, cars weremore complicated with more equipment under the hood, but it made them easier and safer to drive, with one less thing to distract the driver. Surprisingly cars with automatic transmissions can be more energy-efficient, employing best practices when to automatically shift gears to optimize fuel economy.

  While you can still purchase automobiles with manual transmission, the newer hybrids and electric vehiclesnearly universally all have automatic transmission. Not everyone is skilled enough to drive a car with manual transmission, something to consider when you decide which car to take on a cross-country road trip if you want to share the driving responsibilities with the rest of your group.Not surprisingly, rental car companies like Hertz offer primarily cars with automatic transmission, both forincreased safety, and to broaden the reach to all driving skill levels.

• In 1946, the automobile industry introduced "power windows", eliminating the value-added features of the window-crankon each door to roll the window up or down. Now you just press or pull a lever or button, until the window reaches the desired position. Yes, this means that cars are yet again more complicated,with little motors inside each door panel, but it made them easier to use, with the added safety option to lock out children from rolling down the back windows.

  Some people actually choose manual windowsout of fear of driving their car into a lake or river, assuming a window-crank may make the difference in escaping the vehicle. It is these kinds of highly-unlikely scenarios that cause people to make bad purchase decisions. A betterapproach is to learn how to [escape from a sinking vehicle] properly, and keep the right "window-breaking" tools on hand. I keep a hammer for this purpose, and while you might think that Tucson has norivers or lakes to worry about, we do have flash floods, and I'll take knowledge-plus-hammer over window-crank any day.

So, when a company or industry innovates a new way of doing something, changing the way people think about the problem, it might take a while to take effect. SVC has been well-received in the marketplace, with thousands of delighted clients in production.

technorati tags: Shell, Oil, Eureka, video, webisode, IBM, storage, virtualization, engine, SVC, Kelly Beavers, EMC, HP, Hitachi, HDS, Kevin McIsaac, ComputerWorld, network-based, USP, USP-V, Hu Yoshida, BarryW, automobile, industry, electric starter, automatic transmission, power windows, escape, sinking, car, Tucson

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Tags:  disk

Continuing this week's theme of "Innovation that Matters", today I'll discuss cell phones, and their rolein "cloud computing". Some people call these "cellular phones", "mobile phones" or "hand phones".I have posted about these topics before. Last January, I discussed the[Convergence]represented by Apple's iPhone, and in August, I talked about[Accessing Data in the Clouds], but some recent announcements bring this back up as a fresh topic.

With the [end of the PC era] upon us,IBM researchers John J. Barton, Shumin Zhai, and Steve B. Cousins from the Almaden Research Center wrote aresearch paper [Mobile Phones Will Become The Primary Personal Computing Devices], and USA Today reports that [Social networkers reach out more with cellphones]. Of course, telephones, including those attached to land lines, have always been used for social networking since the late 1800s, to arrange parties, reunions, and other get-togethers, but this article is referring to the new "Web 2.0" meaning of social networking, with services like Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and Twitter.

This is a major game-changer, forcing companies to rethink many of their strategies. For example,John Windsor, on The YouBlog asks the CBS Interactive division[What Business Are You In?]The answer is that CBS is shifting from a content focus, to an audience focus, looking to provide CBS television contentto an audience of cell phone users.ThinkBeta [Me, My Cell Phone and I] presents some interesting statistics. Google CEO Eric Schmidt estimates there are over 2.5 billion cell phones in use today, with 288 million units shipped alone in 3Q07.

That's quite a trend. As a leader in IT innovation, IBM tries to stay one step ahead of the industry, selling off mature technologies to other manufacturers, like typewriters, printers, and most recently laptops and desktop PCs, so that it can focus on newer technologies and market trends. For example, while many people might be aware that IBM designs and fabricates processor chips for all of the major game consoles (Microsoft's Xbox 360, Nitentendo's Wii, and Sony'sPlay Station 3), they might not know that IBM also makes chips for many cell phone manufacturers. IBM[POWER Architecture] blog writes about the IBM CMOS 7RF SOI semiconductor:

IBM has managed to integrate seven Radio Frequency (RF) front-end functions onto this single CMOS chip using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology. And this means? For cell phones, according to IBM foundry product director Ken Torino, "Our solution minimizes insertion loss and maximizes isolation which will prevent dropped calls even on the most inexpensive handsets." Currently, cell phone RF front-end functions are handled by five to seven chips and at least two of those are using expensive gallium arsenide (GaA) technologies. The CMOS 7RF SOI should not only reduce costs by eliminating the need for so many chips, but also trim the fat from materials expenditures since GaA tech is somewhat expensive. IBM predicts that manufacturers will first use the chip to reduce on-phone processors to two or three before making the leap to a single chip.

With all this demand, the world will need engineers to develop softwareapplications that work in this new environment. This plays into IBM's strength in the area of grid and supercomputing.IBM and Google announced they have jointly established an Internet-scale computing initiative to promote new software development methods that can help students and researchers address the challenges of Internet-scale applications. From[IBM Internet-scale computing] webpage:

Internet use and content has grown dramatically, fueled by global reach, mobile device access, and user-generated Web content, including large audio and video files. More of the world population is looking to the mobile Web to fulfill basic economic needs. To meet this challenge, Web developers need to adopt new methods to address significant applications such as search, social networking, collaborative innovation, virtual worlds and mobile commerce.

The University of Washington is the first to join the initiative. A small number of universities will also pilot the program, including Carnegie-Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. In the future, the program will be expanded to include additional researchers, educators and scientists.

The heart of the project is a large cluster of several hundred computers (a combination of Google and IBM systems) that is planned to grow to more than 1,600 processors. Students will access the cluster through the Internet to test their parallel programming projects. The cluster is powered with open source software, including:

• Linux [Fedora]
• XEN systems virtualization (see [XenSource])
• [Hadoop] workload scheduling

The project includes a Web site to encourage collaboration among universities in the program, built with Web 2.0 technologies from the [IBM Innovation Factory].

For more viewpoints on this, read the [Google Press Release],or the reviews at [PC World,Cnet,GridsWatch,BBC News, eWeek,IT Jungle].

technorati tags: cellphones, cell, cellular, mobile, hand, phones, iPhone, cloud computing, end of PC era, John Barton, Shumin Zhai, Steve Cousins, IBM, Almaden, Research Center, primary, personal, computing, device, Web 2.0, CBS, Interactive, Google, Eric Schmidt, Microsoft, Xbox+360, Nintendo, Wii, Sony, PlayStation, PS3, CMOS, 7RF, SOI, GaA, Internet-scale, computing, CMU, MIT, Linux, Fedora, Xen, XenSource, Apache, Hadoop, MapReduce, Eclipse, parallel programming, Innovation, factory, PCworld, Cnet, GridsWatch, BBC, eWeek, ITjungle

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Tags:  infrastructure disk

Continuing my week's theme on Innovations that matter, I thought I would tackle energy efficiency and the recent excitement over the Smart car.

USA Today had an article [America crazy about breadbox on wheels called Smart car]. This car weighs only 2400 pounds, gets a respectable 33 MPG City,and 40 MPG Highway, with a list price of $11,590 US dollars. These have been in Europe for some time now.The "Smart" name comes from combining the S from Swatch, the M from Mercedes and ART. The car was designed byNicholas Hayek, founder of the SWATCH wristwatch line, and manufactured by Daimler, who also makes Mercedes cars.

We have many communities here in Tucson that people drive street-legal golf carts. People don't realize but bothelectric and electric/gas hybrid golf carts have been around for a long time. Some of the nicer golf carts run forabout $7,000 US dollars, with a shelf on the back that can hold two sets of golf clubs, or groceries.Of course, you would never take a golf cart on the highway, so that is where the Smart car comes in, with a 10gallon tank, could easily get you from one major city to another.

Like golf carts, the Smart-for-Two model being sold in the US will hold only two people, which is perfect for manyAmerican families. The standard 4-person or 5-person sedan is too big for most DINKS (Dual Income, No Kids), and other families with kids often opt for the 7-person SUV instead.

It is good to see that energy consumption is finally getting the attention it deserves. IBM recently announced some exciting offerings to help data centers manage their energy consumption:

IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager V3.1 [AEM]:

A new, key component of IBM's [Cool Blue portfolio] offering, AEM helps clients manage and even potentially lower energy costs. According to Gartner, insufficient power and excessive heat remain the greatest challenges in the data center. With AEM, IT managers can understand exact power/cooling costs, manage the efficiency of the current environment and reduce energy costs. AEM is the only energy management software tool that can provide clients with a single view of the actual power usage across multiple IBM platforms, including x86, blades, Power and storage systems, with plans to extend support to the mainframe.

IBM Usage and Accounting Manager Virtualization Edition V7.1 [UAV]for System p and System x:

UAV gives IT managers more information to manage data center costs. These powerful usage management tools are designed to accurately measure, analyze, and report resource utilization of virtualized/consolidated/shared resources. With UAV, IT managers can better manage costs and justify new systems by determining who is using how much of which resource; assessing the cost of an IT service or application; and accurately charging each user or department. Working with AEM capabilities, it will also allow tracking of energy consumption costs by server and by user. This level of reporting eliminates a key inhibitor to the adoption of virtualization and consolidation and further differentiates IBM systems.

IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager[UAM]:

This solution -- ideal for heterogenous IT shops -- serves as an accurate measurement tool underlying billing processes and SLA compliance. UAM provides usage-based accounting and charging for virtually any IT resources across the enterprise -- ranging from mainframes to virtualized servers to storage networks and more. The Usage and Accounting Manager Virtualization offerings seamlessly integrate into it.

Whether you are trying to reduce energy consumption in your data center, or in your transportation around town, these innovations can help you stay "green".

technorati tags: Smart Car, USAToday, golf cart, street legal, hybrid, MPG, green, energy, IBM Systems, Director, AEM, UAV, UAM, TUAM, SLA, management, virtualization, DINKS, SUV

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Tags:  green

Continuing my theme of "Innovation that matters", I thought I would cover MapQuest and NeverLost.

When Shawn Callahan on Anecdote wrote[Our need for the knowledge worker is over], he was referring to the fact that we no longer need the term "knowledge worker", because practically everyone isa "knowledge worker" today. He asks "How does knowledge help us to work better?"

It is said that as much as 30 percent of a knowledge worker's time is spent looking for information to do their jobs. This could be information to make a decision, decide between several choices, take specific action, or schedule when these actions should take place. The logistics of planning a business trip, and actually navigating in unfamiliarsurroundings, is a good example of this, and presents some unique challenges.

Before these technologies

Before these technologies, to plan a trip involved finding someone who lives or has been to the destination city,can recommend hotels and restaurants near the meeting facility, and can suggest approximate times it would take to drive from one place to another. I would bring a compass, and would shop for a city map, either before leaving, or upon arrival.

On one trip to Raleigh, I asked a local IBMer who lived in Raleigh for a hotel recommendation. The hotel was nice,but involved a long 45-60 minute commute each day to the meeting facility. When I asked her why she suggested thatparticular hotel, she said it was because it was "close to the airport". I have since learned never to ask for "best" of anything, as this is subject to such interpretation.

On another trip, I was travelling with a colleague in Germany. He asked how I knew which bus to take, and which bus stop to wait at. I pulled out my compass, and told him that based on the schedule, the bus that went in a specific directionmust be the correct one. The entire bus load of people burst out laughing, that we fit the universal stereotype ofmen who refuse to ask for directions. This method works only in Germany, where timeliness is next to godliness. In other countries, time schedules are more of a suggestion.

Sometimes, maps of the destination city were not always easy to find. Now with the Internet and Google Earth, maps are available before leaving on the trip. (See my post on Inner Workings of Storage which discusses how Google Earth works.)

MapQuest

I like using MapQuest, available online at [mapquest.com], and have not yet looked into the similar systems from Google or Yahoo. I map out each leg of my trip that involves driving, walking or trains. These are oftenairport-to-hotel, hotel-to-meeting, meeting-to-airport. Having a feel for the time and distances between locationshelps choose hotels and restaurants, when to leave, and so on.

I even use MapQuest in Tucson. Recently, a route I generated to visit a friend across town took into accountconstruction on Highway I-10 that has been going on for a while, where 8 miles of on-ramps are closed, and routed me around this mess accordingly. This is one key advantage over a static map, either a paper map, or downloaded from Google Earth.

While MapQuest may not always choose the "best" route, it always finds "a route" that works, and generally works for me.

For other reviews of MapQuest, see [Cartography, Cnet's Troy Dreier,EZ Driving, and Misha on HubPages].

NeverLost

A few problems with a MapQuest print-out I have found are:

• It is on paper, which could impact driving, as I have to look away from the road to look at the instructions.
• If it can't find a specific address, it provides generic instructions, and often, this involves airports.
• It often starts with "Head Northeast...", so unless you brought your compass, or can tell what direction you are pointing from Sun, Moon or stars, you may end up leaving in the wrong direction.

Recently, I checkmarked the "Request NeverLost" box on my Hertz Gold profile, and now I seem to get NeverLost innearly every rental. The system is based on the[Global Positioning System] set of satellites,complemented by a CD-based street information and yellow pages data for US and Canada, stored in the trunk.

The NeverLost system knows which way the car is oriented, can tell which direction you are driving, and tell youwith voice prompts to be in the left lane, right lane, and when to make left and right turns. No need for a compassor any knowledge of which way is North, East, West or South.

I also like that it gives you three choices for route: (a) Shortest time, (b) Most use of Highways, and (c) Least use of Highways. This came in handy when I was in Toronto last week. Apparently, the 407 Highway had recently implementedan Electronic Toll Road (ETR) which bills based on license plate. While this system is fine for residents, it isnot designed for rental car companies. Hertz left a note in my car warning me NOT to use the 407 highway, or I wouldbe charged an $8.50 dollar penalty. I chose "Least use of Highways" and proceeded to tour the city of Toronto for90 minutes from the Pearson Airport to my hotel in Markham, a trip that would have only taken 20 minutes otherwise.

Once you enter your destination street address, it can estimate the distance to get there. This is not a quick process, as there is no keyboard, you have to enter each letter using up/down/left/right keys. You can enter thename of the street, hotel or restaurant. To find "Sal Grosso" restaurant in Smyrna, it was at 1927 Powers Ferry Road,but NeverLost said that Powers Ferry only went from 2750-6350. I had to select 2750 and then hope to be close enough.

In Dallas, I tried to find "P. F. Chang's" restaurant, and you have to make sure that the periods and spaces are entered exactly. I ended up looking for restaurants in Grapevine, Texas, and then just going through the list ofall that start with the letter "P".

Another issue is that sometimes it takes awhile to find the satelites in the sky. I get the car started, I hit theenter button to get the NeverLost started, enter the address, and then it starts looking for satellites? Why doesn'tit look for satellites while you spend 3-5 minutes trying to enter the street address?In my case, I take out my MapQuest print-out, head in the right direction, and hope that NeverLost catches upeventually, in time to help me get to the final location.

It is not clear how often Hertz updates the CDrom that contains the street and yellow pages data. About 30-40 percent of the time, it can't find the street address I am looking for, and I have to be creative on howto get me in the general area.

Part of the problems is that I have not read the entire instruction manual, and do not have time to learn itwhen I am in the car driving. I might have to put this on my reading to-do list before my next trip. Some ofmy other colleagues have purchased their own GPS-based systems, like those from Garmin or Magellan, so that theyalways have it available, and they always know how to use it. This has the advantage that you can use it when walking around, or in your own car when you are home, as well.

See the [Official Hertz NeverLost website] for more information.or here for other reviews from[James Martin, and [Thom Hogan].

Despite these few problems, I am impressed on the innovations involved to make this all happen. All of the mapping information was stored, transmitted, searched, and then plotted in a manner that provides specificinformation that you need to get the job done. For now, I will probably use a combination of these to planand travel on my business trips. Wouldn't it be nice if other areas in your life had this kind of support?

technorati tags: knowledge worker, MapQuest, Google, Yahoo, Hertz, NeverLost, Garmin, Magellan[Read More]

Tags:  infrastructure bc

In North America, today marks the start of the "Give 1 Get 1" program.

Children using the XO laptop

I first learned from this when I was reading about Timothy Ferriss' [LitLiberation project] on his [Four Hour Work Week] blog, and was surfing around for related ideas, and chanced upon this. I registered for a reminder, and it came today(the reminder, not the laptop itself).

Here's how the program works. You give $399 US dollars to the "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC)[laptop.org] organization for two laptops: One goes to a deserving child ina developing country, the second goes to you, for your own child, or to donate to a localcharity that helps children. This counts as a $199 purchase plus a $200 tax-deductible donation.For Americans, this is a [US 501(c)(3)] donation, and for Canadians and Mexicans, take advantage of the low-value of the US dollar!

If your employer matches donations, like IBM does, get them to match the $200donation for a third laptop, which goes to another child in a developing country. As for shipping, you pay only for the shipping of the one to you, each receiving country covers their own shipping. In my case, the shipping was another $24 US dollars for Arizona.No guarantees that it will arrive in time for the holidays this December, but it might.

To sweeten the deal, T-mobile throws in a year's worth of "Wi-Fi Hot Spot"that you can use for yourself, either with the XO laptop itself, or your regular laptop, iPhone, or otherWi-Fi enabled handheld device.

National Public Radio did a story last week on this:[The $100 Laptop Heads for Uganda]where they interview actor [Masi Oka], best known from the TV show ["Heroes"], who has agreed to be their spokesman.At the risk of sounding like their other spokesman, I thought I would cover the technology itself, inside the XO,and how this laptop represents IBM's concept of "Innovation that matters"!

The project was started by [Nicholas Negroponte] from [MIT University] as the "$100 laptop project". Once the final designwas worked out, it turns out it costs $188 US dollars to make, so they rounded it up to $200. This is stillan impressive price, and requires that hundreds of thousands of them be manufactured to justify ramping upthe assembly line.

Two of IBM's technology partners are behind this project. First is Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) that providesthe 433Mhz x86 processor, which is 75 percent slower than Thinkpad T60. Second is Red Hat,as this runs lean Fedora 6 version of Linux. Obviously, you couldn't have Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X, as both require significantly more resources.

The laptop is "child size", and would be considered in the [subnotebook] category. At 10" x 9" x 1.25", it is about the size of class textbook,can be carried easily in a child's backpack, or carried by itself with the integrated handle. When closed, it is sealedenough to be protected when carried in rain or dust storms. It weighs about 3.5 pounds, less than the 5.2 pounds of myThinkpad T60.

The XO is "green", not just in color, but also in energy consumption.This laptop can be powered by AC, or human power hand-crank, with workin place to get options for car-battery or solar power charging. Compared to the 20W normally consumed bytraditional laptops, the XO consumes 90 percent less, running at 2W or less. To accomplish this, there is no spinning disk inside. Instead, a 1GB FLASH drive holds 700MB of Linux, and gives you 300MB to hold your files. There isa slot for an MMC/SD flash card, and three USB 2.0 ports to connect to USB keys, printers or other remote I/O peripherals.

The XO flips around into three positions:

Standard

Standard laptop position has screen and keyboard. The water-tight keyboard comes in ten languages:International/English, Thai, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, West African, Urdu, Mongolian, Cyrillic, and Amharic.(I learned some Amharic, having lived five years with Ethiopians.)There does not appear be a VGA port, so don't be thinking this could be used as an alternative to project Powerpoint presentations onto a big screen.

Built-in 640x480 webcam, microphone and speakers allow the XO to be used as a communication device. Voice-over-IP (VOIP) client software, similar to Skype or [IBM Lotus Sametime], is pre-installed for this purpose.

The basic built-in communication are 802.1g (54Mbs) that you can use to surf the web usingthe Wi-Fi at your local Starbucks; and 802.1s which forms a "mesh network" with other XO laptops, and can surf theweb finding the one laptop nearby that is connected to the internet to share bandwidth. This eliminates the need to build a separate Wi-Fi hub at the school. There are USB-to-Ethernet and USB-to-Cellular converters, so that might be an alternative option.

For kids who want to learn how to program, the Python, Javascript, Logo and Squeak languages are included.Since the machine runs Linux, it can be modified as needed to fit individual needs of each country.

E-book

Flipped vertically, the device can be read like a book.The screen can be changed between full-color and black-white, 200 dpi, with decent 1200x900 pixel resolution. The full-color is back-lit, and can be read in low-lighting. The black-white is not back-lit, consumes much less power, andcan be read in bright sunlight. In that regards, it is comparable to other [e-book devices], like a Cybook or Sony Reader.

Software includes a web-browser, document reader, word processor and RSS feed reader to read blogs.The OLPC identifies all of the software, libraries and interfaces they use, so that anyone that wants to developchildren software for this platform can do so.

Game mode

With the keyboard flipped back, the 6" x 4.5" screen has directional controls and X/Y/A/B buttons to run games. This would make it comparable to a Nintendo DS or Playstation Portable (PSP). Again, the choice between back-lit color,or sunlight black-white screen modes apply. Some games are pre-installed.

So for $399, you could buy a Wi-Fi enabled[16GB iPod Touch] for yourself, which does much the same thing, or you can make a difference in the world.I made my donation this morning, and suggest you--my dear readers in the US, Canada and Mexico--consider doing the same.Go to [www.laptopgiving.org] for details.

technorati tags: North America, Give-1-Get-1, program, XO, laptop, Timothy Ferriss, Four Hour Work Week, LitLiberation, One Laptop Per Child, OLPC, $100 laptop, IBM, AMD, Red Hat, Fedora, T-mobile, NPR, Nicholas Negroponte, MIT, Thinkpad, T60, notebook, subnotebook, Linux, Windows, OS X, green, AC, hand-crank, human-power, International, English, Thai, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, West+African, Urdu, Mongolian, Cyrillic, Amharic, Ethiopia, FLASH, MMC/SD, USB, VGA, webcam, VOIP, Lotus, Sametime, Skype, Starbucks, mesh, network, Nintendo DS, Playstation, portable, PSP, 802.1g, 802.1s, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Powerpoint, Python, Javascript, Logo, Squeak, back-lit, sunlight, Cybook, Sony, Reader, RSS,

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Tags:  infrastructure disk olpc green

I'm in Atlanta today, on my way back to Tucson, but wanted to talk about IBM's entry-level iSCSI offerings, based on comments on this week's discussion about Dell's acquisition of EqualLogic.

Analysts were quick to comment on this when the news broke.Tony Asaro gave his take on [Dell's Logic - The Storage Market is No Longer Equal], and Steve Duplessie writes [Dell Just Bought N.H.’s Tech Sector]. The last time I remember Steve talking about EqualLogic, [Catching Up], he had the funniestquote:

"EqualLogic didn’t get 2,000 customers because people were dying to use iSCSI. It got them because it built systems that scale dynamically and because a system the size of Montana can be managed by someone as clueless as my ex-wife."

As with any acquisition, people might be asking if this is a "match made in heaven" that makes strong business sense,or another HP-Compaq debacle. Back in September, I posted [Supermarkets and Specialty Shops] to explain how the storage marketplace has two market segments. Internally, IBM distinguishesbetween "clients" and "customers". Clients are those that buy services and complete solutions from a one-stop systems vendor, such as IBM, HP, Sun, or Dell, or systems integrator like IBM, CSC or EDS. Customers are those that buy products and components, from the systems vendors I just mentioned, as well as from individual specialty shops, like EMC, HDS, or NetApp.

To reach the growing "supermarket" segment, specialty shops are dependent on systems vendors to OEM or resell their kit: EMC disk through Dell, HDS disk through Sun and HP, NetApp through IBM. Until now, EqualLogichad to make their living as a "specialty" shop, but iSCSI appeals more to SMB than large enterprises, andSMB tend to be in the "supermarket" segment, so they partnered with Sun. Here is the timeline of this likely awkwardand strained relationship:

• 2002: [Sun Says iSCSI May Be a 'Mistake']quoting Balint Fleischer, CTO of Sun's network storage group.
• 2003: [Sun changes iSCSI tune] andcertifies EqualLogic arrays for use with Sun servers.
• 2004: [EqualLogic and Sun Microsystems Enter into Reseller Agreement]

I am not surprised that I haven't seen anything in the blogosphere yet from HP, Dell or Sun. I suspect this news meansthat Sun won't be reselling Dell's EqualLogic boxes anymore, and perhaps there is nothing more for Sun bloggers Randy Chalfant or Nigel Dessau to add to that. HP and Dell are practically non-existent in the storage blogosphere, so I didn't expect much from them either.

I did, however, expect EMC to put in their spin, given that Dell resells EMC disk, and accounts for perhaps 15% of their revenues.Now that Dell has multiple offerings, they will be instructing their channel reps when to lead with EqualLogic versus when to sell EMC, for now, until 2011, at which point may simplify their storage sales model to just EqualLogic. I don't know if Dell would do that in 2011. Depending on how quick the decline happens, EMC may have to increase the pricesof their gear, or cut into their development budgets, to make up for this loss.

I started this post because of a comment from EMC blogger Chuck Hollis, who speculates how this will impact[Dell, EqualLogic and EMC].In that post, he expresses his opinion (which I will put into a different color):

"Speculation is pretty evenly split. Neither HP nor IBM have a good, entry-level iSCSI product."

If he had left out the word "good", then that would just be a false statement, but by adding the word "good" reduces this to merely an opinion of IBM products that I disagree with. (I have no experience with whateverHP sells in this category, nor talked to any customers about their experiences, so will neither agree nordisagree with Chuck's opinion of the HP half of his statement). As for the term "Entry-level", this is fairly well defined by analysts as a storage system under $50,000 US Dollars. Actually, IBM has three good offerings.

DS3300

Our basic, lowest-price model is the IBM System Storage DS3300, which does iSCSI only, like the EqualLogic offerings. This supports both SAS and SATA disks, and can attach to our System x and System p server product lines.

N3300

Our smallest model of our fancier IBM System Storage N series not only supports iSCSI, but also CIFS, NFS,HTTP, FTP, and FCP protocols, what we call "Unified Storage". The iSCSI feature is included at no additional charge, and small customers can start with this, then scale up to larger N3600, N5000 or N7000 models, andadd more protocols and software features, as their business grows.

N3600

Our next larger model, but still entry-level, is the N3600. Since the N series supports a unified multi-protocolplatform, with features like SnapLock for regulatory compliance and SnapMirror for remote disk mirroring. The IBM System Storage N series easily replaces any mix of EMC "C-boxes": Centera, Celerra, and CLARiiON.

Both the DS3300 and the N series support the various Business Applications I have discussed this week, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, SAP, Oracle, Siebel, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft. N series offers SnapManager for variousapplications to make the business value even that much better.

Chuck speculates that Dell did this to compete better against rival HP, but that doesn't make sense, sincehe feels HP didn't have much to offer in this space. Perhaps Dell did this to competebetter against IBM, the number one vendor in storage hardware, according to IDC. Looking at what IBM andNetApp have to offer, Dell may have realized that they didn't have competitive disk systems from their resellingrelationship with EMC, looked elsewhere and found EqualLogic. Meanwhile, EqualLogic probably felt that Sun wasgoing out of business, or not yet fully supportive of IP SAN environments, and decided to ["switch horses midstream"].

For more about the DS3300 or N series, see my [Announcement Recap of October 2007] or visit our [www.ibm.com/storage] website.

technorati tags: IBM, entry-level, iSCSI, Dell, EqualLogic, ESG, Tony Asaro, Steve Duplessie, Montana, ex-wife, HP, Compaq, systems vendors, systems integrators, supermarket, specialty, products, components, services, solutions, Chuck Hollis, Sun, NetApp, HDS, Exchange, Domino, SAP, Oracle, Siebel, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, IDC, DS3300, N3300, N3600

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Tags:  disk infrastructure

Continuing this week's theme on Enterprise Applications, today I will cover Oracle.

IBM is Oracle's number #1 integration partner, and has the leading market share, nearly 40 percent, for IT hardware running Oracle applications. In the coopetition category, Oracle's databases competes against IBM's DB2 database offerings, and Oracle'sapplications compete against SAP's set of Enterprise Apps. While SAP offers its own internal database, most production SAP environmentsuse either an Oracle or IBM database instead. Comparing license revenues, Oracle's application side earns roughly 70 percent of the amount SAP applications earn.

To compete against SAP, Oracle has been on a spending spree of acquisitions. This includes PeopleSoft, Siebel, Hyperion, Agile, and JD Edwards.IBM can help with all of these applications, and many clients continue to use IBM DB2 as the underlying database, rather than switching over to Oracle database. For example, IBM has sizing tools to help identify the right amount of servers and storage based on "best practice" experience.

Server Platforms

Oracle's database uses a number-letter combination. "9i" was Version 9, "i" for Internet. "10g" and "11g" are versions 10 and 11, "g" for Grid. Most of the Oracle customers I deal with are still on 9i or 10g. The 11g releaseis supported on Linux and Windows, with the other platforms to be delivered in a staged approach.

Alternatively, most run also on AIX on System p, and Linux/Windows on System x. For System i customers, the Oracle supports its [JD Edwards World] andJD Edwards Enterprise One natively on i5/OS, the other applications can run under an AIX LPAR on an System i server.

While some of my readers cringe everytime I mentioned benchmarking, IBM has the top benchmarks for Oracle 10g database, [Oracle e-Business Suite], JD Edwards and PeopleSoft.

As with SAP, it is possible with Oracle to run a front-end application on one server platform, and theback-end database on a different server platform. Many of IBM's largest customers run the front-end onAIX or Linux, and then use z/OS on System z for the back-end database.

Oracle has implemented a "Scale-Out" approach called Real Application Clusters [RAC],pronounced same as "rack", which I discussed before [Similar Sounding Storage Speech].Several servers can act as an "application cluster" to access a common database. This approachallows customers to use a bunch of x86 servers instead of a bigger System p or System i machine. Additional processor capability can simply be added into the "application cluster" as needed.

IBM and Oracle are both staunch proponents of Linux. Oracle offers theirOracle Enterprise Linux support program.In this support program, Oracle will offer support service contracts for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) corporatecustomers.This could explain why Oracle decided to support[Linux first]on its new 11g database, rather than Windows.

What's New

To deal with all of their acquisitions, Oracle has announced its Applications Unlimited strategy. Inthis strategy, the Oracle Fusion middleware will support all of Oracle'sapplications, including JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Seibel. This is good for IBM, as it will simplify IBM's testing of server and storage platforms for its Oracle clients.

To support pre-sales efforts, IBM and Oracle have formed the IBM Oracle International Competency Center,[IOICC]

technorati tags: IBM, Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, Hyperion, Agile, Red Hat, RHEL, 9i, 10g, 11g, z/OS, i5/OS, AIX, Linux, Windows, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Real Application Clusters, RAC, Fusion, Applications Unlimited

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Tags:  disk infrastructure

Continuing this week's theme on Enterprise Applications, I thought that since I mentioned Lotus Notes in my discussion ofSAP yesterday, that I would cover Microsoft Exchange today.

IBM and Microsoft is the ultimate example of "Coopetition". Both companies develop popular operating systems. Microsoft's "Xbox 360" gaming console uses IBM processors. Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino are the Coke-and-Pepsi dominant players in the email marketplace, with Microsoft slightly in the lead, as seen on this graph[Lotus Notes/Domino marketshare growing] from fellow IBM Lotus blogger Alan Lepofsky.And now, Microsoft is getting serious about participating in the storage software business, with its strong support for iSCSI and its SharePoint product. For this post, I will focus just on email.

For those not familiar with both Microsoft and IBM products, I offer the simple cheat-sheet below:

Microsoft Outlook (client)::IBM Lotus Notes (client)
Microsoft Exchange (server)::IBM Lotus Domino (server)

Server/Storage Considerations

Email has become the primary collaboration tool for most businesses, raising it to the level of "mission-critical".Microsoft has introduced its new Exchange 2007 to replace the existing Exchange 2003. Here are the key differences:

Exchange 2003	Exchange 2007
Windows 2000 or 2003	Windows 2003
Runs on 32-bit x86	Requires 64-bit EM64T or AMD64, but Itanium IA64 not supported
Two(2) server roles	Five(5) server roles
	Edge Server Role for combating SPAM
	Unified Messaging services to combine voicemail, email, fax
5 storage groups	50 storage groups per server on Enterprise edition
5 databases	50 databases per server on Enterprise edition (max 5 per storage group)
NAS or NTFS-formatted block disk	NTFS-formatted block disk recommended

Obviously, Exchange only runs on Windows operating system. The change from 32-bit to 64-bit means that many Exchange 2003 customers have not yet migrated over, and perhapsnow is a good time to point out alternative email servers on more reliable operating system platforms.For example, in addition to Windows 2003, Lotus Domino runs on IBM AIX, Linux on x86, Linux on System z, Sun Solaris, i5/OS on System i, and z/OS.

Another Linux alternative to Microsoft Exchange is Bynari InsightServer, which allows you to use your existing Windows-based Microsoft Outlook clients, swapping out only the server. This approach can be used when consolidating Windows servers to Linux virtual images on System z mainframe.Linux desktops can run [Ximian Evolution] to attach to either Bynari server, or Windows-based Microsoft Exchange server.Linux Journal offers a few articles on this:[Understanding and Replacing Microsoft Exchange, andExchange Functionality for Linux].

As with [Exchange 2003 editions], the new Exchange 2007 comes in both ["Standard" and "Enterprise" editions]. With all the newroles supported, you now can limit your "Mailbox Storage Server" role as Enterprise, and have the other roles, likeEdge and Hub, as simply "Standard" instead. Enterprise is about 5x more expensive than Standard, so that can makea difference.With Exchange 2003, the big difference was that "Standard" supported only 16GB, versus 16TB with "Enterprise",making "Standard" impractical for all but the smallest company. In the new Exchange 2007, both Standard and Enterprise support 16TB.

Exchange 2007 is also less IOPS-intensive. Thanks to 64-bit addressing, it generates about 75 percent fewer IOPS than Exchange 2003 for comparable configurations. This is good becauseaccording to a 2006 Radicati Group survey, the average corporate employee gets 84 emails per day, averaging 10MBdaily ingestion, and this is expected to grow to 15.8MB daily ingestion by 2008. The number of mailboxes worldwideis growing at a rate of 16 percent per year.

IBM System Storage is a Microsoft Gold certified partner, and participates in Microsoft's Exchange Solution Reviewed Program [ESRP].Both IBM DS8000 and DS4000 series are certified under this program, using a testbed called Jetstress.Those considering IBM System Storage N series can use Exchange 2007 with NTFS-formatted LUNs via FCP or iSCSIattachment.

Backup and Business Continuity

Back in 2003, the Meta Group found that 80 percent of organizations surveyed felt access to email was more importantthan telephone service, and that 74 percent believed being without email would present a greater hardship thanlosing telephone service. These percentages are probably higher today, with websiteslike ["Crackberry.com"] to cater to those addicted to theirRIM Blackberry hand-held devices.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager can provide backup and recovery support for Microsoft Exchange.TSM for Mail supports both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino. TSM for Copy Services can use MicrosoftVolume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) interfaces. I blogged about this before, back in June[Exchange 2003 VSS Snapshot Backup Whitepaper], and now there TSM has support for Exchange 2007 as well.

Interestingly, Exchange 2007 has some built-in"Business Continuity" features. Of the ones below, Standard edition has LCR only, Enterprise edition gives you the full set.

• Local Continuous Replication (LCR):In this approach, a single server ships update logs from the active storage group on one disk system over to a passivecopy on a secondary disk system, presumably within 10km FCP distance. These logs can then be forward-applied to thepassive copy. This is sometimes called "database shadowing".

• Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR):This is based on two servers in an active/passive MSCS cluster. First server is attached to the primary disk system,and ships logs to the passive copy attached to the second server.

• Standby Continuous Replication (SCR):For the MSCS cluster-averse customer, SCR is based on two independent servers that are in two locations. In the event of failure on thefirst, scripts can be run to switch over to the second server. Each server has its own disk system.

• Single Copy Clusters (SCC):This is for customers who have existing systems, but not recommended for new customers. An MSCS cluster, where both active andpassive servers are connected to the same single disk system. The disk array can be a single point of failure (SPOF) in this environment.You could mitigate risks by using IBM's disk mirroring in this situation, but then you are left coordinating those copies with new servers at the remote location.

Archive Support

It is estimated that as much as 75 percent of a company's intellectual property (IP) can be found somewhere in their email repository. Email is often requested in lawsuits and regulatory investigations. According to the Workplaceemail IM & blogging 2006 survey by AMA and the ePolicy Institute, 24 percent of organizations have be subpoenaed by courts and regulators, and another 15 percent have gone to court in lawsuits triggered by employee emails.

New regulations now mandate that emails are archived, protected against tampering and unauthorized access, and kept for a specific amount of time, or until certain conditions are met. According to a 2004 CSI and FBI Computer Crime and Security survey, 78 percent of organizations were hit by viruses (the rest must have been running Linux, AIX, i5/OS or z/OS!)and 37 percent reported unauthorized access to confidential information.

IBM offers software to archive emails. IBM CommonStore software supports both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino.For SMB customers, we made things easier with the [IBM CommonStore eMail Archiving Preload Solution], an appliance which I mentioned in [Day 2 Storage Symposium].

What's Next

According to Gartner, over 60 million people will be doing some form of telecommuting, so access Microsoft hasbeen working on extending the reach of email beyond Outlook client. There is now "Outlook Web Access" thatprovides browser-based access, "Outlook Mobile" to provide text access from cellular phones, and even "Outlook Voice Access" which allows you to listen to your emails from any phone. These are all part of the new Unified MessagingServices feature.

Microsoft is also teaming up with SAP, with a new offering called Duet. See the [SAP and Microsoft Introduce Duet] press release for more details.

It might be a while before all these are commonly deployed, but at least it is something to look forward to!

technorati tags: IBM, Microsoft, coopetition, Xbox 360, Exchange, Lotus, Notes, Domino, client, server, EM64T, AMD64, IA64, Itanium, Alan Lepofsky, Unified Messaging, services, Bynari, Ximian, roles, standard, enterprise, edition, ESRP, Jetstress, Edge, Hub, IOPS, NAS, NTFS, Blackberry, Crackberry, Windows, Linux, AIX, z/OS, i5/OS, VSS, CommonStore, Gartner, Outlook, web, access, mobile, voice, SAP, Duet

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Tags:  disk infrastructure bc

Continuing this week's theme on Enterprise Applications, I will talk about [SAP] today.

The history of SAP is fascinating. Back in 1972, five IBMers noticed that IBM wasn't leveragingits internal accounting/inventory software package. They asked if they could buy the rights to it, leave IBM to form their own company to fix it up, and sell it as their own. Since IBM had decided not tobe in the enterprise applications business any longer, they approved. These guys renamed the software to "Realtime Data Processing/1" or just R/1 for short, andformed Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung AG. In 2005, they renamed this to Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung AG,which is German for "Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing, Inc.", withSAP AG as the preferred abbeviation (the AG here is justthe German version of "Inc.").

R/1 became R/2, then R/3, and today is now called the SAP ERP forthe SAP Business Suite, although many still call it R/3. Other popular Business Suite components includeCustomer Relationship Management(CRM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and Supply Chain Management (SCM),and Supplier Relationship Manager (SRM).The architecture had evolved in this time frame, separating out the application components from a base platform product line called NetWeaver, similar to IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS). Other ISVs or in-house developers can build their applications directlyonto the NetWeaver base platform, creating a form of eco-system of software applications.

Today, SAP is now the fourth largest software company (behind Microsoft, IBM and Oracle) employing over 42,000 employees worldwide,and is considered the leading global vendor of Enterprise Application software, generating over $14 billiondollars in revenue each year.

Server Platforms

SAP runs on all of IBM's major operating systems and server platforms, so it makes sense for IBM to continue its strong ties to SAP. Together, we formed the IBM SAP International Competency Center[ISICC], in Waldorf, Germany,where SAP has its headquarters. I have been to Germany and visited with the folks from the ISICC.Of my 17 U.S. patents, several were for a feature called z/OS DFSMShsm "Fast Replication" that was requested by SAPat one of these meetings. This featuretakes advantage of IBM System Storage DS8000 FlashCopy to make instantaneous backups of an SAP environment built on DB2 for z/OS databases. For more details read the [IBM Redbook: Fast Replication].

The #1 UNIX platform for SAP is IBM's AIX operating system that runs on System p servers. Some of our customers create a[Composite Application] by havingthe SAP front-end application server run on AIX, and use z/OS to host the SAP DB2 databases. Thisallows you to take advantage of DFSMShsm Fast Replication on System z, with the number-crunching power of theSystem p server.

Combining IBM server and storage is a winning combination for SAP performance as well, as evidenced by this[New IBM server achieves championship benchmark results] press release.

Last year, IBM introduced [Lotus Notes 7 access to SAP solutions],which has since been enhanced with Lotus Notes 8 support of Composite Applications, building on IBM and SAP'smutual efforts to get customers to adopt [Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)] and Java.

Server/Storage bundles

What's most exciting to me about SAP is that for every dollar spend on IT hardware to support an SAP application,60% is for storage, and 40% for servers. Therefore, buying both from IBM is simpler and easier than shoppingfor these separately.

[Business Intelligence], abbreviated BI, attempts to evaluate and correlate data across many different business applications, to help executives make business decisions.An exciting development is [IBM Systems forSAP Business Intelligence Accelerator]. These are pre-installed, pre-configured server/storagebundles in four ["T-shirt"] sizes, based on 500-byte rows:

• Small, 10 user sessions, and 120 million rows
• Medium, 20 parallel user sessions, and 250 million rows
• Large, 50 parallel user sessions, and 500 million rows
• Extra Large, 100 parallel user sessions, and 1 billion rows

The "Accelerator" provides a performance boost by managing large queries in memory. SAP blogger Nenshad Bardoliwalla in his Bardoli Blog explains why [the future is in memory-based data warehouses].

IDC Insight has an opinion paper titled [SAP Business Intelligence Accelerator: A High - Performance Analytic Engine for SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence by Dan Vesset.

Backup and Archive Support

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) was the first product to certify to SAP's BC-BRS interface for copy/mirror/backup/restore. IBM provides additional support with TSM for SAP, TSM for Databases, andTSM for Advanced Copy Services (ACS). TSM for ACS supports the use of FlashCopy on SVC, DS8000, DS6000, and ESS; as well as SnapShot on the IBM System Storage N series.

IBM's recent push into the Archive and Compliance space offers[IBM CommonStore for SAP],which acts as an "archive file manager" between you SAP application and your archive repository, such asthe IBM System Storage DR550, DR550 Express, N series, and tape.

What's Next: SMB and SaaS

Since SAP has saturated the market for medium and large size businesses, IBM is now focused on helping theSMB customer base. The majority of these are expected to deploy SAP on x86 platforms running Linux orWindows. For smaller companies, SAP has their "Business All-in-One" for companies with 100-500 users,and "Business One" for companies with less than 100 users. Note: not every employee may need to use SAP,so larger companies may have only a subset of their employees actually using the SAP system and find thesesmaller offerings a good fit.

Nicholas Carr on his Rough Type blog writes:[has SAP unleashed a cannibal?],referring to SAP's new "Business ByDesign" Software as a Service (SaaS) offering to compete againstSalesforce.com business model. Rather than installing and maintaining the SAP software yourself, youinstead pay SAP on a per-user/per-month basis to use their systems remotely. The reference to cannibalism comes from the IT slang "eat your ownchildren", the notion that IT companies may introduce a new offering that eats away at future sales of theexisting product set.

For more information on IBM's support of SAP enterprise applications, check out this [IBM and SAP website].

technorati tags: IBM, SAP, ERP, Microsoft, Oracle, DFSMShsm, Fast+Replication, DS8000, FlashCopy, R/3, MySAP, Business Suite, DB2, z/OS, AIX, Lotus Notes, Composite Applications, SOA, Java, Business Intelligence, BI, BIA, BI-A, Accelerator, Nenshad Bardoliwalla, NetWeaver, TSM, ACS, database, CommonStore, DR550, x86, Linux, Windows, ByDesign, SaaS, cannibalism,CRM, PLM, SCM[Read More]

Tags:  disk infrastructure

I am in Toronto, Canada. It is a lot cold and rainy here, worse than last week in Seoul, Korea.This looks like a slow news week, so slow that the only news here in Canada is the possibility of anew 5-dollar coin. I thought I would make this week's theme about enterprise applications.

IBM doesn't make these applications anymore, we have decided to focus on our core strength, to be the best IT platform to run other people's applications. This means being the best IT systems, software and services company. However, many of the companies that make enterprise applications are both cooperate and compete against parts of IBM, what we call "coopetition".

Let's take a look at some acronyms in this space:

ERP

"Enterprise Resource Planning" represents all the basic applications that business need to run theirbusiness, including: finance, accounting, human resources, and manufacturing. The focus here is to streamline operations and make the workforce more productive. Before IBM, I ran my ownsoftware development company, Pearson Kurath Systems, and we developed ERP applications for clients oneby one, customized to their industry requirements.

CRM

"Customer Relationship Management" or sometimes "Client Relationship Management" help companies identifyand retain their customer base. Focus here is to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

SCM

"Supply Chain Management" help track supply and just-in-time inventory demand, sharing the information withkey suppliers and distributors. The focus is to manage inventories down to nothing, and improve speed to get products out to market.

B2B

"Business to Business" refer to procurement, purchase orders, and collecting payments over the internet.One of my pet peeves are acronyms that use "2" to mean "to" and "4" to mean "for".

HCM

"Human Capital Management" deals with managing costs of Human Resources (HR) and coordinating servicesfrom outside organizations.

KM

"Knowledge Management" refers to sharing and collaborating information. This is not just email and instant messaging, but also online calendaring, experience repositories, client case studies, and anecdotes.

This week I will cover applications that address these, and how they relate to storage.

technorati tags: IBM, coopetition, enterprise, applications, ERP, CRM, SCM, B2B, HCM, KM

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Tags:  infrastructure san disk

IBM announced the industry's first corporate-led initiative to enable clients to earn energy efficiency certificates for reducing the energy needed to run their data centers.For the first time, this provides a way for businesses to attain a certified measurement of their energy use reduction, a key, emerging business metric. The certificates can be traded for cash on the growing energy efficiency certificate market or otherwise retained to demonstrate reductions in energy use and associated CO2 emissions. The Efficiency Certificates initiative engages Neuwing Energy Ventures, a leading verifier of energy efficiency projects and marketer of energy efficiency certificates.

How it works:

• The Neuwing Energy assessments are a two-part evaluation to 1) determine the initial energy draw from the data center or IT equipment identified for consolidation based on industry accepted energy estimates for the servers in use and the power and cooling profiles of the data center, and 2) a second review of energy draw after steps are taken that are designed to reduce energy consumption.
• Neuwing Energy will issue customers an Efficiency Certificate for the total megawatt-hours of energy no longer needed to power and cool their data center or operate IT equipment. Neuwing Energy will keep a portion of each customer's earned certificates or charge a per MWH saved fee in exchange for the assessment.
• Customers can trade earned Efficiency Certificates on the energy efficiency certificate market or they can retain their certificates, using them to demonstrate reductions in energy use and associated CO2 emissions.

IBM intends to make the Efficiency Certificates program available across its entire line of server and storage offerings.

Here is the full Press Release.

technorati tags: IBM, Neuwing, Energy, Ventures, Efficiency, Certificate, Program

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Tags:  green

I'm following theadvice of Tim Sanders, who reminds us ["Don't let the Wookie always win"].

In this case, it is not chess pieces, but FUD being slung around like mud between vendors. EMC blogger Chuck Hollis' post [Products vs. Features] correctly pointsout that IBM has invented most nearly everything useful in IT, and sadly a few things we wish we hadn't.Gene Amdahl, who left IBM to start his own company, is credited for coining the phrase describing IBM'sinnovative sales techniques. Wikipedia has a nice write up on the history of[Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt(FUD)].

Nowadays, when you hear "FUD" most storage administrators immediately think of EMC, who have taken this method to anew level of art-form. Take for example two EMC entries from fellow blogger BarryB, on his Storage Anarchist blog:[Not Dead Yet, andPushing Daisies].The first is a reference to a funny scene from a Monty Python movie, and the second one is referring to a terriblenew television program called "Pushing Daisies". (In this show, the main character can bring a dead personback to life for sixty seconds, just long enough to ask a few questions on behalf of his detective friend. He must touch the person again within 60 seconds, or someone else randomly dies instead. I amnot a fan of this concept, and found it a bit morbid and creepy. But I digress.)

It is true I was on vacation the past two weeks, but this was group travel I booked over six months ago before we had the exact dates lined up for our various announcements, and not a last-minute celebration of my recent new job assignment. I got all my assignments for this announcement turned in before leaving for my trip. I never thought of checking with fellow IBM blogger BarryW to make sure that we don't have overlapping vacation schedules, leaving the "blogosphere" unmanned, so to speak, but it is not a bad idea. Fortunately, our IBM PR team was able to make their rebuttal through other means. You can read the recap on Techworld [Marketing Wars by Proxy].

Several astute readers on my blog, however, requested that I add my two cents. Let's take a look at some of BarryB's comments:

...most DS8300's are to this day most frequently bundled as "free" storage with IBM mainframe and server sales.

We just shipped our 15,000th box, so for this absurd statement to be true, more than half would have to be given away as part of a server-and-storage deal?Actually, about a third of our DS8000 sales are sold with servers in the same bundle, and while we do provide discounts from the official list price, that is not the same as "free". The other two thirds are sold into accounts to be used with the existing servers already deployed. So BarryB, your math doesn't work out. (Perhaps you've been taking Hitachi math lessons???)

It is interesting however, that when we do a 4-year TCO comparison, between a normally-discounted DS8000 versus free EMC DMX4 hardware, IBM still has the lower cost, given that most of the price-gouging from EMC happens after the initial sale, through software features, annual Powerpath renewals and MES upgrades. If you are an EMC customer, and you are planning to add more capacity to your DMX, ask EMC to charge you no more than what you originally paid on a dollar-per-GB basis for the initial capacity. That's only fair, right?

...No thin provisioning, or even a commitment to thin provisioning. Just crickets. (Celerra support since Jan 2006...

EMC DMX does not have thin provisioning available today either, so BarryB brings up Celerra, their NAS box? IBM System Storage N series NAS box also has thin provisioning, so if you want thin provisioning you can buy a NAS box from EMC or IBM. Thin provisioning makes sense using NAS protocols, as there are actual commands to "delete a file" that can then free up the related blocks in a thin-provisioned environment. The only way to do this with block-oriented protocols is to get the OS to notify the storage device that blocks can be freed up. As it turns out, IBM's z/OS has such support, which we developed specifically for our thin-provisioning support in our IBM RAMAC Virtual Array disk systems back in the 1990s.For block-oriented devices on most other operating systems, thin provisioning may not be all that it is cracked up to be.

No SATA drives (only DMX-4 supports native SATA-II drives, since Aug’07)

A few people are confused on this. IBM DS8000 has supported FATA for quite some time now, same slower speeds and higher capacities as SATA, but are technically NOT the same as SATA. FATA are designed to provide better protection against vibrational shock, to improve reliability of the drives. IBM felt that if the data was important enough to put on a high-end system, it should get better-than-SATA treatment. If you really want SATA, try our IBM System Storage N series, DS4000 or DS3000 models.

No RAID 6 (DMX-3 has supported multi-dimensional RAID since Q1’07, DMX-4 since Aug'07, ...

IBM N series supports RAID6, but we called it RAID-DP and that confused some people. Same thing, DP stands for Dual Parity, protecting against a double-disk failure. We also just announced RAID6 on our DS4000 series, by the way.

No 4Gb back-end (USP-V since May '07, DMX-4 since Aug’07)

I found this one odd, since BarryB himself in an earlier post explained why 4Gbps back-end made no difference to DMX4 performance in this post [DMX-4 and Oh So Much More], which I will put into a different color so you can tell it is from a different post:

You may have noticed that there weren't any specific performance claims attributed to the new 4Gb FC back-end. This wasn't an oversight, it is in fact intentional. The reality is that when it comes to massive-cache storage architectures, there really isn't that much of a difference between 2Gb/s transfer speeds and 4Gb/s. Transmit times are really only a tiny portion of I/O overhead, and just don't make that much difference when a massively-cached system is pre-fetching reads, buffering/delaying writes and reordering I/O requests to minimize seek times. Not that 4Gb/s won't help some applications, but most people just won't see any noticeable difference.

In this case, BarryB is right. The IBM DS8000's 2Gbps back-end is not a performance bottleneck. The DS8000 with a 2Gbps back-end is faster than DMX4 with a 4Gbps back-end for business application workloads. EMC doesn't publish SPC benchmarks to deny this, so you will just have to take our word on this.

Still only 1024 maximum disk drives (DMX-3 & 4 support up to 2400 drives, USP-V supports 1152)

I would be curious to see how many customers have more than 1024 drives on any high-end disk array.As we learned back in [Day 2 Storage Symposium], the average DS8100 has 17.4 TB, and DS8300 has 41.5 TB capacity. Using 500GB drives,that's only 83 spindles. Even with 73GB drives, that's 568 spindles. Plenty of room for growth, so I am notconvinced that higher theoretical upper architectural limits are worth discussing here.

Still only two HARD LPARs (partitions) ..., and even IBM’s mid-tier products support more than 2 storage partitions (in this same announcement)

IBM's two LPARs are TWICE what EMC DMX offers. I don't even know why anyone from EMC would bring this up? While EMC is enjoying their success with VMware, the lack the experience to carry this over to their storage lines. Until EMC offers MORE THAN TWO of any kind of partitions on their high-end offerings, there just is no credibility here. As for our "storage partitions" on our DS4000 line, that is an unfortunate mis-understanding of the press release. On the DS4000, the term "storage partition" is really "LUN masking", dividing up only which disks can be accessed by which hosts, and not dividing up any processor or cache capacity. So this is not the same as any LPAR concept on any other system. For example, a DS4000 with 64 partitions can be attached to 64 hosts, or 64 host-clusters like a Windows MSCS environment or AIX HACMP.

No native Ethernet replication or iSCSI support (Symmetrix has had since 2002)

Again, I found this one odd. On another EMC post, [Vigorous Debates],Chad Sakac mentions that only 2% of Symmetrix are sold with IP ports, not sure if this is for Ethernet replication, iSCSI attachment, or both (Again, I will use a different color):

On the Symm business (a huge part of EMC’s business – the IP ports are included on 2% of deals. That’s a fact.

Just because engineer can put a feature or function on a box, doesn't mean there is business sense to do so. I would hate for IBM to invest millions of dollars on native iSCSI support, only to have 2% of our DS8000 boxes sold with that feature. Customers who have DS8000 on FC SANs already deployed can easily add iSCSI support either through their SAN switches, or by fronting the DS8000 with an N series gateway. Most customers looking for native iSCSI are the smaller no-SAN-deployed SMB customers, and for them, we have both the DS3300 and the various N series models to choose from.

Well that's my two cents. The DS8000 series remains a strategic part of the IBM System Storage offering matrix, with continued investment in the development, as well as on-going research that we can leverage throughout the IBM company. I would like to read your thoughts on this, post me a comment below.

technorati tags: Tim Sanders, Wookie, C3-PO, Star Wars, chess, FUD, Amdahl, Monty Python, Pushing Daisies, BarryB, Storage Anarchist, IBM, disk, systems, DS8000, DS8300, DS8100, TCO, EMC, DMX, DMX4, thin provisioning, Celerra, z/OS, RAMAC Virtual Array, RVA, SATA, FATA, RAID-6, RAID6, RAID-DP, 4Gb, 4Gbps, 2Gbps, back-end, LPAR, LUN masking, MSCS, AIX, HACMP, DS4000, DS3000, Chad Sakac, iSCSI, Ethernet, IP

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Tags:  disk

Well, it is Halloween back in the USA. I am in Seoul Korea this week, so it is already Thursday, November 1st here, but thought I would comment on Colin Barker's piece in ZDnet titled[SNW offers the frights].The article starts out with an oversimplification:

The storage industry is enjoying a boom currently thanks to the requirement for IT managers to keep everything. With the possibility of being sued any time by any company for no good reason at all, everyone is keeping everything, or at least all their data. Result? Loads and loads more kit being bought to the benefit of EMC, IBM, HP and every other supplier with any kind of storage product.

While its true that IBM System Storage grew yet again in 3Q07, exceeding our own internal business model, I would not call this an overall "boom" for the storage industry. While companies are growing in "TB capacity" by 30-50%, this translates only to single digit growth in terms of "Dollar revenues". This is because we continue to make storage with declining dollar-per-GB.

One should not confuse what people do with what people are required to do. I am not a lawyer, but most regulations pertaining to storage of information state that certain records need to be kept for a set amount of time, either a fixed period of years, or based on some event. For example, broker/dealers need to keep emails of their clients for six years after the client closes their brokerage account. After those six years, the records can be destroyed.

Unfortunately, many IT managers look at the laws and come up with the simplest solution: keep everything forever. While this might meet the regulators audit requirements, it does expose their employer to subpoenas for data that should have been deleted, and may not be very cost-effective.

The alternative for many IT managers involves having to leave their comfort zone, and talk to their legal counsel, the lines of business, and try to classify their data, determine a set of policies, and inact some forms of enforcement. This is perhaps the "scary" part of the storage of information, it has grown outside the walls of IT, forcing IT managers to interact with the rest of the business to get their jobs done.

Compliance is the only game in town and that is most certainly where the money is.

Anytime an analyst tells you that something is the "only game in town", they are usually wrong. In this case, IBM has had great success in other areas that are not compliance-related. For example, digital video surveillance (DVS) is being used not only to help reduce shoplifting, but also to help identify patterns in customers perusing through aisles and window-shopping. Identifying what people are interested in has proven effective in moving product displays around to better attract buyers and motivate them to make purchases.

Take, the keynote from Andy Monshaw, general manager of IBM storage, and thus a man who is very much in a position to know. He spent his allotted 30 minutes, or whatever, listing all the security, compliance, threats and related issues that are currently making the jobs of most IT manager a cause for concern. Now, there is an argument that suggests that it is absolutely the right thing to do to frighten IT managers into sorting out their issues. They need shaking up say some. Especially analysts.

I helped develop the content of Andy's SNW presentation, working with his speech writers and graphic artists to make a consistent and coherent message fit in the 25 minutes he was given. The challenge with SNW is that we needed to make this presentation applicable across the entire storage industry, without sounding like an infomercial for IBM offerings.

Some people have compared the storage to the "insurance industry", claiming that backups, remote disk mirroring, continuous data protection and other storage related features are costs that can be compared to insurance you pay to protect your home, business, and other assets. You hope you never have to use it, and complain how much it costs, but when bad things happen, you hope it is the best money can buy.

Unlike Y2K, which was a one-time event that had a specific date of occurrence, the threats and risks mentioned by Andy in his presentation may never happen at all, or in other cases, may happen more than once, without knowing when or where. For the sake of your shareholders, and your stakeholders, it is best to be prepared for these possibilities.

The counter argument says that IT companies just smell the money.

Is this a counter argument? Can IBM not both help customers mitigate their risks, and at the same time, turn a profit? Trust me, you do not want to do business with any storage vendor that is not interested in making a profit. The better ones have incorporated addressing client's most pressing challenges into their strategy. I gave a quick summary of IBM's strategy last August in [Day 1 Storage Symposium].

Helping our clients mitigate risks is just one of IBM's core strengths. If you want to learn more, contact your local IBM Business Partner or storage rep.

technorati tags: Colin Barker, ZDnet, Halloween, compliance, 3Q07, growth, Andy Monshaw, insurance, policy, backup, remote, disk mirroring, continuous data protection, strategy, profit, revenues

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Tags:  lifecycle bc

Well it's Tuesday, which means its time to look at recent announcements.While I was on vacation last week, IBM made a lot of storage announcements October 23.Josh Krischer gives his summary on WikiBon [October 2007 Review].Austin Modine of the The Register went so far as to say that [IBM goes crazy with storage system updates].

IBM System Storage DS8000 series

This is "Release 3" software/microcode upgrades on our existing "Turbo" hardware.

• IBM FlashCopy SE -- Here "SE" stands for Space Efficient. Rather than allocating a full 100% of the space for the FlashCopy destination, you can set aside just a fraction, and this will hold all the changed blocks, similar to whatIBM already offers on the DS4000 series.
• Dynamic Volume Expansion -- In the past, if you needed more space for a LUN, you had to carve out a newer one elsewhere, and then copy the data over from the old to the new, leaving the old LUN around to be re-used or leftstranded. With this enhancement, you can just upgrade the LUN in place, making it bigger as needed, similar to whatIBM already offers on the DS4000 series and SAN Volume Controller. This applies to CKD volumes for the System zmainframe users out there as well.
• Storage Pool Striping -- striping volumes across RAID ranks to eliminate or reduce hot-spots, and provide betterload balancing. Many used SAN Volume Controller in front of the DS8000 to do this, but now you can do it natively inthe DS8000 itself.
• z/OS Global Mirror Multiple Reader -- for System z customers, "z/OS Global Mirror" is the new name for XRC. Thisenhancement improves the throughput of sending updates to the remote disaster recovery location.
• DS Storage Manager enhancements, the element manager software has been enhanced, and is pre-installed on the new IBM System Storage Productivity Center, which I will talk about below.
• Intermix of DS8000 machine types -- this is especially useful to allow new frames to have co-terminating warrantieswith the base units. In other words, as you expand your system, you can ensure that the entire chunk of iron runs outof warranty all at the same time, to simplify your decision making process to upgrade or contract for extended service.

See the [DS8000 Announcement Letter] for more details.

IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller 4.2.1

BarryW summarizes the updates in the[Announced SVC 4.2.1] release.If you have problems with the link he provides in his post, here is the [SVC 4.2.1 Announcement Letter].

IBM System Storage Productivity Center

One of the biggest complaints about IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center is that it is software that needs to beinstalled on its own server, and that this installation process can take a day or two. Why wait? Now you can havea hardware console that has the DS8000 Storage Manager software, SVC Admin Console software, and IBM TotalStorageProductivity Center "Basic Edition" pre-installed. Here are the key features.

• Pre-installed and tested console
• DS8000 R3 GUI integration
• Cohabitation of SVC 4.2.1 GUI and CIMOM
• Automated device discovery
• Asset and capacity reporting, including tape library support
• Device configuration
• Advanced topology viewer

See the[System Storage Productivity Center - Announcement letter] for more details."Basic Edition" can be upgraded to "Standard Edition" to get full functionality.

IBM System Storage N series

Our "Release 9" applies across the board, from N3000 to N5000 to N7000 series models, includingnew host bus adapters, and the new Data OnTAP 7.2.4 release level.

The Virtual File Manager (VFM) was announced as one of our latest [Storage Virtualization Solutions]. VFMprovides a global namespace that aggregates the file systems from Linux, UNIX, and Windows file servers, as well asN series storage, into a consolidated environment.

See the [N series Announcement Letter] for more details.

IBM TS7520 Virtualization Engine

IBM's virtual tape library (VTL) for the distributed systems platform, has been enhanced to provide:

• Up to 12TB of disk cache, using 750GB SATA disk.
• F05 Tape Frames installed as TS7520 base units through a 32 port fibre channel switch
• Support for LTO generation 4 tape drives, both as virtual tape drives and as physical tape drives within IBM automated tape libraries attached to the TS7520. This allows you to use Encryption capabilities of LTO4.

See the [TS7520 Announcement Letter] for more details.

IBM System Storage DS6000 series

The latest 300GB 15K RPM drives are now supported.

IBM System Storage DS4000 series

This was a software/microcode upgrade release for the DS4000 series.

• RAID-6 support on the DS4700 Express models and the DS4200 Model 7V
• Support for greater than 2 TB volumes on selected supported operating systems
• 8K cache block size
• DS4000 Storage Manager v10.10 increases the number of FlashCopy tasks, remote mirror pairs, and storage partitions.

See the [DS4000 Announcement Letter] for more details.

IBM System Storage DS3000 series

DS3000 series now supports SATA disk, and can be attached to AIX and Linux on System p servers. This appliesto the DS3200, DS3300 and DS3400 models.See the [DS3000 Announcement Letter] for more details.

IBM System Storage TS2240

These are LTO4 Half-High drives, which can support encryption.See the [TS2240 Announcement Letter] for details.

Perhaps Austin is right, we might have gone crazy announcing all of this at once.

technorati tags: Josh Krischer, Austin Modine, IBM, DS8000, Turbo, FlashCopy, SE, space efficient, dynamic volume expansion, DVE, striping, z/OS Global Mirror, XRC, System Storage, Productivity Center, TotalStorage, Basic Edition, topology viewer, ONTAP, VFM, global namespace, TS7520, Virtualization Engine, virtual tape library, VTL, F05, SATA, LTO, LTO4, LTO-4, DS6000, DS4000, RAID6, RAID-6, AIX, Linux, System p, servers, TS2240, half-high, drives

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Tags:  announcements disk tape infrastructure

Well, I'm back from my relaxing vacation in New Zealand and Fiji. Yes, we hada few earthquakes near Milford Sound, several avalanches that blocked some roads, a few power outages, and we walked in a rain storm for three hours after our bus broke down. But overall, it was fun.

This week I am in Seoul, South Korea for various business meetings. The best part is that I am almost already acclimated to the time zone, since New Zealand was GMT+11 and Fijiwas GMT+12, I am hoping that I will adjust fast this week.

South Korea is part of our "BRICK" countries--those emerging markets made up of Brazil,Russia, India, China and Korea that represent IBM's spearhead into the SMB marketplace.[Read More]

Tags:  marketing

I'm off for two weeks of vacation.

Here's a quick round-up of things I saw this week that didn't have time to blog about:

• Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for this hard work on "going green"to help save the planet. IT datacenters can, and should, do more to help in this area.
• SNW conference in Dallas. I won't be there, but have been helping out behind the scenes.
• SNW conference in Germany later in October. I won't be there either, but look forAndy Monshaw, General Manager of System Storage, to give the keynote address.

technorati tags: IBM, vacation, Al Gore, Nobel, Peace, Prize, going green, SNW, Dallas, Germany, Andy Monshaw, keynote

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Tags:  green

Two European scientists, Albert Fert (France) and Peter Grunberg (Germany) have won the 2007 Nobel Prize for physics for their research into Giant Magnetoresistance, or GMR. GMR read/write heads are used in IBM disk systems.

Chris Evans points to an interesting "jet analogy" in his post[Your Data On a Knife Edge].To help people understand that significance of this innovation, IBM Research has a website with all kindsof useful GMR information: http://www.research.ibm.com/research/gmr.html

While many people associate GMR heads with disk drives, it also applies to tape.In 2006, IBM Researchers Set World Record in Magnetic Tape Data Density, recording 6.67 billion bits per square inch of tape media. This was achieved with specific developments:

• New high-density dual-coated particulate magnetic tape: Developed by Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd., in Japan in collaboration with IBM Almaden researchers, this next-generation version of its NANOCUBIC™ tape uses a new barium-ferrite magnetic media that enables high-density data recording without using expensive metal sputtering or evaporation coating methods.
• More sensitive read-write head: For the first time, magnetic tape technology employs the sensitive giant-magnetoresistive (GMR) head materials and structures used to sense very small magnetic fields in hard disk drives.
• GMR servo reader: New GMR servo-reading elements, software and fast-and-precise positioning devices provides an active feedback system with unprecedented 0.35-micron accuracy in monitoring and positioning the read-write head over the 1.5-micron-wide residual data track.
• Improved tape-handling features: Flangeless, grooved rollers permit smoother high-speed passage of the tape, which also enhances the ability of the head to write and read high-density data.
• Innovative signal processing algorithms for the read data channel: An advanced read channel used new "noise-predictive, maximum-likelihood" (NPML) software developed at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory to process the captured data faster and more accurately than would have been possible with existing methods.

IBM often leverages the research done in one part of its business over to other parts of its business. In this manner, advances in disk translate into advances in tape, keeping tape a viable medium for at least the next 8-10 years.

technorati tags: Albert Fert, France, Peter Grunberg, Germany, IBM, Research, world record, Chris Evans, jet, Fuji, Japan, barium-ferrite, GMR, head, servo, disk, systems, tape, drives, NPML, Zurich

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Tags:  disk tape

Congratulations go to IBM blogger Barry Whyte!

Network World, the folks who last year rated this blog in the Top 10 IT storage blogs, havejust put out an article on The best and worst vendor blogs, identifying the companies that make up the good, bad and ugly on the blogosphere. This time, they recognize Barry Whyte'sStorage Virtualization blog under the "Good" category, representative of IBM'sefforts corporate-wide on the blogosphere.

technorati tags: IBM, Barry Whyte, Network World, best, worst, vendor, corporate, blogs, blogosphere, good/bad/ugly

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Tags:  disk

Registration is still open for next week's Information On Demand 2007 conference, Oct 14-19, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This will be a huge event, bigger than last year's, covering the storage of information, e-discovery and compliance, data management, and other related topics.

• 500 Technical Skill Building sessions
• 120 Business Leadership sessions
• Addition of IBM ECM UserNet Conference (formerly FileNet UserNet)
• Bigger EXPO: 200 Business Partners and 130 IBM Demos
• Twice the Hands On Labs
• Free Onsite Certifications
• Opportunities to Meet the Experts
• a "Mock Trial" highlighting Compliance Challenges

Weather should be nice next week, 80 degrees during the day, 60 degrees at night.

technorati tags: IBM, Information, On Demand, 2007, conference, Las+Vegas, ECM, UserNet, FileNet, mock trial, expo, sessions

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Tags:  infrastructure lifecycle

As BarryW points out, IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is now[fully certified with VMWare ESX 3.0.2]. Here's the [official IBM press release]. This is based onthe [Storage Virtualization Certification Program] announced by VMware last week.

This is great news for everyone. I have said before that VMware is perhaps the best product EMC offers, and some EMC bloggers have returned the favor saying that SVC might just be the best disk system that IBM offers. While IBM and EMCare heavily competitive in other aspects of the IT storage industry, when it comes to delivering what is right for the customer, we can set aside those differences. IBM is the number one reseller of VMware, and it is a great pairing with SAN Volume Controller.

Of course, it is not a free-for-all. VMware has a few restrictions at this time:

storage hardware

Disk managed by SVC must be on VMware's [Storage / SAN Compatibility GuideFor ESX Server 3.x]. As VMware certifies future storage that SVC supports, they will update the guide accordingly.

guest operating systems

The VMware certification is limited to Windows operating system, specifically those listed on its [Guest OS Guide].The list looks fairly extensive, so if you were running Windows guests on VMware to SVC today via RPQ,you are probably covered. However, if you are running NetWare or Linux, then the VMware certification doesnot yet apply.

host bus adapters

Only Qlogic host bus adapters are supported at this time. This is because VMware directly communicates to the host bus adapters as part of its "I/O virtualization" capabilities, and needs to work with or test with all the other HBA manufacturers.

no RDM support

Raw Device Mapping (RDM) mode is currently not yet supported. This probably will only affect a small percentage of customers, as I don't know of any major applications that require this.

Of course, most of these issues can probably be addressed with additional testing, or minor software changes, and IBM will work with VMware to prioritize what added testing or software changes are needed to expand this support.

technorati tags: IBM, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, EMC, VMware, ESX, Server, Storage, Virtualization, Certification, Program, Windows, NetWare, Linux, RDM, HBA

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Tags:  disk

Welcome to my blog on IBM Developerworks!

I am Tony Pearson, storage consultant at the IBM Executive Briefing Center, located in Tucson, Arizona. I have degrees in Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering from the University of Arizona. Over the past 20 years, I have worked in a variety of storage roles, including development projects, product and portfolio management, testing, field support, marketing, and now am doing storage consulting.

There are a lot of things to discuss related to storage, and I am never short of opinions. As such, the standard IBM disclaimer applies: “The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.”

I have invited other IBMers to post their opinions, and when they do, their opinions may not necessarily match mine either.

This is an open two-way conversation between IBM, Business Partners, Independent Software Vendors, prospect and existing clients. I encourage everyone to post comments about our products, services, and marketing efforts.

Warm Regards,
Tony Pearson
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Tags:  consulting

I welcome HDS into the "Super High-End" club. Those who follow my blog might remember thatI suggested that analysts like IDC that use "Entry Level", "Midrange" and "Enterprise" as categoriesmay need a New Category: Super High End.

I was not surprised to see EMC, who now drops further down in perception, dispute HDS's recent SPC-1 benchmarks.Fellow blogger EMC's BarryB posted on his Storage Anarchist blog [IBM vs. Hitachi] thatpoints out that IBM's SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is still much faster, and less expensive, than USP-V.

So, just in case you haven't seen all the press releases, here is a quick recap on the results:IBM SVC 4.2 is still in first place, then HDS USP-V, then IBM System Storage DS8300. Just for comparison, I includeour IBM System Storage DS4800 midrange disk results, so you can appreciate the difference between midrange and high-end.There are other products from other vendors, I just point out a few from IBM and HDS here in this graph.

******************************************************************** 272,505 IOPS - IBM SVC 4.2
************************************************** 200,245 IOPS - HDS USP-V
******************************* 123,033 IOPS - IBM DS8300
*********** 45,014 IBM DS4800

HDS tried to come up with a phrase "Enterprise Storage System" for comparison that would leave the SVC 4.2 out.Given that the SVC has five nines (99.999%) availability, has non-disruptive upgrade and firmware update capability, has more than two processors typical of midrange products, and can connect to mainframes via z/VM, z/VSE andLinux on System z operating systems, there is no reason to pretend SVC isn't Enterprise-class.

The irony now is that EMC now looks very lonely being one of the last remaining major storage vendors not to participate in standardized benchmarks that help customers make purchase decisions, as mentioned both by IBM's BarryW: I guess that only leaves EMC, as well as HDS's Claus Mikkelsen: Olympics of Storage.

Earlier this year, EMC's Chuck Hollis opined[Storage Scorecard]that the EMC DMX and HDS TagmaStore USP were high-endboxes, which I would speculate both of these would fall somewhere between DS4800 and DS8300 on the graph above.If that is the case, it is impressive that HDS was able to re-engineer their USP-V to be 2-3x faster thanits predecessor, the USP.

Not all workloads are the same, and your mileage may vary. While I can't speak to HDS, the folks over atEMC have assured me, in writingcomments on this blog, that there is nothing preventing their customers from publishingtheir own performance comparisons between EMC and non-EMC equipment. I would encourage every customer to do this, between IBM and HDS, HDS and EMC, and between IBM and EMC, to help shed even more light on this area.In fact, you can even run your own SPC benchmarks to see how your own environment compares to the ones published.

Of course, performance is just one attribute on which to choose a storage vendor, and to choose specific products,models or features. For more information about Storage Performance Council and the SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmarks,see my week-long series on SPC benchmarks, which are listed in reverse chronological order.

Go to the official Storage Performance Council website to read the details of the SPC-1 results.

technorati tags: IBM, Super, High-End, Entry-Level, Midrange, IDC, Enterprise, HDS, USP-V, USP, EMC, SPC, SPC-1, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, DS8300, DS4800, mainframe, z/VM, z/VSE, Linux, System z, BarryB, BarryW, Chuck Hollis, SPC-2, Storage Performance Council

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Tags:  disk

Byte and Switch magazine published an article on Top Women in Storage.

I thought of this as it was recently announced that Cindy Grossman, IBM VP of Tapeand Archive systems, will also serve as Site Level Manager for the IBM Tucson lab.

The motivation for the Byte and Switch article was probably from this article in Wall Street Journal detailingthe status of women in IT sales positions. Here is an excerpt:

Today, 13.5% of EMC's sales force is female, the company says, compared with 40% at International Business Machines Corp. and 29% at CA Inc., a big software vendor, those companies say. According to the 2000 U.S. census, about 25% of high-tech employees nationally were women.

IBM recognizes that diversity provides unique advantages in dealing with a global marketplace. Not only are women well represented on our IT sales force, they are also well represented on our board of directors, our Worldwide Management Committee, and our executive team overall, as well as in technical positions such as IBM Fellows, Distinguished Engineers, members of the IBM Academy of Technology. Working Mother magazine has rated IBM one of the top 10 "Best Companies" for women to work for in each of the 18 years that it has published this list.

In 2006, 51 camps called EXITE (Exploring Interests in Technology and Engineering) were held worldwide in 33 countries. The hope is to get young girls to pursue college degrees in computer science, math and engineering, so that they can then help fill the shortage of technical resources in IT.

So, if you are a women discouraged at your current place of employment, and are looking for exciting new opportunities in IT, come check out working for IBM![Read More]

Tags:  announcements

Over the past year and a half, I have been focused on explaining WHAT IBM System Storage was, and WHY IBM should be considered when making a storage purchase decision. Let's recapsome of IBM's accomplishments during this time:

• IBM celebrates its 50th Anniversary in Disk Systems innovation
• IBM System Storage wins the Inaugural Brand 2007 award from Liquid Agency
• IBM passes all major vendors in overall storage hardware
• IBM has the fastest disk systems, including the SAN Volume Controller and DS8000 series, based on industry standard benchmarks from the Storage Performance Council
• IBM is the first storage vendor to introduce tape encryption built into the drive

Today, October 1, I switch over to HOW to get it done. In my new job role, I will be leading a seriesof projects and workshops on how to make your data center more green, how to get more value from the information you have, how to better protect your information from unauthorized access or unethical tampering, how to develop and deploya site-wide business continuity plan, and how to centralize your management using open industry standards.

I will still be in Tucson, but am moving from building 9032 over to 9070 to be closer to the rest of my team.

If you are interested in participating in such a workshop, contact theTucson Executive Briefing Center.

technorati tags: IBM, 50 years disk, systems, innovation, Liquid Agency, Inaugural Brand, award, fastest disk, Storage Performace Council, SPC, storage, hardware, leader, tape, encryption, Tucson, Executive, Briefing, Center

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Tags:  marketing green