This week, I am in Dublin, Ireland for the [IBM System x, IBM PureSystems and System Storage Technical University] conference.

(Note: While Lenovo has officially taken over the System x on October 1st back in the United States, China, and several other countries in Asia and the Americas, it has not yet happened in Europe. This is expected to happen this December. This results in some awkwardness during this period of transition.)

Day 1 started off with some keynote sessions. Amy Purdy, IBM Director of Training Services, was the emcee.

Gareth Tucker, Director of EMEA for Intel

Gareth focused on the strong partnership between IBM, Lenovo and Intel. For example, a client query that took 4 hours with traditional DB2 database on Intel Xeon, but only 90 seconds on DB2 BLU with the new Xeon V2 chip.

10 years ago, some storage vendors warned clients not to use any Intel-based storage devices. Today, over 85 percent of storage is Intel-based, including most of the IBM System Storage portfolio. IBM SoftLayer also uses Intel to offer both bare metal and virtual x86 servers, and was the first cloud provider to use Intel's "Trusted Execution" mode.

Next year, Microsoft will drop support for Windows 2003 server on July 15, 2015. This represents an excellent selling opportunity to get clients to upgrade their x86 server hardware. Intel estimates there are 24 million instances of Windows 2003 worldwide. On average, it takes 150 days to migrate to Windows 2012, so get clients to start now!

Jeff Howard, Vice President of Lenovo Flex and BladeCenter

Jeff was a last-minute stand-in for Adalio Sanchez who is busy getting thousands of employees and hundreds of trailer trucks full of IT equipment from IBM's Raleigh location to Lenovo's new building in Morrisville.

Lenovo's goal is simple: to be the #1 vendor of x86 enterprise servers. Lenovo sees a $44 Billion USD opportunity in x86 servers, with an additional $14B opportunity selling IBM System Storage attached to these servers. Lenovo is already #1 for Personal Computers in the consumer space, and is #1 for customer satisfaction. IBM System x #1 in reliability and up-time for x86 servers. In a client survey of how many clients had an outage lasting four hours or more, less than 1 percent from IBM System x compared to 13 percent for HP servers. That's a big difference!

There is a 40 percent growth in "Converged Systems" such as the Flex System and PureFlex systems. Lenovo will take over the x86-only versions of these, while IBM will retain the POWER-based and Power-and-x86 hybrid models. IBM will also retain the PureApplication and PureData models of the PureSystems line.

Lenovo is also focused on security. Their "Trusted Platform" includes Self-encrypting Drives (SED) managed by IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager software, and Crypto-assist co-processors.

Jeff also mentioned new reference architectures for VMware's VSAN, Microsoft's Fast-track Data warehouse for SQL Server, SmartCloud Desktop Infrastructure VDI with Atlantis ILIO, and Flex Systems for Hyper-V.

Greg Lotko, VP of IBM Storage Systems Development

Greg is the new VP of Storage Systems Development, about 11 months on the job, but I am glad to hear that he recognizes that IBM System Storage has a huge portfolio of products.

He focused on those areas where IBM is ranked #1:

• IBM is #1 for All-Flash arrays.
• IBM is #1 for Software Defined Storage (SDS).
• IBM is #1 for Tape, including tape drives, tape libraries and virtual tape systems

 

The weather here in Dublin is great, although I have had not had much time to enjoy the outdoors with all the awesome and interesting sessions inside!

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmtechu, Lenovo, Intel, SoftLayer, VMware, VSAN, Microsoft, Gareth Tucker, x86, converged systems, expert-Integrated systems, Flex Systems, PureFlex, BladeCenter, , Jeff Howard, Self-encrypting drives, Security Key Lifecycle Manager, SED, SKLM, , Greg Lotko, Software-Defined Storage, SDS, All-Flash, Tape, x86, Dublin Ireland

This week, I am in Dublin, Ireland for the [IBM System x, IBM PureSystems and System Storage Technical University] conference.

Here are the sessions that I will be speaking at:

If you are at the conference, stop by and see me! You can also follow me on Twitter @az990tony and the hashtag #ibmtechu.

technorati tags: #ibmtechu, Smarter Storage, Cloud storage, Big data, Storage tiering, Archive storage, Data footrpint reduction, storage efficiency

Hello everyone! I am back, fully well-rested from a wonderful 3-week vacation touring the lovely state of Tennessee. Here's a quick recap:

(FCC Disclosure: I mention various companies and products in this blog post. I have no financial interested in any of them, nor have I received any compensation to mention or endorse them here.)

Lynchburg

Our first stop was Lynchburg, TN, home of [Jack Daniel's], America's oldest whiskey distillery. Our tour guide, Ron (who both looked and sounded like [John Goodman]) took us first to see how they burn wood to make charcoal, then the natural water spring which supplies the iron-free water used for the whiskey. We then got a whiff of the mash at various stages of fermentation. Lastly, we had samples of Original No. 7, Gentleman's Jack, and Single Barrel.

(A word of caution: Domestic airlines only allow FIVE LITERS of Bourbon, Whiskey or Rum in your checked luggage. That is only six bottles at the 750ml size, of beverages that are between 24 to 70 percent alcohol by volume [ABV]. Anything above 70 percent is considered too flammable to take on the plane. Excess bottles can be custom packed and shipped, but can be quite expensive. Nearly everyone we met drove all the way to Tennessee instead of flying, and now I understand why.)

While in the area, we had a nice lunch at [Miss Mary Bobo's], a boarding house turned into a restaurant. They only serve one meal a day at 1pm, by reservation only. And we were paired up with eight others and served food "family style" a large round table with a [Lazy Susan].

Jack Daniel's is not the only attraction in the area. We also visited [Falls Mill], a grist mill that grinds corn, wheat and rye for the other distilleries. Mo and I visited [Prichard's Distillery], where they make Whiskey, Rye and Rum. We highly recommend their molasses-flavored "Sweet Lucy"!

Chattanooga

We stopped at the famous historic landmark, the [Chattanooga Choo Choo], which was formerly a train station, and now renovated into a hotel. We asked to see the inside of one of the train cars converted into a hotel room.

 

Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge

We stayed in a cabin in the [Smokey Mountains] near Gatlinburg. In addition to pleasant rides through the National park, we also walked around the small town, looking at all the shops and amusements.

The next town over is Pigeon Forge, and driving down the main parkway is like Las Vegas in a slightly alternate universe. One person called it the Redneck Riviera!

We spent two days at Dollywood theme park, named after its founder, famous country singer Dolly Parton. We arrived after 3pm the first day, so they gave us the second day free!

In addition to roller coaster rides, artisan shops and restaurants, we found zip lines! Mo and I put on harness, attached to a pulley, and zipped over roller coasters, trees and rivers throughout Dollywood park. It was a lot of fun!

We also went to Dolly Parton's other attraction: Stampede. This was a dinner show with horses. It was similar to the Excalibur show we saw in Las Vegas last year during the week of Edge 2013 Conference.

 

Knoxville

On our way from Gatlinburg, we stopped into Knoxville to have lunch with clients. We had a choice to make, we could either drive up into Kentucky and visit the distilleries in the Bourbon trail, or drive straight to Nashville and spend more time there. We opted for Nashville, saving the Bourbon trail for a future trip.

Nashville

Our final stop was Nashville, known as Music City. Our hotel was on Broadway, walking distance between Vanderbilt University and the [honky-tonks] downtown.

We had purchased advanced tickets for the [Grand Ole Opry]. This is not your typical concert. Instead, you have no idea who will play until just a few days before. The three hour show had about a dozen different musical acts, some famous, some new to the country music scene.

We went to the Johnny Cash Museum. People with ticket stubs from the Grand Ole Opry get in for a discount!

After the museum, we had lunch at [Demos' restaurant] and then listened to live music at a honky-tonk called [Second Fiddle]. Mo got a picture with the country singer [John Riggins]!

Searching [TripAdvisor] for things to do in Nashville, I found [The Escape Game]. You pay them money to lock you up in a room with a bunch of strangers, and then collectively as a team you need to figure out how to escape by solving puzzles and clues.

Each room has different themes. First, we tried the "Underground Playground". You know that TV show [Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader?] Well, the majority of our so-called team were not in this case, and after 60 minutes the referee told us we had failed and unlocked the door.

We had so much fun that we came back two days later to try a different room. This time we tried "The Heist" which is all about art theft. The strangers we were teamed up with were very motivated to get out of the room in time, and we succeeded, getting out in just 54 minutes!

Mo and I had a great time, but are glad to be back home!

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

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

I was in Japan when I wrote that, and the company IBM acquired was Japanese, so the comparison stuck.

Today, IBM announces the latest versions Transparent Data Migration Facility z/OS v5 [TDMF] and z/OS Dataset Migration Facility v3 [zDMF] software products.

(Where better to commemorate this event than in Pigeon Forge, Tenessee, the capital of shotgun wedding venues! Including, and I am not making this up, a replica of the [grand staircase of the Titanic]. Yes, you can book this for a shotgun wedding, while your guests re-arrange the deck chairs. I stopped at a local McDonald's to submit this blog post.)

TDMF software allows you to migrate CKD volumes that are attached to your System z mainframe, including those that are actively being used by applications. zDMF allows you to migrate z/OS data sets, including those currently open by applications.

The migration is hardware-agnostic, supporting CKD volumes on IBM, EMC and HDS disk systems. As many clients are migrating from EMC and HDS disk systems to IBM DS8870, this is a good time to look at TDMF and zDMF to help make the process as transparent as possible.

Of course, if you are not interested in acquiring the software to do this yourself, you can hire IBM Data Mobility Services, which uses TDMF and zDMF to do it for you!

technorati tags: IBM, TDMF, zDMF, shotgun wedding

This week, I was one of the 24 recipients of the IBM Corporate Technology Social Business Impact awards!

The list of recipients spans 14 countries (in alphabetical order):

The award was based on engagements and conversations resulting from blogs, tweets, Facebook and Linkedin posts, Slideshare, Flickr, and other social venues, over the 2013 calendar year.

I would like to congratulate the other 23 winners! I am glad to recognize several of the people that I had helped get their blog started, and mentored along the way, have made it to the list!

technorati tags: IBM, Social Business, Darryl Miles, Sergio Varga, Ahmed Abbass, Jean Francois Puget, Turgut Aslan, Detlef Helmbrecht, Sebastian Thaele, Prashanta Chandramohan, Vinod A Valecha1, Massimo Chiriatti, Bruno Portaluri, JungWoon Lee, HyungKeun Park, Edwin Schouten, Renata Anna Bilecka, Maria Borbones, Alessandro Sorniotti1, Richard G Brown, Jon McNamara, Rick Robinson, Paul DiMarzio, Tony Pearson, Christopher Pepin, Elisabeth Stahl

Years ago, I wrote a series of blog posts related to IBM Watson computer that played Jeopardy! game show. My most popular post to-date has been [IBM Watson -- How to replicate Watson hardware and systems design for your own use in your basement], which I had previously used "Watson Jr." an an unofficial name for your own personal implementation.

Over time, I have gotten many emails, comments and tweets related to this post. The instructions have been downloaded over 130,000 times!

The letter below was so inspiring that I felt I need to share it. (Published here with permission from the author, who goes by the screen name DaveAlex)

Thought you would like to know that I am working toward an AI Agent hopefully more advanced than "Watson Jr." although I will probably include the software behind it.

The hardware I have on hand is a System X3650M2 which I bought for $250 on eBay. It has four 2.66 GHz Xeons with 6 cores each, and 16 GB RAM. I have another 16 to install when I need it. I will shortly have 4 TB of HDD space on line, plus an addition 3 TB USB3 drive.

Ultimately, I hope to have some of the available knowledge bases on line, Freebase, CYC, etc which will handle specific information perhaps better than the Watson software by itself.

What the target (goal) that I am aiming for is a stationary version of Commander Data of Star Trek, Next generation.

I envision if having some form of self knowledge, being capable of processing graphical data, i.e., facial recognition, gesture interpretation, voice input/output, mathematical processing, with graphical output (display & hardcopy) and several additional features.

As I have studied this project, I am amazed at how much of the required software is already available. The biggest stumbling block is integrating the separate parts.

Back to Hardware. I just bought 2 Dell 2850 servers, each with dual Intel Xeons which can handle some of the tasks. If I need more processing power, I just happen to have about 10 other towers with Pentium IV or dual core processors sitting around, which can be pressed into service as needed. So far, my total cost is less than $1000 US Dollars, and my wife has not thrown me out yet. I continue to watch eBay for additional older used equipment for fractions of the original cost. My friends who follow my project keep telling me that I need to get on with the software, and add hardware as needed; they are absolutely correct, but I can't resist a bargain.

The power consumption is a potential problem, but I have a 4500 Watt solar array to use. The cooling could be a problem too, but my house sits into the side of hill, and can readily duct the air supply pass the sub-surface wall, perhaps with old Processor cooling fins glued to the wall.

I hope to get some hobby programmers involved in the project, it is a bit beyond my programming capabilities. I hope that I can live long enough to see it come to fruition; I am 78 now, and mentally in very good condition.

-- DaveAlex

Wow! He is 78 years old! While others his age are playing shuffleboard at the nursing home, he is out there learning new things about the latest technology. I wish him the best of luck on this! If you would like to reach out to DaveAlex, send me a note or comment below, and I will forward them on to him.

Continuing my coverage of the [IBM Edge2014 conference], IBM's premiere conference for System Storage and related products, I attended keynote sessions on Tuesday morning, titled "Delivering on the Promise of the Future: Made with IBM".

Once again, Stephen Leonard, IBM General Manager, STG Sales, served as emcee for this general session. Yesterday, the executives focused on the "What" and "Why" for new IT initiatives. Today, they want to tackle "How" to accomplish all this.

Robert LaBlanc, IBM Senior Vice President, Software and Cloud Solutions

Robert estimates that 70 percent of enterprises will pursue dynamic hybrid clouds by 2015. Big data and analytics represents a $17 trillion USD opportunity, about 25 percent of the total IT industry.

IBM helps companies extend what they already have to what they need. In the future, people will ask "Who remembers building a private cloud stick-by-stick?" Today, IBM supports the deployment of patterns of expertise that can work on-premise IBM PureSystems. These can easily be moved or deployed off-premise to IBM SoftLayer private and public cloud offerings.

Snehal Antani, CIO of GE Capital

IT has shifted from the "back office" to the very core of business. Technology now allows GE Capital to go quickly from whiteboard to roll-out.

Not everyone is on-board. At GE Capital, people are encouraged to be like [Tigger", the adorable character from Winnie the Pooh stories, to lead efforts of innovation and collaboration. Cynics are tagged as [Eeyores], always finding a reason or excuse why plans won't work. Finally, we have "Kings and Queens", eager to be offended that any changes are needed at all.

Snehal also mentioned their "No squirrel" policy. If you have seen the movie "Up!", you know that the dog was constantly distracted by squirrels, or things he thought were squirrels. Many IT people fall the latest "shiny object" in technology.

Arvind Krishna, IBM General Manager of Development and Manufacturing

Arvind feels that "data" is the new base of new business value, in the same manner as steam, electricity and hydrocarbons had done in past centuries. In the past, most data was stored in databases, but today over 90 percent is unstructured.

In 2008, there were more "things" than people attached to the Internet, and this [Internet of Things] is expected to exceed 1 trillion items by 2015.

One of these things will be the [connected car]. By 2017, ABI Research predicts that [60 percent of cars will be connected by 2017]. Hopefully, resulting in 80 percent fewer serious accidents.

Mike North, Senior Director of NFL

Have you ever wondered how the NFL plans each year's football game schedule, balancing 32 teams across five television networks? There are over 800 quadrillion possible combinations!

Borrowing the analogy from Snehal from GE Capital, the football teams are the Eeyores, and the networks are the Kings and Queens. This year, three of the games will be played in London, England. With IBM's help, the NFL was able to finish the 2014 schedule earlier than before.

Maria Winans, IBM Vice President, Social Business

Maria started with an interesting anecdote:

Lily Robinson, age 3, sent a letter asking a local grocery chain Sainsbury why their "tiger bread" was not called "giraffe bread" as it looked more like the spots on a giraffe. A manager provided a nice reply. Her parents posted it on social media, the conversation went viral, and [Sainsbury changed the name of their product] to "giraffe bread".

This is an example of "People-centric" engagement, rather than dealing with consumers in marketing segments or categories of gender or race. People will share personal data with companies they trust. Smarter companies use this data to provide the right experience at exactly the right time.

Maria explained IBM AlwaysOn Engagement Center which allows companies to track social mentions. For example, there were over 52 million social mentions of IBM Edge 2014 so far during its first two days!

The process is not just for clients, customers and consumers. It can be used to engage individual employees to drive business outcomes, or individual citizens to deliver sustainable economic growth and improve living standards.

This was a nice balance, combining IBM executives with client testimonials.

For those on Twitter, my handle is @az990tony and the hashtag for this event was #ibmedge.

technorati tags: IBM, Stephen Leonard, Robert LaBlanc, Snehal Antani, GE Capital, PureSystems, SoftLayer, Tigger, Eeyore, Arvind Krishna, Internet of Things, connected car, ABI Research, Mike North, NFL, People-centric Engagement, AlwaysOn Engagement Center, Maria Winans

Continuing my coverage of the [IBM Edge2014 conference], IBM's premiere conference for System Storage and related products, I attended EdgeTalks: Innovation That Impacts Our World that offered a series of inspiring talks styled after the famous [TED] conferences.

Surjit Chana, IBM Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and VP of Strategy for IBM Systems and Technology Group, served as emcee to introduce the speakers.

Ron Finley, Renegade Gardener

Back in 2003, "South Central" was [renamed to South Los Angeles]. But as everyone in IT knows, merely renaming something doesn't fix any of its problems. Ron was tired of seeing empty lots filled with old mattresses, used condoms and discarded tires, and wanted to beautify his immediate surroundings by planting vegetables in his front yard.

The city of Los Angeles [cited him for growing food within city limits], and even threatened him with jail time. An appearance with comedian Russell Brand helped Ron gain national attention.

Ron's army of volunteers, the [L.A. Green Grounds], filed a petition. As of October 2013, it is now legal to grow food on your parkway in Los Angeles.

Ron explained that South Los Angeles is a [food desert], where it is nearly impossible to get healthy, organic food. He is concerned the "drive-thrus" of fast food restaurants kill more of his neighbors than [drive-by] shootings.

Ron has discovered this problem is not limited to Los Angeles. The American food system is designed to fill you with processed food and chemicals, made worse by a health care system happy to cut you open or prescribe you more chemicals and drugs. Everywhere processed food goes, chronic disease follows. The USA exports obesity to the rest of the world.

"To change a community, and you must first change the composition of the soil." -- Ron Finley

The rise in cancer, diabetes, and childhood cardiac arrests inspired Ron to start the [Ron Finley Project] consisting of community farms, a marketplace that accepts EBT, SNAP and other government food programs, and portable "container cafes" based on standard shipping containers that could be placed near a garden to help sell the food grown locally.

John Wilbanks, Chief Commons Officer at Sage Bionetworks and Senior Fellow in Entrepreneurship for Faster Cures

John works at [Sage Bionetworks], a non-profit 2009 spin-off from Merck.

We live in the age of cheap data. John prefers the term "cheap data" rather than "big data". Mapping the first human genome cost $3 Billion USD, now John can get his own genome mapped for about $1200.

John feels this cheap data changes the way we justify our opinions. From baseball scouts to the analytics demonstrated in the movie [Moneyball]. President Barack Obama used social media to help win elections. And cheap data is coming to health and medicine.

John gave an interesting example. A grad student wanted to study alcoholism among undergraduate students. The traditional method would have been to gather privacy permission slips from volunteers. Instead, he "friended" 4,000 undergraduates, and looked on social media containing the [distinctive color of red beer cups] for photos taken on Monday through Wednesday, indicative of a drinking problem. This innovative approach allowed the grad student to complete his research in less than six weeks.

Cheap data doesn't mean we have wisdom. John explained the wrong way of doing things. There are several machine-learning apps for smartphones to check for melanoma. Take a photo of your suspected mole, and the app will determine if it detects skin cancer, and recommend a biopsy. Incentives to sell apps, and to perform biopsies, result in 90 percent false positive rates. There is no financial incentive to improve accuracy.

Sharing is the innovation that converts cheap data into wisdom. Get the world's smartest people to compete to create wisdom. Collaborating with IBM on Dialogue for Reverse Engineering Assessments and Methods [DREAM] platform, a competition for modeling breast cancer was launched. Requiring all participants to share their code in real-time allowed the accuracy of the model to jump three orders of magnitude in just nine days. Over 60 teams participated. The winning team was awarded an article and cover of [Science Translational Medicine] magazine.

John feels that there are very few genius [data scientists] in the world, and they are isolated, hideously overpaid, managing hedge funds or search engines, but would probably rather be looking for cures for cancer.

Progress is not made if every company only has its own people looking at its own data. John wants data to shared amongst the world's scientists to create wisdom. However collaboration flies in the face of the competition that all the reward systems are based on in health care.

As an experiment, John wanted to make his own genome public. However, that requires "informed consent" for others to use his private health information, and it took him six months of legal and ethical rules to develop a system for him to provide this consent for public use.

In much the same way that gardens and fields were the first [commons] shared by farmers, John feels we need to cultivate the public domain, the "digital commons". This can truly transform medicine and health care.

Peter Singer, Technology Expert and Best-selling Author

Peter shared insights from his latest book [Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know].

The first web page appeared in 1991, and now there are over 30 trillion pages. Over 98 percent of military communications occur over civilian internet communications. The [Internet of Things] adds everything from smart cars to medical devices into the equation.

But along with all the benefits the web has brought society, there are also risks. Every second, nine new pieces of malware are discovered. An astounding 97 percent of Fortune 500 have admitted to being hacked. Over 100 governments have established a cybermilitary force.

(Instead of Powerpoint slides, Peter had a slideshow of his personal collection of the world's best and worst cybersecurity art. Studies show that audiences remember 60 percent more if they are looking at pictures when they hear a speaker.)

While IT folks are good at dealing with both hardware and software, they traditionally don't do well with "wetware", the human side of things. Essential cybersecurity terms and concepts are often misunderstood.

Business leaders over-react to some threats, but completely ignore others. Consider that 70 percent of cybersecurity decisions at companies are made by executives who have no training in cybersecurity. No single MBA program offers cybersecurity courses.

There is a shortage of talent to deal with cybersecurity. Hiring managers are only satisfied with 40 percent of the employees they hire in this Cybersecurity space.

Incentives help explain why some industries like financial services do security well, while others like health care do poorly.

In an effort to find which employees do not take cybersecurity seriously enough, Companies have resorted to sending [phishing] emails to their own employees. Those that click are caught, and must attend mandatory training, or are subject to dismissal. Unfortunately, senior executives are twice as likely to click on phishing emails than the general workforce.

Peter recommends companies focus on resilience. You can never build high enough walls to eliminate threats. Instead, focus on bouncing back after attacks, similar to the anti-bodies in the human body deal with illness.

Ben Franklin said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Peter cited a studied that found proper cyberhygiene would have prevented 94 percent of attacks. The most successful foreign military attack on the U.S. military happened when a soldier saw a memory stick in a parking lot, and was curious enough to connect it to the secure military network to see what it contained.

We need to build an ethic. We teach our kids to cover your mouth when you cough. This does not protect your child in any way, but is an ethic to avoid spreading disease. We need to teach the same ethics related to cybersecurity.

All three were excellent talks focused on innovation. Ron Finley used gardening in otherwise empty urban spaces to help grow people as well as food. John Wilbanks used innovation to help bring the smartest minds to determine models for identifying cancer from genomes. Peter Singer marveled at the innovation of the Internet, and how proper cyberhygiene is needed to keep it secure.

These talks were recorded and available on this [98-minute YouTube video]. For those on Twitter, my handle is @az990tony and the hashtag for this session was #ibmedgetalks.

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmedge, #ibmedgetalks, TED conference, Surjit Chana, Ron Finley, Ron Finley Project, South Los Angeles, Russell Brand, LA Green Grounds, container cafe, John Wilbanks, Sage Bionetworks, Moneyball, cheap data, Barack Obama, red Solo cup, social media, DREAM, data scientist, Science Translational Medicine, human genome, Ben Franklin, Peter Singer, cybersecurity, public domain, digital commons, cyberhygiene

Continuing my coverage of the [IBM Edge2014 conference], IBM's premiere conference for System Storage and related products, here are my notes from the afternoon of Day 1 at the general keynote sessions.

Stephen Leonard, IBM General Manager, STG Sales, served as emcee for the general session.

Tom Rosamilia, IBM Senior Vice President, STG and ISC

Tom (my fifth-line manager, BTW) started off with a joke: "All this talk about Cloud, but it has to run on hardware somewhere!"

Tom insists it is imperative for clients to build an infrastructure that enables business growth. However, less than 10 percent of clients are ready for Cloud, Analytics, Mobile or Social (CAMS) initiatives. Clients need to embrace these new workloads, ensure right-time decision making, and integrate front-office with back-office IT systems.

Tom is also proud that IBM's Software Define Storage solutions manage over 1 [Yottabyte] of information today. That's a billion Petabytes, in case you were wondering. If all of this data was stored on 1TB disk drives, instead of a mix of disk and tape, it would take over one million city blocks to house all the data centers required.

Tom indicated that data is to the 21st century what steam was for the 18th century, electricity was for the 19th century, and hydrocarbons were for the 20th century.

(Fact check: The first [steam engine applied for industrial use] was in 1698, and later improved in 1712. The first industrial-class [electrical generator] was not invented until 1884, and use of electricity was not widespread until the 20th century. Most of the steam and electricity was generated from hydrocarbons such as coal, natural gas or oil. In the 20th century, hydrocarbons were not just used for fuel, but also [plastics, wax, lubricants, and asphalt for roads and parking lots].)

Tom invited Mike Reagan, CIO of Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi, to say a few words on why Infrastructure matters to his IT environment. The [Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi] is a 364-bed multi-specialty facility, the first US-hospital replicated outside of North America.

Mike explained their great success partnering with IBM to develop a private cloud solution. Each patient has a bedside tablet that can be used to control the entertainment, lighting, temperature and window shades. It can also be used to Skype with family and friends. The facility is four times the floorspace of the Sands Expo that this event is being helenovo 61 CES awardsld in.

Jamie Thomas, IBM General Manager, Storage and Software Defined Systems

Jamie feels that data is all about security and economics. Storage admins must become the new [data scientists] for IT.

It is important to integrate traditional "Systems of Record" with new "Systems of Engagement" workloads. Her focus areas are Software Defined Storage, Flash technologies, and storage virtualization. Specific examples included:

• New hardware models of the IBM Storwize family: [SAN Volume Controller 2145-DH8 and Storwize V7000] along with v7.3 software enhancements.
• New 1TB flash modules to offer smaller entry versions of the IBM [FlashSystem 840 and V840].
• High-performance Flash enclosures (HPFE) for the IBM [DS8870 disk system].
• The new [Codename: Elastic Storage] for GPFS v4.1 and related products.

Jamie invited two clients to join her on stage: Mike Smith is CIO of [Lee Memorial Health System] and Greg Lavender is CTO of [Citi].

Mike talked about how important Electronic Health Record [EHR] systems and advanced clinical diagnostics are to help make the right medical decisions.

Greg explained that Citi was operating at global scale in 100 countries. Citi partnered with IBM to deploy commodity compute servers, 10GbE/40GbE Ethernet networking and IBM Software Defined Storage to achieve Cloud economics and Cloud scale. Citi can't afford for server, storage and network admins to work separately.

Adalio Sanchez, IBM General Manager for System x

Adalio expressed his excitement in Lenovo's [plans to acquire IBM’s x86 Server Business],

(Note: The deal is not yet complete, awaiting approval from the [Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.] over [national security concerns].)

Rather than contesting [Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman's FUD about this deal], Adalio took the high road, and focused on IBM's success in the x86 server space. New offerings include the X6 architecture, including PureSystems and the NextScale dense computing platform.

Adalio invited Christian Teismann, Lenovo, on stage. Christian re-iterated that IBM and Lenovo are both committed to a smooth transition, continuing IBM's roadmap for the x86 server platform, and full consideration for the x86 servers and related storage, software, service and maintenance.

IBM has had a strong relationship with Lenovo already with the acquisition of IBM's PC division, and now this deal brings together Chinese supply chain efficiency with Western ideals and design principles. Lenovo has about 46,000 employees, nearly 4,000 R&D engineers, and will acquire an additional 7,500 IBMers when the deal completes.

 

Adalio then invited two clients to join him on stage: Ron Grabyan, Manager of Data Warehousing Services at [Southern California Edison], and Rohit Lal, IT Direction of Coca-Cola.

Ron indicated that actionable insights must be fast for productivity. He mentioned the funny [MetLife television commercial featuring Charlie Brown and Lucy] declaring that term-life insurance should cost only "five cents" per month. In the same manner, end users often request that response times should be short. IBM was able to get response times from 40 seconds down to "5 seconds" by helping Ron deploy SAP HANA. Another process that took 53 minutes was down to 1 minute 20 seconds.

Rohit talked about their exciting new "Coke One North America" (CONA) project. This will provide consolidated IT services for 6 different Coca-Cola bottlers in North America. With $46 Billion USD in revenue serving 1.8 billion servings of beverage per day, the use of Analytics, SAP HANA and private cloud were critical to their business.

The industry recognizes Lenovo as a major x86 player, having had 20 quarters of growth outpacing the market. Lenovo has [won 61 CES 2014 awards], more than the other top five x86 vendors combined. IBM x86 servers are ideal for Enterprise solutions, Cloud, HPC, embedded designs, and IT infrastructure deployments. IBM is #1 in x86 server customer satisfaction, #1 in x86 server up-time, and boasts the #1 fastest x86-based supercomputer. IBM and Lenovo want to take this to the next level: #1 leadership in every x86 category.

For those on Twitter, my handle is @az990tony and the hashtag for this event is #IBMEdge.

technorati tags: IBM, Stephen Leonard, Tom Rosamilia, STG, ISC, Software Defined Storage, SDS, Yottabyte, Mike Reagan, Cleveland Clinic, Abu Dhabi, Jamie Thomas, data scientists, Systems of Record, Systems of Engagement, Flash, virtualization, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, 2145-DH8, Storwize V7000, FlashSystem 840, FlashSystem V840, Elastic Storage, GPFS, Mike Smith, Lee Memorial, Greg Lavender, CitiGroup, Electronic Health Record, EHR, Adalio Sanchez, Hewlett-Packard, Meg Whitman, X6, PureSystems, NextScale, Christian Teismann, Lenovo, Ron Grabyan, Southern California Edison, MetLife, Rohit Lal, Coca-Cola, CONA, SAP HANA, CES

Continuing my coverage of the [IBM Edge2014 conference], IBM's premiere conference for System Storage and related products, here are my notes from the morning of Day 1.

IBM Storage Trends and Directions

Clod Barrera, IBM Chief Technical Strategist for IBM System Storage, and Axel Koester, IBM Chief Technologist and Executive IT Specialist for IBM System Storage, co-presented the first session of the conference.

Nearly all storage users are struggling with the combined effects of significant capacity growth, data as both an asset and potential liability, and the lack of staff and expertise to exploit new technology.

In addition to [Systems of Record], representing the traditional workloads of databases and on-line transaction processing (OLTP), we are now seeing [Systems of Engagement], which represent new workloads such a mobile apps, social business, and big data analytics.

We are now at a tipping for Flash. IBM FlashSystem can perform I/O in about 100 microseconds, which is roughly 10x faster than solid state drives (SSD), and 50x faster than spinning disk. For those clients who value performance, this can easily justify its use.

Take for example an IBM Power system running DB2 PureScale application with 43,000 transactions per second, including 13,000 updates per second, that result in 1.3 million IOPS to the back-end storage. This can be accomplished with either (a) all-disk 5,000 spinning disk spindles, (b) hybrid 2,500 spinning disk spindles combined with 128 solid state drives (SSD), or (c) IBM FlashSystem.

The comparisons are astounding. The IBM FlashSystem solution is 11x less expensive then the hybrid system, and 14x less expensive than the all-disk solution. The solution also uses 26x less energy, and 80x less space in the data center.

Clod also feels that Software Defined Storage has come of age. IBM has three offerings in this area. The first, code-named Elastic Storage, represents IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) and GPFS-based products like SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified. The second is the IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center and Storwize family of storage hypervisors. The third is IBM XIV Storage System.

Software Defined Storage can be used in private, hybrid and public clouds. In 2013, only 22 percent of storage was Cloud, but this is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2017.

IBM will support a range of Software Defined Environments, from the highly proprietary VMware, to the open source OpenStack foundation. Where applicable, IBM will provided added value above and beyond the basic OpenStack infrastructure.

Axel Koester presented storage futures. He works closely with IBM Research and described some of the projects they are working on:

• 120PB file system solution that involved a grid of IBM POWER 775 servers. Instead of traditional RAID, the system used GPFS Native Raid, which offers an 8+3 Reed Solomon protection scheme.
• Multi-cloud storage that allows you to access storage from multiple public providers without having the bottleneck of a single master scheduler.
• Phase Change RAM (PCRAM) which does not rely on capturing an electrical charge. This will be 12x faster than PCIe Flash, and 275x faster than consumer SSD.
• Liquid state storage. Rather than solid state, metal is kept in its liquid state to store binary information.

Finally, he mentioned IBM Research's success at storing a single bit of information in just 12 atoms. To do this, the folks at Almaden Research Center had to manually move the atoms into place using the needle of a scanning tunneling microscope [STM] to nudge each atom into position.

Axel gave a great example of scale. An atom compared to a tennis ball is like a tennis ball compared to the entire planet Earth. If an atom was the size of a tennis ball, the point of the STM needle would be the size of Mount Everest, but upside down.

IBM's Smarter Storage Strategy

In previous years, my session on Storage Strategy was scheduled on Wednesday or Thursday, and attendees would comment "Why wasn't this sooner in the week? Everything makes more sense now!"

This time, I was featured immediately after Clod and Axel's keynote session, resulting in hundreds of attendees in a large standing-room-only ballroom. The session was repeated Thursday morning for those who were turned away.

IBM's storage strategy has three main themes.

First, IBM is focused on data-intensive solutions such as big data analytics. This means storage needs to be efficient to manage the growth in a cost-effective manner. IBM offers real-time compression and data deduplication to be capacity-efficient, Flash, Nearline drives and tape to be energy-efficient, and extremely easy-to-use graphical user interfaces and automation to be labor-efficient.

 

Second, IBM wants to optimize business critical workloads. IBM wants to eliminate the manual effort needed to balance between performance versus cost. IBM Easy Tier, I/O priority manager, and FlashSystem solutions are just a few examples.

And third, IBM wants to help you start quickly, and add value, by deploying private, public and dynamic hybrid cloud environments. IBM is not limiting its solutions to just VMware, but rather supporting other server hypervisors including KVM, Hyper-V, PowerVM and z/VM. IBM is a platinum sponsor for OpenStack foundation, and IBM storage systems support Cinder interfaces.

For those on Twitter, my handle is @az990tony and the hashtag for this event is #IBMEdge.

technorati tags: IBM, Clod Barrera, Systems of Record, OLTP, Systems of Engagement, Flash, FlashSystem, SSD, DB2, PureScale, Software Defined Storage, SDS, Software Defined Environments, SDE, Vmware, OpenStack, Elastic Storage, GPFS, SONAS, Storwize, XIV, Axel Koester, phase change, PCRAM, liquid state storage, scanning tunneling microscope, STM, Cinder, KVM, Hyper-V, PowerVM, Easy Tier, Nearline

I have landed safely in Las Vegas for the [IBM Edge2014 conference], IBM's premiere conference for System Storage, System x and PureSystems products!

The conference kicks off Sunday with registration and a reception for IBM Business Partners at Wolfgang Puck's Postrio restaurant.

For those who want to meet me in person, here is my [speaking schedule]. For those on Twitter, my handle is @az990tony and the hashtag for this event is #IBMEdge.

technorati tags: IBM, #IBMEdge

Next week, I will be in Las Vegas attending the [IBM Edge2014 conference], IBM's premiere conference for System Storage and related products!

With thousands of people attending, you may have a hard time finding me in person. Here is my speaking schedule:

To prepare for the big event, consider [watching some of the sessions recorded] from last year, or review my blog posts from Edge2013:

• [What to Expect at IBM Edge2013]
• [Day 0 Arrival and Reception]
• [Day 1 General Sessions]
• [Day 1 Breakout Sessions]
• [Day 2 General Sessions]
• [Day 3 Meet the Experts ]
• [Day 3 Solutions Center]
• [Day 4 More Photos at the Solutions Center]
• [Day 5 Social Media Hour]

For those on Twitter, my handle is @az990tony and the hashtag for this event is #IBMEdge.

technorati tags: IBM, #IBMEdge, @az990tony, Smarter Storage, Storage Tiering, Data Footprint Reduction, Archive Storage, Data Retention, Government Compliance, Industry Regulations, Meet the Experts

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

I was afraid IBM was going to pile up all the announcements on one day at Edge next week, so I am glad that our new General Manager, Jamie Thomas, has agreed to spread them out a bit. Last week, IBM [announced new SAN Volume Controller and Storwize models], and yesterday, IBM [announced Elastic Storage].

Today is all about the [enhancements to the IBM System Storage DS8870], one of IBM's Enterprise-class high-end disk systems.

High Performance Flash Enclosure

When IBM designed the DS8870, it changed the bulk power supplies and batteries used in the previous DS8800 model to highly energy-efficient [DC-UPS]. In addition to reducing the overall energy consumption of the DS8870, it also gave the engineers space above the units to put 4U of standard 19-inch rack equipment.

The High Performance Flash Enclosure provides an ultra-dense and ultra-high-performance option. Each HPFE can delivers up to 250,000 IOPS and up to 3.4 GB/s bandwidth.

Up to thirty 387 GB Enterprise Multi-Level Cell (eMLC) flash cards provide up to 11.6 TB of raw capacity, about 9.2 TB usable, in only 1U of 19-inch rack space. A pair of very powerful integrated SAS RAID engines manage RAID-5 across the flash cards. The HPFE attaches directly to GX++ slots in the two DS8870 POWER7+ controllers, rather than using the Device Adapter (DA) loops.

You can have up to four of these HPFE in the "A" frame of your DS8870. Each HPFE can have either 16 or 30 flash cards. For 16 cards, you would have two spare plus two 6+P RAID-5 ranks. For 30 cards, you would add another two 6+P RAID-5 ranks.

Easy Tier Enhancements

Easy Tier is IBM's market-leading sub-volume automated tiering inside the DS8870 disk system. There were several enhancements in this announcement.

The first enhancement is to "Easy Tier Server", a feature that coordinates caching of active blocks of data inside the server's own internal Flash. This had supported Power Systems with EXP30 Ultra drawers, and now expanded to support IBM [Flash Adapter 90].

The IBM FlashAdapter 90 was announced last October as part of the [ IBM Power Systems feature new I/O enhancements].

The second enhancement is to the three-level (Flash,Enterprise,Nearline) tiering algorithm. Inside the DS8870, the new HPFE flash cards will be part of the "Flash Tier" along with solid state drives (SSD) attached to the DA loops. Internal inter-tier load-balancing will take into account the faster nature of the flash cards in the HPFE, and move the busiest blocks accordingly. We we refer to this as "micro-tiering" within the Flash Tier.

Broader Solid State Drive options

Not everybody likes the 400GB solid state drives IBM offered for the DA loops, so IBM is now offering a smaller 200GB and a larger 800GB options as well.

Enhanced Concurrent Code Load

The new DS8870 R7.3 firmware release drastically cuts the activation time of concurrent code load in half.

Reduced Warmstarts

Nobody likes warmstarts either. These are a necessary evil for some error conditions, but the clever engineers upstairs have figured out ways to reduce the number of warmstarts and eliminate the need to perform a warmstart after certain events to prevent any application impact to the attached host.

Multi-Target Remote Mirror

By now you know that IBM has the market-leading remote mirroring services for high-end disk systems, using less bandwidth and maintaining better concurrency than high-end systems from other vendors.

The DS8870 R7.2.7 firmware release can now support multi-target remote mirror. In previous releases, if you wanted three-site disaster recovery, you relied on Metro/Global Mirror, where site "A" had a Metro Mirror to a bunker site "B", and then site "B" had a Global Mirror to site "C". Not everybody liked this.

Some clients have asked for a "star" configuration, where "A"-to-"B" and "A"-to-"C" are independent of each other. A SCORE request is available for the following configurations:

• Two Metro Mirror
• One Metro Mirror and one Global Copy
• Two Global Copy

While Metro Mirror can support up to 300km distance, and Global Copy can go any distance around the planet, there is no reason why you can't have one or both copies in the same building, or on campus nearby, for use with HyperSwap.

OpenStack Cinder interface support

Last but not least, the DS8870 now offers full support for OpenStack Havana and Icehouse releases. Support is provided through the OpenStack Cinder driver currently available for download. IBM is a platinum sponsor of the OpenStack foundation.

To learn more about the IBM [DS8870 disk system], or any other IBM Storage System solution for that matter, attend next week's [IBM Edge 2014 conference]. Look for me, I'll be there!

technorati tags: IBM, DS8870, #IBMEdge, High Performance Flash Enclosure, HPFE, DS8800, DC-UPS, eMLC, SSD, Flash card, RAID-5, Easy Tier, automated tiering, HyperSwap, OpenStack, Cinder, Havana, Icehouse

International Technology Group [ITG] has just published a series of papers about IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center (VSC) and SAN Volume Controller/Storwize storage hypervisor virtualization technology detailing the cost benefit advantages over EMC and VMware.

Here are the reports:

• [ITG Management Report: Cost/Benefit Analysis of IBM Virtual Storage Center Compared to EMC Storage Virtualization Solutions]
  
  
• [ITG Management Report: Cost/Benefit Analysis of IBM Virtual Storage Center Compared to VMware Tools for Storage Virtualization and Management]

To learn more, check out the [SmartCloud VSC Wiki] full of resources available.

Also, you can watch an interview with the study's author, International Technology Group Managing Director, Brian Jeffery, live from next week's IBM Edge Conference in Las Vegas. Brian will be interviewed on [TheCUBE by Wikibon] on Monday afternoon. Watch it live on May 19!

I will be at Edge next week. If you plan to be there, I would be glad to discuss these ITG findings with you and your clients in person.

technorati tags: IBM, #IBMEdge, TCO, SmartCloud, Virtual Storage Center, VSC, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, Storwize, EMC, VMware, ITG, Brian Jeffrey

Today, I attended the IBM Fast Data Forum. This was a special announcement event for press, analysts and IBM employees.

My fifth-line manager, [Tom Rosamilia], IBM Senior Vice President of Systems Technology Group, kicked off the ceremonies.

The world is changing fast, and technology has changed the way we live, and the way we work. For example, nearly [80 percent of people use their smart phone 22 hours a day]. Tom then introduced our first speaker, Jamie Thomas.

Jamie Thomas, IBM General Manager of Storage and Software Defined Environments

Jamie announced [IBM Elastic Storage], a new offering that is available as a software defined storage solution, based on IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) technology already deployed at 45,000 installations.

IBM Elastic Storage provides a global name view across data center locations. It can manage up to a Yotabyte of information, combining Flash, disk and tape resources. It supports OpenStack interfaces, Hadoop and standard POSIX file system conventions.

IBM Elastic Storage provides automated tiering to move data from different storage media types. Infrequently accessed files can be migrated to tape and automatically recalled back to disk when required. Unlike traditional storage, it allows you to smoothly grow or shrink your storage infrastructure without application disruption or outages.

IBM Elastic Storage software can run on a cluster of x86 and/or POWER-based servers, and can be used with internal disk, commodity storage, or advanced storage systems from IBM or other vendors.

IBM partnered with various clients in different industries in a special beta program. Jamie led a client panel to discuss their experiences with IBM Elastic Storage:

• Alan Malek, Director of IT, Cypress Semiconductor.

  "Total cycle time is key". Over the past 31 years, they bought whatever file storage was available. Now, with IBM Elastic Storage, the performance was very consistent for their engineering workloads with full load balancing.

• Russell Schneider, Principal Storage Consultant, Jeskell.

  Russell's company works with a lot of federal agencies, "Big Data has become Bigger Data". For example, research on Global Warming and Climate Change requires a large amount of storage across agencies.

  In another example, when the tsunami hit Japan a few years ago, an agency here in the USA realized they had 14PB of data stored as a single copy in a data center at sea level less than a mile from the coast. They realized they needed to have a secondary copy, and an option to cache to a third location depending on regional disasters.

• Matthew Richards, Products, OwnCloud.

  For those not familiar with OwnCloud, it provides a Dropbox-like file sharing service, but in the Enterprise, with on-premise storage. It has been fully tested and certified with IBM Elastic Storage to provide a secure file sharing platform.

  With IBM Elastic Storage, they were able to scale linearly up to 20,000 users, and are now testing 100,000 users. The need to have intelligent access to files at scale is what Matthew likes about IBM Elastic Storage.

 

Dr. Michael Factor, IBM Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research

Michael started out explaining there are three areas for storage: block, file and object. The fastest growing type of data is unstructured fixed content with associated metadata. This is ideal for object storage. Michael has been working with OpenStack Swift, an open source interface defined for object storage. He defined "storlets" as follows:

Storlets extend an object store by moving computation to the data -- filtering, transforming, analyzing -- instead of bringing data to the computation.

Storlets have been deployed on a variety of European Union research projects. For example, in partnership with Phillips, a pathology storlet can count the number of cancer cells in an image. By bringing the computation to the data, it eliminates having to transfer large amounts of data over the network.

Storlets can run on-premise and on IBM's SoftLayer IaaS cloud offering.

Bruce Hillsberg, IBM Director of Storage Systems at IBM Research

Bruce led another panel discussion, this time of IBM storage experts:

• Vincent Hsu, IBM Fellow and CTO of Storage.

  The problem is the isolation of data into "storage silos". Isolation causes problems in managing large amounts of data at scale, and costs more as storage is not fully utilized. IBM Elastic Storage brings everything together, eliminating storage silos.

  IBM Elastic Storage can scan [10 billion files on a system in 43 minutes].

• Dr. Michael Factor, IBM Research.

  Michael explained how IBM works with clients all over the world to ensure that storage solutions meet client requirements. For example, storlets can be used to use rich metadata to manage photographs, and display them based on GPS satellite location, or other content that makes it easier to manage these images.

  IBM Elastic Storage will support OpenStack Cinder and Swift interfaces. IBM is a platinum sponsor of OpenStack foundation, and is now its second most prolific contributor, with hundreds of full-time employees working on this.

• Tom Clark, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect, Storage Software, Cloud & Smarter Infrastructure.

  Storage Management is a critical piece of Software Defined Storage. This is done in three ways:

  1. The use of analytics to optimize the deployment of storage, based on workload requirements. Storage admins set policies, and then IBM Elastic Storage analytics gather metrics and then optimize data placement and movement based on these policies. IBM Elastic Storage has 70 percent lower TCO that competitive offerings.
      
  2. The focus on backup services. Backups are not just for data protection, but rather can be used to duplicate or replicate data for testing, for training, and for other purposes. IBM Elastic Storage is fully supported by IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.
      
  3. Being able to support Hybrid Cloud environments, where some data can be on-premise, and other data off-premise. Storage Management challenges will need to deal with this possibility. IBM Elastic Storage is well positioned for this.
      
• Carl Kraenzel, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Director of Watson Cloud Technology and Support.

  Watson is ground-breaking technology, and IBM Elastic Storage technology was at the heart of the Watson that was first introduced in 2011.

  To consider IBM Elastic Storage based on lower-cost and higher-scalability is not the full picture. Rather, this is an important platform for Cognitive Computing, which we are just at the tip of the iceberg in exploring. IT systems need to be aware of the context of what we are doing.

  While the Grand Challenge demonstration on Jeopardy! was exciting, it is time we stop playing games and apply IBM Elastic Storage to business, to help with health care and medical research, and other problems in society. IBM has already deployed this at Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, for example.

Tom Rosamilia provided closing remarks. IBM Elastic Storage is not just for new workloads in Cloud, Analytics, Mobile and Social (CAMS) but also traditional workloads as well. IBM Elastic Storage provides "data democracy" and allows for "better rested storage administrators" that make fewer mistakes.

Tom opened the floor for questions from the audience:

Tom Rosamilia assured the audience that IBM is fully committed to its storage portfolio. IBM Elastic Storage is not just about the profoundness of what IBM announced today, but also where IBM is investing in the future of storage.

technorati tags: IBM, Fast Data Forum, #fastdata, Tom Rosamilia, STG, Jamie Thomas, Software Defined Storage, Software Defined Environment, Elastic Storage, Alan Malek, Cypress Semiconductor, Russell Schneider, Jeskell, Matthew Richards, OwnCloud, Michael Factor, storlets, Bruce Hillsberg, IBM Research, Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Tom Clark, Carl Kraenzel, Novocaine, data democracy

Wow! It has been six years already since []IBM acquired Diligent] and launched the [IBM ProtecTIER® data duplication storage solutions]! My how time flies.

Marking the occasion, here is an important letter from our Vice President, Laura Guio:

May 6, 2014

To Whom it may concern

Subject: ProtecTIER Development Update:

This year marks the sixth anniversary of IBM's acquisition of Diligent Technology. Over the past six years IBM has emerged as a leader in enterprise class data deduplication. Our highly scalable, dual node hardware redundancy and gateway design are unique characteristics in the industry. IBM fundamentally believes in the importance of cost saving data deduplication technology and continues to enhance our solution, improve value and increase investment protection for our installed base.

First, it is important to note what IBM has done most recently. IBM is among the first to integrate flash technology along with deduplication to boost performance and lower cost. Integration of the IBM FlashSystem 840 for metadata was completed the day the system was publically announced. The speed of technology integration is a result of our flexible gateway design which simplifies technology adoption. It also is enabled by our global development team providing a 24x7 system design, product test and integration environment.

Secondly, IBM has recently released ProtecTIER Mainframe Edition which enables the same enterprise class deduplication capability now for IBM System z. Another distinctive feature of ProtecTIER is its ability to sustain high throughput for both read and write operations. Most deduplication methodologies have an inherent read performance penalty. Since mainframe tape operations are much more read intensive than distributed systems, we were one of the first to market with a practical deduplication offering for all mainframe tape applications.

That's just what we've done getting out of the starting blocks in 2014. Our development team continues to enhance ProtecTIER. We're also working on refreshing the entire ProtecTIER product line with new model enhancements. A new gateway design is underway which will improve performance of the existing DD5. We expect this to be available as an upgrade, providing investment protection for existing ProtecTIER clients. The SM2 product family is also being redesigned to extend its capacity range. Along with hardware changes, we will widen the disk support matrix offering enhanced flexibility and new levels of price performance.^*1*

We expect 2014 to be a busy year for IBM deduplication. We have development facilities around the world in Europe, North America, Central America and Asia, working on ProtecTIER. IBM continues to market, sell, and support ProtecTIER as our strategic offering for cost-reducing deduplication technology. Any suggestion that ProtecTIER is fading away is wishful thinking by our competitors. We are working to expand our markets as we have demonstrated by our recent introduction of ProtecTIER into the mainframe. Furthermore, we are looking to expand the use cases for ProtecTIER, which can now be attached as a NAS file system, to other areas besides pure backup. We're excited about what we are delivering today and where we can provide leadership by leveraging deduplication for customer storage environments.

Laura Guio
Vice President, Business Line Executive Storage Systems
IBM Systems and Technology Group

^*1*: IBM's statements regarding its plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice at IBM's sole discretion. The development, release, and timing of any future features or functionality described for our products remains at our sole discretion.

 

To learn more about IBM ProtecTIER, consider attending the [IBM Edge conference], May 19-23, 2014 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. I'll be there to explain Data Deplication technology as part of my "Data Footprint Reduction" presentation!

technorati tags: IBM, IBM acquisitions, Diligent Technology, ProtecTIER, DD5, SM2, FlashSystem, FlashSystem 840, ProtecTIER Mainframe Edition, NAS, Laura+Guio, #ibmEdge

Systems Technical University 1001 Arabian Nights

Wrapping up my coverage of the [Systems Technical University 2014] conference, we had a special dinner with entertainment on Wednesday evening.

Before dinner, I was able to catch up with my colleagues from across the pond. Here I am pictured with Ola Surowiec, a Power Systems sales specialist from Scotland.

The dinner was set up as self-service buffet style, with choices of European, Asian, and Middle Eastern cuisine. This is largely the heritage of the Ottoman empire to provide a fusion of flavors from its neighbors.

The city of Istanbul is considered the border between Europe and Asia, with one side of the city on the "European" side, and the other side of the Bosphorus strait being the "Asian" side.

 

With a population of over 14 million, Istanbul forms one of the largest urban agglomerations in Europe, second largest in the Middle East and the third-largest city in the world by population within its city limits.

The entertainment started with two [belly dancers], one male and one female. (IBM is an equal opportunity employer!) For those not familiar with this particular form of performance art, it is improvised folk dances based on torso articulation and abdominal movements.

I have seen dancers before in Egypt, the country that most people associate with the origin of belly dancing, but the Turkish version is considered more energetic and athletic. Certainly both of our dancers were quite flexible.

This was followed by a live cover band that played the latest English-language hits. Several Americans at the table asked "Wait? We come all the way to Turkey and the local band sings the songs in English?"

I had to explain that [the Beatles made their start playing in Germany]. This let the band hone their performance skills, widened their reputation, and led to their first recording.

Today, what music tops the charts throughout Europe, including countries like Turkey that are predominantly not English-speaking residents, are mostly from American musicians. Emmanuel Legrand has a great article on this titled [Europe's music scene -- A mosaic of talent united by one language].

In the corner, attendees were invited to dress up as their favorite sultan to take photograph. Here for example, are some of the members of the STU event team.  Mo McCullough, Don Meyer, Marlin Maddy, Glenn Anderson and Alex Abderrazag pose with two lovely local ladies in full costume.

The word "sultan" derives from the Arabic word meaning "strength", "authority" or "power". Sultans ruled the Turkish empire from 1299 to 1922.

The [Topkapi palace], where I visited earlier in the week, contains clothing on display of the sultans and princes from the second half of the 15th century to the early 20th century.

A fun time was had by all!

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmtechu, Systems Technical University, Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, Ola Surowiec, Power Systems, Emmanuel Legrand, Mo McCullough, Marlin Maddy, Glenn Anderson, Topkapi palace

Continuing coverage of the [Systems Technical University 2014] conference, we had our last set of breakout sessions on day 4.

New Generation Storage Tiering: Less Management, Lower Investment and Increased Performance

This was not just an update to my session last year in Brussels, Belgium. Rather, I decided to start over and focus I/O density as the metric to focus my efforts, armed with real data from Intelligent Storage Tiering Analysis (ISTA) studies done at various clients. From that, I was able to talk about storage tiering on three fronts:

• Storage tiering between Flash and disk. IBM FlashSystem and IBM Easy Tier on DS8000 and Storwize family for hybrid Flash-and-disk configurations.
  
  
• Storage tiering between disk and tape. HSM and Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) on SONAS, Storwize V7000 Unified and LTFS-EE.
  
  
• Storage tiering automation across your entire environment. ISTA studies can help identify a target mix of Tier 0, Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 storage. SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center can recommend or perform the movement of LUNs to more appropriate tiers, based on age and I/O density measurements.

Next Generation FlashSystem 840 and V840, Architecture Deep Dive

Detlef Helmbrecht, from the IBM Advanced Technical Skills team in Germany, presented this deep dive in our latest IBM FlashSystem offerings. He started with an analogy. Latency is like a single car driving down an empty highway. IOPS, on the other hand, is like a lot of cars stuck in slow traffic, with all lanes filled on the autobahn. While there are more cars transported on a full highway, the individual cars are not driving very fast. Flash versus disk has similar comparisons.

Detlef explained the differences between the previous FlashSystem 810/820 with the new 840, as well as talk about the FlashAdapter 90 now available as a PCIe card.

Finally, we talked about SAN Volume Controller combined with Flash, and the new FlashSystem V840 which combines SVC and FlashSystem 840 to have an incredibly function-rich, robust solution.

Data Footprint Reduction - Understanding IBM Storage Efficiency Options

My last session of the week! This session covered all of the various technologies for data footprint reduction, including Thin Provisioning, Space-efficient FlashCopy and snapshots, Real-time compression and data deduplication. Frankly, I wasn't expecting many people to attend the last session of the last day, but nearly 50% of the seats were filled, so I was quite pleased on the turn-out.

Fun Fact: Istanbul is considered by TripAdvisor in 2014 as the #1 most popular city to visit in Europe!

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmtechu, STU, Istanbul, TripAdvisor, storage tiering, FlashSystem, HSM, ILM, SONAS, Storwize, ISTA, SmartCloud, Virtual Storage Center, data footprint reduction, FlashCopy, Thin Provisioning, Real-time Compression, Data Deduplication, Detlef Helmbrecht

Continuing coverage of the [Systems Technical University 2014] conference, I participated in a "Meet the Experts" session on day 3.

Johann Weiss, Jim Blue and I joined several other local experts to answer questions and respond to comments and suggestions attendees had about IBM System Storage products and solutions. Here is a sample:

I would like to add 1TB of Flash to our FlashSystem 810 and have the system automatically re-stripe across this new capacity non-disruptively?

Good suggestion!

How can I have XIV systems at two datacenters in an active/active configuration that would allow me to vMotion from one location to the other non-disruptively?

Put them behind the SAN Volume Controller in Stretched Cluster mode.

What about a similar active/active but for NAS?

IBM N series.

I would like HyperSwap on the SVC/Storwize family like the DS8000 offers for AIX?

Good suggestion!

When will IBM offer a multi-frame XIV?

The "Hyper-Scale" set of features lets you logically connect 144 XIV frames together and treat as a single system. There is no need to physically bolt them together, since the communication is done over standard network switches.

When will IBM devices have native FCoE support?

All IBM System Storage products work within an FCoE framework today, either with native FCoE support, or through Top-of-Rack switches splitting out the traffic between IP and FCP traditional networks. IBM Storwize and N series products support FCoE natively, and any disk behind virtualized by SAN Volume Controller or Storwize can be access via FCoE hosts because of this support.

What is FLAPE?

FLAPE is the combination of Flash and Tape. Both of these technologies are improving over 40 percent year-to-year, but disk is slowing down to 20 percent improvement. It is possible to combine Flash and tape systems, such as IBM LTFS-EE or IBM ProtecTIER TS7600 series.

Only the Storwize V7000 Unified supports file modules to add NAS capabilities, what can IBM offer us that is smaller for NAS deployments, perhaps a Storwize V5000 Unified or Storwize V3700 Unified?

Consider the IBM N3000 series.

Other storage vendors indicate that RAID-5 and RAID-6 are running out of steam, are no longer practical to protect ever growing capacities of disk. What is IBM planning in this area?

IBM XIV Storage System was one of the first to offer a distributed RAID that addresses many of the RAID-5/RAID-6 drive rebuild concerns. IBM DCS3700 and DCS3860 also have Dynamic Disk Pooling to reduce drive rebuild impact. Lastly, IBM GPFS now offers Native RAID support, used in the IBM GPFS Storage Server.

Is it true that GPFS is NFS only?

Do not confuse GPFS the file system with the various storage offerings that are based on GPFS. IBM SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified, both based on GPFS, support CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, SCP and FTP. IBM GPFS Storage Server can be configured to access GPFS natively, or you can run NFS v3/v4 server to make those protocols available. With Microsoft [Windows Storage Server], you can provide CIFS access to any GPFS-based storage solution.

LTFS-EE sounds like an exciting alternative to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager HSM space management for moving data from disk to tape. Do you agree?

Yes, we agree. However, TSM HSM space management supports a broader set of file systems. LTFS-EE only provides disk-to-tape movement for IBM GPFS.

Why does the DS8000 implementation of Easy Tier sub-LUN automated tiering support three tiers, but SVC/Storwize only support two tiers?

The same software engineering team works on both, but develop new features for the DS8000 first, get it working, then port it over to the Storwize family. At times, there might be gaps between what is supported on the latest DS8000 version and what is available on Storwize family products.

In an SVC Stretched Cluster, I would like to have the third quorum disk connected over the IP network, rather than FCP.

Good suggestion!

Personally, I enjoy these interchanges. They are sometimes called "Birds-of-a-Feather" or BOF at some conferences, "Free-for-All" at others. At IBM conferences, they are often titled "Meet the Experts". Whatever you call it, the questions and feedback on what clients are thinking are quite useful for product planning and prioritization of future planned features.

technorati tags: IBM, FlashSystem, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, Stretched Cluster, Storwize, Multi-frame XIV, HyperSwap, Hyper-Scale, N3000, DS8000, RAID-5, RAID-6, Distributed RAID, Dynamic Disk Pooling, RAID rebuild, GPFS, GPFS Native RAID, GNR, SONAS, Storwize V7000 Unified, TSM, LTFS, LTFS-EE, BOF, Free-for-All, Meet the Experts