This week -- Jan 29 to Feb 2, 2018 -- I am in New York city with other IBM Storage executives, to meet with Channel distributors and Business Partners. If you are in the NYC area, and wish to have a product briefing, or just dinner or drinks, let me know!

IBM and Cisco announced the [ Cisco MDS 9132T 32G Fabric Switch for IBM Storage Networking], the next generation of Cisco MDS Series Fabric switches, combining high performance with outstanding flexibility and cost effectiveness.

I believe the "T" stands for "Third generation", as we have had other 9132 boxes before. Here are the details:

• Small: Just 1U in size
• Ports: 8, 16 or 32 ports
• Transceivers: 32, 16, 8, and 4 Gbps
• Protocols: FCP only, no FICON, FCIP, FCoE or iSCSI

Why is this important? Because the 16 Gbps and 32 Gbps transceivers support NVMe over Fabrics. Let's do a quick NVMe recap:

Last May, IBM announced that its developers are re-tooling the end-to-end storage stack to support [New Faster Protocols for Flash Storage], to boost the experience of everyone consuming the massive amounts of data now being perpetuated across cloud services, retail, banking, travel and other industries.

NVMe is a new language protocol that is replacing traditional SAS and SATA standards for solid state drives (SSD). Through employing parallelism, to simultaneously process data across a network of devices, clients can anticipate significantly reduced delays caused by data bottlenecks and move higher volumes of data within their existing flash storage systems.

(For some basic background, Cisco's J Metz explains [NVMe for Absolute Beginners]. You can also ready the IBM Redbook [IBM Storage and the NVM Express Revolution] by Ioannis Koltsidas and Vincent Hsu.)

IBM's NVMe strategy is based on optimizing the entire storage system stack - from applications requiring the data to flash technology to store it. Through the development of its FlashSystem family of all-flash storage solutions, IBM recognized years ago that multiple technologies would be required to address the demands of ultra-low latency data processing. IBM is developing solutions with NVMe across its storage portfolio, which it plans to bring to market in 2018.

At the AI Summit New York, December 2017, IBM disclosed a [technology preview and demonstration] with the integration of IBM POWER9 Systems and IBM FlashSystem 900 using NVMe-over-Fabrics InfiniBand. This combination of technologies is ideally suited to run cognitive solutions such as IBM PowerAI Vision, which can ingest massive amounts of data while simultaneously completing real time inferencing (object detection).

Whether it is streams of data, transactional data, or batch processes, a consistent requirement is the lowest possible latency. Among the leading all flash storage vendors, IBM with its FlashSystem 900, has stuck to its mission delivering low latency all flash arrays. Along comes NVMe-oF, which is, at its core, about getting rid of latency.

How do you take an already low latency protocol, like InfiniBand or Fibre Channel, and make it faster? Replace SCSI with NVMe and enable NVMe from server to fabric to storage array.

The FlashSystem 900 has been shipping with InfiniBand using SRP (SCSI over RDMA) for many years. In the technology preview, the very same InfiniBand adapter, based on the Mellanox chip set, is instead used to support the OpenFabrics driver distribution and NVMe-oF InfiniBand.

While the demonstration last December used Infiniband, this is not the only transport. NVMe-OF can also be used with Ethernet, either using Internet Wide Area RDMA (iWARP) or RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE). NVMe-OF over Fibre Channel is often referred to as FC-NVMe, and can drive NVMe over FCP or FCoE. Even though iWARP, RoCE and FCoE are all Ethernet-based, NVME-OF RDMA on the first two is different than FC-NVMe over FCoE.

Why not just drive NVMe commands over standard TCP/IP? The NVMe standards board is actually investigating this, but probably won't have anything until next year in 2019.

This week, IBM will be at the [Cisco Live!] event in Barcelona, Spain, talking about this new 9132T switch, as well as all of our VersaStack solutions! I won't be there, obviously, since I am in New York City, but if you are there, please send me photos! Barcelona is a wonderful city!

technorati tags: IBM, New+York, NYC, Cisco, Cisco MDS, Cisco 9132T, FCP, FICON, FCoE, FCIP, iSCSI, NVMe, <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/NV...a>, <a data-cke-saved-href=" http:="" www.technorati.com="" tags="" ioannis+koltsidas"="" rel="tag">Ioannis Koltsidas, Vincent Hsu, FlashSystem, POWER9, Fibre Channel, RDMA, InfiniBand, SRP, iWARP, RoCE, Cisco+Live, Barcelona Spain, VersaStack

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a festive and restful winter break! I sure did!

(FCC Disclosure: I work for IBM. IBM is in our 17-day "quiet period" before it announces full-year and 4Q results on January 18. Therefore, I picked today's topic that has nothing to do with storage products, recent client wins, or financials.)

It's January, so I thought I would discuss [New Year's resolutions], a tradition in United States in which a person resolves to change an undesired trait or behavior, to accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their life. Early Romans made promises to their god Janus, for whom the month of January is named.

Sadly, most of us are unsuccesful. This is often because the resolutions were unrealistic, people failed to measure and track their progress, or simply lost interest midyear.

From my own experience, most resolutions can be lumped into four major categories:

• Get healthy: Eat better, lose weight, exercise more, sit less, quit smoking
• Get organized: Stop procrastinating, pay off debt, de-clutter, switch to a better job, reduce stress
• Become social: Spend more time with friends and family, meet new people, travel, volunteer for charity
• Learn new skills: Learn a new language, take up a new hobby, learn to paint or create arts and crafts

A technique I use to develop presentations might help people keep New Year's Resolutions. The technique called [SCIPAB®], created by Mandel Communications, is an elegantly simple, six-step method for starting important conversations or create [Effective Presentations]. Since Resolutions are basically "conversations with yourself", let's give it a try!

SCIPAB is basically an acronym of the six steps. Inspired by a blog by [Dick Stark], we can demonstrate SCIPAB with a familiar story line of [Dudley Do-Right], a fictional Canadian Mountie, featured in segments of [The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle] television show.

 

1. Situation: "Oh No! The boss's daughter, Nell Fenwick, is tied to the railroad tracks!"
2. Complication: A train approaches!
3. Implication: If nobody does anything soon, she will die
4. Position: "I, Dudley Do-Right, will save her!"
5. Action:
   • Untie her from the tracks and set her free
   • Arrest the villain, Snidely Whiplash
6. Benefit: Nell lives! "Dudley Do-Right, you are my hero!"

 

Let's see how we can use this approach on different categories of resolutions. To get healthy, we might use:

 

1. Situation: "Oh No! My latest doctor visit indicates that my numbers are too high!"

   (AMA Disclosure: I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Here numbers could represent any appropriate health measurement of your BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, liver enzymes, or blood sugar, for example.)

2. Complication: I am not getting any younger.
3. Implication: I am at risk of heart disease, cancer, or other health issue. This situation will not go away on its own.
4. Position: I need to change my lifestyle to get healthy
5. Action:
   • Set appointment to see my doctor
   • Follow doctor's recommendations for diet, medication and exercise
   • Schedule follow-up appointments to measure and track progress
6. Benefit: My health measurements will return to normal range.

Rather than resolving to "Eat less and exercise more", the above approach is more focused on the end result, rather than intermediate actions, and therefore has a better chance of success, getting your health within normal range.

Let's try another one. To get better organized, we might use:

1. Situation: "Sigh! All of my projects are over budget and behind schedule, my desk is a mess, I forget important thoughts and ideas, and I am always late to meetings."
2. Complication: I just got assigned to lead project XYZ.
3. Implication: If I am not better organized, I could lose my job.
4. Position: I need to change my work routine to get organized.
5. Action:
   • Read David Allen's book and learn his system for "Getting Things Done" [GTD], or one of the many variants, like [GSD] or [ZTD].
   • Decide on where to write down and keep track of my thoughts, tasks and projects, either on paper like a notebook or [Hipster PDA], or an online mobile account like [Evernote] or [Google Keep]. Chose something that will be within arms reach 24 hours a day.
   • Work with project managers to track and measure progress of project XYZ.
6. Benefit: Project XYZ will be completed on schedule, within budget. I might even get a bonus, raise, or promotion!

I could go on, but you get the idea.

In his WSJ article [Blame it on the Brain], Jonah Lehrer cautions against trying to change too many habits all at once. If you have multiple resolutions, try to focus on establishing new habits for one resolution for a month or two, before starting the next one. Prioritize what is most important.

technorati tags: IBM, New Years Resolution, Janus, Mandel Communications, Dudley Do-Right, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Dick Stark, Nell Fenwick, Snidely Whiplash, David Allen, Getting Things Done, GTD, GSD, ZTD, Hipster PDA, Evernote, Wall Street Journal, Jonah Lehrer, Google Keep

Well, 2017 is nearly wrapping up, and many bloggers are using this time to predict what will happen in the future.

The IBM [Institute of Business Value] has published a global survey study [Facing the storm: Navigating the global skills crisis], written by my IBM colleagues Mike King, Anthony Marshall, and Dave Zaharchuk.

The study surveyed 5,676 leaders from various industries, education, and government agencies responsible for workforce development and labor/workforce policy. This was a truly global survey, with respondents from North and South America, the Nordics, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Asia.

A gloomy picture for the future

The survey paints a gloomy picture for the future. The majority of industry executives struggle to keep their workforce skills current, in light of rapidly changing technological advancements.

Only 55 percent of the respondents felt the current education system, from grade school up to university, were adequate to ensure lifelong learning and skills development. Most blamed inadequate investment from private industry in addressing these issues.

Any problem can be solved if (a) everyone agrees what the problem is, and (b) everyone feels it is high enough priority to solve. The study found there was a disparity of what the problem is, what the priorities are, and who should solve it.

In the book Class Counts: Education, Inequality, and the Shrinking Middle Class, the author Allan Ornstein argues ".. the debate centers on whether the government should take a backseat or manage the economy, whether a free market should prevail or whether we should redefine or tinker with market forces..."

Which workplace skills are in short supply?

Can we at least agree on which workplace skills are in short supply?

Not surprisingly, Industry leaders ranked the top three skills required:

• Technical core capabilities for Science, Technology Engineering and Math [STEM]
• Basic computer and software/application skills
• Fundamental core capabilities around reading, writing and arithmetic (often called [the three Rs])

These are all "hard skills", referring to the knowledge, skills and competencies to perform specific tasks. Nearly 75 percent of corporate training budgets are focused on hard skills.

Government leaders, on the other hand, especially those that are responsible for labor/workforce policy, ranked the top three skills:

• Ability to communicate effectively in a business context
• Willingness to be flexible, agile and adaptable to change
• Ability to work effectively in team environments

These would all be classified as "soft skills", referring to the people skills, social skills, communication and emotional intelligence to effectively navigate the environment and work well with others.

In fact, these government leaders felt that STEM, computer skills and "the three Rs" ranked the lowest requirements in their priority.

 

[Research conducted by Harvard University, the Carnegie Foundation and Stanford Research Center] concludes that 85 percent of job success comes from having well-developed soft skills, and only 15 percent from hard skills.

The study reaffirms the findings from an earlier study on Engineering Education from 1918, nearly a hundred years ago!

Higher pay, better benefits, and more accommodating work hours

In his article [Unemployment and the 'Skills Mismatch' Story: Overblown and Unpersuasive], Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institute argues in favor of tinkering with market forces:

"Unless managers have forgotten everything they learned in Econ 101, they should recognize that one way to fill a vacancy is to offer qualified job seekers a compelling reason to take the job. Higher pay, better benefits, and more accommodating work hours are usually good reasons for job applicants to prefer one employment offer over another."

Last year, Forbes published their top 10 list of the [Highest-Paying Tech Jobs Right Now] in the United States. It ranged from $83,936 to $116,399 per year. Certainly a livable wage in most American cities, but compare it to the average salary of construction workers that don't require any kind of college degree. For example, [crane, hoist and lift operators earn an average of $104,023 per year].

It's not just stagnant salary and benefits, but also the expectation to work long hours that discourage people from entering the field. In the article [The Many Reasons Long Hours Are Awful For You, Your Work, And Your Clients], Drake Baer cites observations from designer Jason James, Anne Marie Slaughter, and entrepreneur Daniel Epstein:

"... the long-hours pandemic is a symptom of the tech and design sectors' badge-of-honor-martyr-complex. ... part of the reason that women can't have it all is that American business has grown this time-macho culture, a relentless competition to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, ... the classic 40-hour work week have trained us to measure our labor by the number of hours we log,... However, this mindset is dead wrong when applied to today's professionals. The value ... isn't the time they spend, but the value they create through their knowledge."

IT jobs require creativity and focus. In a feature article titled [Why you should work 4 hours a day, according to science], Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, looks at the work habits of highly accomplished creative people through history and finds that they all shared a passion for their work, a terrific ambition to succeed, and an almost superhuman capacity to focus.

Yet when you look closely at their daily lives, they only spent a few hours a day doing what we would recognize as their most important work. The rest of the time, they were hiking mountains, taking naps, going on walks with friends, or just sitting and thinking.

Engineers and programmers should [manage their energy, not their time], to optimize around the Ultradian Rhythm.

Encouraging more students to develop the skills early

While we all agree that employers should raise salaries, offer better benefits, and fix their morally-corrupt culture of working too many hours, that only addresses part of the problem, the demand half of the equation. We also need to get kids to learn the hard and soft skills needed at an early age.

Do students have what it takes to work in the IT industry? John Rampton lists the [15 Characteristics of a Good Programmer]. Most are soft skills, with my favorites being: Laziness, Impatience and Hubris.

In his book Why Good People Can't Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It, Peter Cappelli advises corporations to take a more proactive role:

"... a huge part of the so-called skills gap actually springs from weak employer efforts to promote internal training for either current employees or future hires ... It makes no sense for the employers, as consumers of skills, to remain an arm's-length distance from the schools that produce those skills..."

The major stakeholders, from industry to education to government, should partner together. For example, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) system will be the first in the United States to [require all students to take computer science] in high school, starting with the class graduating in 2020. Grants and training are being provided by IT industry giants like Google and Microsoft.

IBM is also doing its part with [a new education paradigm], called Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools [P-TECH]. Normal high school is typically four years (grades 9 to 12), but P-TECH is a system of innovative public schools spanning grades 9 to 14 that bring together the best elements of high school, college, and career. The additional two years (grades 13 and 14) of community college can help teach the soft and hard skills needed for particular jobs in IT.

After the six years, students graduate with a no-cost associates degree in applied science, engineering, computers and related disciplines, along with the skills and knowledge they need to continue their studies or step easily into well paying, high potential jobs in the IT arena for multiple industries.

The paradigm has grown from one school in 2011 to 60 schools by September 2016, with over 300 large and small companies affiliated with P-TECH schools serving thousands of students.

So the future may not be as gloomy as predicted. Problems can be addressed if everyone works together to solve them. In the mean time, I will be taking the rest of the year off for long-overdue vacation. Perhaps I will go hike mountains and take naps, as Alex suggests above.

Happy holidays and a prosperous new year!

technorati tags: IBM, Institute Business Value, Skills Gap, Skills Shortage, Skills Crisis, Mike+King, Anthony Marshall, Dave Zaharchuk, Allan+Ornstein, STEM, Harvard University, Carnegie Foundation, Stanford Research Center, Engineering Education, Gary Burtless, Brookings Institute, Forbes, Drake Baer, Jason James, Anne Marie Slaughter, Daniel Epstein, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Ultradian Rhythm, John Rampton, Peter Cappelli, Chicago Public Schools, Google, Microsoft, P-TECH

It's official. We have changed our name! The Worldwide IBM Systems Executive Briefing Centers (EBC) are now being called the Worldwide IBM Systems Client Experience Centers!

I joined the Tucson EBC team in 2007. For the past 10 years, I have been running design workshops, consulting with clients and architecting solutions.

Why the name change? The term "Executive Briefing Center" implies one-way communication with [death by PowerPoint], which can be ineffective in today's dynamic and collaborative work environments.

Client expectations for two-way communications have given rise to immersive and interactive engagements where clients not only learn about IBM's solution offerings, they experience them.

Through hybrid briefing/workshop engagements, demonstrations, and active promotion of our ISV Ecosystem partners, we take clients on a journey where they envision utilizing our technology and solutions to achieve desired business outcomes. The new Client Experience Center moniker more accurately represents the work we do and the value we provide.

(Note: I realize that the new acronym for the Client Experience Center (CEC) is the same as the Central Electronic Complex (CEC) used in both storage and server products. I can assure you that the executives that decided to rename the centers had not chose this to be funny! Consider it a mere coincidence.)

Of course, changing the name is not cheap. We will have to update all of our websites, and order new signage, new water bottles, new coasters, new embroidered shirts, and new business cards, just to name a few!

The weather in Tucson is awesome these next few months, so come on down! Can't travel? We can come visit you, or do it over the phone via webinar.

Our Worldwide IBM Systems Client Experience Centers are located in:

• Austin, Texas USA
• Beijing, China
• Boeblingen, Germany
• Guadalajara, Mexico
• Montpellier, France
• Poughkeepsie, New York USA
• Rochester, Minnesota USA
• Tucson, Arizona USA

Not sure which CEC to engage with? We also launched the IBM Systems Client Experience Portal (ISCEP) at [https://ibm.biz/client-experience-portal] to provide search capability.

technorati tags: IBM, EBC, CEC, Executive Briefing Center, Client Experience Center, Central Electronics Complex,

Last Friday, I helped students learn about Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). This was the annual [2017 Arizona STEM Adventure] event in Tucson, Arizona. Once again, Pima Community College Northwest Campus provided the venue.

The event hosted 1,200 students, ranging from fourth to eighth grades. Buses collected them from ten different school districts in the area. Home-schooled, private-schooled and charter-schooled children participated as well.

I was just one of 215 volunteers. IBM had 18 volunteers. [Apple], [Raytheon], [Pima Community College], [Agents of STEM], [SARSEF], [StemAZing], [Office of Pima County School Superintendent], [UA Stem Learning Center], and other individuals also volunteered their time to make this happen.

(This is the second time I volunteer. Read my blog post of my experiences of [Arizona 2015 STEM Adventure]!)

There were three dozen exhibits, some were indoors, and others in tents outside. The weather was delightful for November.

Bicycle Gyroscope

 

IBM's exhibit used a simple bicycle wheel to demonstrate the properties of a [gyroscope]. A gyroscope is a spinning wheel that maintains its angular momentum. This can be useful for both measuring forces that try to affect it, as well as counteract those forces.

We had the kids stand on a rotating platform, holding the bicycle wheel with both hands. A volunteer would spin the wheel. If the kid leaned the wheel left or right, the platform would spin to counteract the force. (The effect can be accomplished while sitting on a swivel chair. See [Exploratorium] for an example.)

Gyroscopes are used in everything from airplanes to submarines to help with navigation, keeps space-based telescopes like the Hubble pointed in the right direction, helps to dig tunnels straight, and for [Steadicam] filming for Hollywood movies and [IBM Client Center videos!

Citizens for Solar: Solar Cooking Demonstration

Climate change is a big deal in Arizona. According to the journal magazine Science, [Arizona will suffer more deaths and economic losses] than most of the United States under current climate change projections.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

"The state has warmed about two degrees (F) in the last century. Throughout the southwestern United States, heat waves are becoming more common, and snow is melting earlier in spring. In the coming decades, changing the climate is likely to decrease the flow of water in the Colorado River, threaten the health of livestock, increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires, and convert some rangelands to desert." (Source: [What Climate Change means for Arizona])

People are not doing enough to [reduce their carbon footprint], so [we'd all better get used to it].

Vail School District: Boxerbots

The [Boxerbots] is Boxerbots is part of FIRST [For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology] league, formed out of the Vail High School Science, Engineering, and Robotics Club.

Their robots stole the show! This one pictured here was remote controlled. Another one was able to pick up and throw basketballs.

(This is not my first exposure to FIRST. See my 2009 blog post [Helping Young Students] on how I helped fourth graders learn C programming language by building robots with LEGO Mindstorms.)

The team draws students from the five high schools of the Vail school district. I drive by one of these, the Vail Academy and High School, on the way to IBM Client Experience Center. This is not just for boys, about one third of the team are girls!

The students do the design of each robot, do the welding, even do the C++ programming, and participate in competitions!

Lunch and Logistics

With all the focus on science and technology exhibits, it is easy to forget all the work done behind the scenes. An [Eventbase] website was used to help us direct all of the students, teachers and volunteers to the right place.

Since we had enough volunteers for the IBM exhibit, I chose instead to be a "general volunteer" and was assigned the task of collecting and distributing lunches. For some schools, the students brought their own lunches on the bus, these were collected when they got off the bus, and distributed to them when it was their time to eat. For other schools, their staff packed lunches for each student.

We staggered the distribution into five groups, with color coded labels, starting from 10:30am, every 20 minutes, to 11:50am. The volunteers themselves did not eat until 1:30pm. We were provided pulled pork sandwiches from [Mama's Hawaiian BBQ], a local favorite!

This was a great day! There are plenty of problems that need to be solved in our world, and a shortage of scientists and engineers to solve them. Encouraging kids to pursue these careers is a good step forward.

technorati tags: IBM, AZSTEMAdventure, Pima Community College, PCC, SARSEF, StemAZing, University of Arizona, gyroscope, global warming, climate change, solar cooking, EPA, Science Magazine, carbon footprint, Boxerbots

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

Spectrum Scale

The Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Livermore [CORAL] is a joint procurement activity among three of the Department of Energy's National Laboratories launched in 2014 to build state-of-the-art high-performance computing (HPC) technologies that are essential for supporting U.S. national nuclear security and are key tool s used for technology advancement and scientific discovery.

Of course, when you hear "state-of-the-art technology", IBM is probably the first company that comes to mind!

The new IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0 has been greatly enhanced to meet CORAL requirements:

• Dramatic improvements in I/O performance
   
• Significant reduction in internode software path latency to support the newest low-latency, high-bandwidth hardware such as NVMe
   
• Improved performance for many small and large block size workloads simultaneously from new 4 MB default block size with variable sub-block size based on block size choice
   
• Improved metadata operation performance to a single directory from multiple nodes

Spectrum Scale 5.0 now handles automatically tuning more than twenty communication protocol and buffer management parameters, aiding setup for optimal performance. The enhanced GUI features many capabilities including performance, capacity, network monitoring, AFM (multicluster management), transparent cloud tiering, and enhanced maintenance and support, including interaction with IBM remote support.

Spectrum Scale 5.0 now offers file-level immutability. Previous releases supported immutability at the file set granularity, so this allows greater granularity. Immutability can be an effective tool as part of an overall Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable [NENR] compliance policy.

Spectrum Scale comes in both "Standard Edition" and "Data Management Edition". The latter offers some additional features, including Transparent Cloud Tiering, Asynchronous AFM Disaster Recovery support, and Encryption. Some additional enhancements to Data Management Edition in Spectrum Scale 5.0 are:

• File audit logging capability to track user accesses to file system and events supported across all nodes and all protocols
   
• Parseable data stored in secure retention-protected fileset
   
• Data security following removal of physical media protected by on-disk encryption

To learn more, see [Spectrum Scale 5.0] and [Spectrum Scale 5.0-Passport Advantage] press releases.

Storage Utility Offerings

The new IBM Storage Utility Offerings include the IBM FlashSystem 900 (9843-UF3), IBM Storwize V5030 (2078-U5A), and Storwize V7000 (2076-U7A) storage utility models that enable variable capacity usage and billing.

These models provide a fixed total capacity, with a base and variable usage subscription of that total capacity. IBM Spectrum Control Storage Insights is used to monitor the system capacity usage. It is used to report on capacity used beyond the base subscription capacity, referred to as variable usage.

The variable capacity usage is billed on a quarterly basis. This enables customers to grow or shrink their usage, and only pay for configured capacity.

Suppose you only need 300 TB today, but expect this to grow to 1 PB (1000 TB) over the course of three years. You install 1000 TB (1 PB) of capacity, and pay for the base 300 TB, plus whatever above this 300 TB you might be using during each subsequent quarter. After 36 months, you pay for the rest of capacity installed.

(There are comparable offerings from IBM's competitors, but they often require that you pay for at least 75 to 85 percent of the installed amount, and then you would need to continue to disrupt your operations with additional capacity installed throughout the 12 to 36 month period. IBM's approach allows you to avoid installation disruption during the entire 36 month period!)

To learn more, see [Storage Utility Offerings] press release.

Spectrum Virtualize

IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud V8.1.1 delivers a powerful solution for the deployment of IBM Spectrum Virtualize software in public cloud, starting with IBM Cloud. This new capability provides a monthly license to deploy and use Spectrum Virtualize in IBM Cloud to enable hybrid cloud solutions

Remote replication will be supported between Spectrum Virtualize-based appliances (including SAN Volume Controller (SVC), the Storwize family, IBM FlashSystem V9000, and VersaStack with Storwize family or SVC), or Spectrum Virtualize Software, to the IBM Cloud.

Using IP-based replication with Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, or Global Mirror with Change Volumes, clients can create secondary copies of on-premises data in the public cloud for disaster recovery. IBM has over 25 data centers around the world available to chose from. Remote copy services can also be used between two IBM Cloud data centers for improved availability.

The solution is based on bare metal servers. You can create either two- or four-node high availability clusters.

Spectrum Virtualize on-premise SVC and Storwize now also support 2.4 TB 10K rpm 2.5-inch SAS hard disk drives.

To learn more, see [New Capacity Drive Option] and [Public Cloud] press releases.

IBM is #1 for Software-Defined Storage, and these offerings are an excellent example of IBM's continued commitment in this area!

technorati tags: IBM, Spectrum Scale, CORAL, Oak Ridge National Lab, Livermore National Lab, Department of Energy, DOE, HPC, High Performance Computing, NVMe, Active File Management, AFM, immutability, NENR, Standard Edition, Data Management Edition, audit logging, Passport Advantage, Storage Utility+Offering, SUO, FlashSystem 900, Storwize V5030, Storwize V7000, Spectrum Control, Storage Insights, Spectrum Virtualize, Public Cloud, IBM Cloud, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, FlashSystem V9000, IP-based Replication, Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, Global Mirror Change Volumes, GMCV, Softwaare Defined Storage

Last week, I participated in a special event!

IBM has been holding various "Hackathons" and "Meetups" as a new way to reach out to prospective clients. IBM sponsored a meetup at the Austin Executive Briefing Center (EBC) to discuss Machine Learning with TensorFlow on IBM Power systems, October 26, 2017.

This was a joint event, co-sponsored by [IBM Watson/Cognitive Austin] and [Big Data/AI Revealed] meetup groups. Special thanks to my colleague Cathy Cocco, IBM Executive IT Architect with the IBM Austin EBC, for coordinating this event with their organizers.

(What is a Meetup? [Meetup.com is an online social networking website that facilitates in-person local group meetings. Meetup allows members to find and join groups unified by a common interest, such as books, games, pets, technology, careers or hobbies. In 2017, there are 32 million users with 280 thousand groups available across 182 countries.)

Here was the agenda for the event:

Time	Description
6:30-7:00pm	Registration, Pizza & Soft drinks
7:00-7:30pm	Tensorflow 101 presentation
7:30-7:45pm	Demo: Using TensorFlow for Financial Market Predictions on IBM POWER Systems
7:45-8:00pm	Lightning Talk: IBM Data Science Experience
8:00-8:30pm	Networking

Clarisse Taaffe-Hedglin: Intro to TensorFlow on IBM Power servers

Our guest speaker was my colleague Clarisse Taaffe-Hedglin, IBM Cognitive Senior Technical Architect, part of the same Worldwide Client Centers team that I work in. She flew in from Charlotte, NC.

Her topic was TensorFlow, an open source [Machine Learning] framework. TensorFlow was originally developed by Google, but was made open source in November 2015.

Machine Learning is popular in a variety of industries, from self-driving cars and trucks, speech recognition and video surveillance, to what movie to watch next on Netflix. There are three aspects to Machine Learning:

• Data: Start with the data you want to analyze. This could be IoT sensor data, security logs, or social media feeds. Check out all that happens in an "Internet Minute"!
   
• Compute: While mathematical computations can be performed on traditional CPUs, some frameworks are optimized and accelerated with Graphical Processing Units (GPU). These GPU can perform Teraflops of single and double precision calculations.
   
• Technique: As methodology have gotten more complicated over the years, frameworks have evolved to match.

The [TensorFlow] framework is now one of the most popular among data scientists. You can download it for free at [Github].

Clarisse showed the various programming/calculation tools used by data scientists. The top five were: Python, R, SQL language, MapReduce, and Microsoft Excel.

Mathematical models come in many flavors. Clarisse explained they can be used to identify clusters of data that might have similar properties, or to perform classification, or linear regression. The results can be "descriptive", gaining a better understanding of what already is, or "predictive" for what might be.

Some frameworks like Chainer or Torch are more flexible, using a dynamic Build-by-Run approach. However, these do not scale well. Theano and TensorFlow, on the other hand, employ a Define-then-Run approach, which scales better for larger projects. With the growth in popularity with TensorFlow, the Theano framework has been "functionally stabilized".

 

Clarisse Taaffe-Hedglin: Financial Markets Demo

For the demo, Clarisse had historical stock closing data for USA, Australia and Asian stock markets. The hypothesis: We can determine a Buy/Sell for USA stocks based on the closing results of non-American stock results? This is a classic "Binary Classification" model. The other stock markets close 4-16 hours before the U.S. markets open, so this has real-world applicability.

Since the data was in different monetary units, she did some cleanup to normalize the data, removing out the trends, and converting everything to U.S. Dollars (USD).

Clarisse used "Supervised Learning" on 80 percent subset of the data, and then used the other 20 percent remaining data to validate how well it did.

As with any model, you measure how good it is by how close it results in the correct answer. Wrong answers are weighted by how bad they are. This is often referred to as "Loss" or "Cost". Different models can therefore be compared by minimizing the loss.

Using a simple y=wx+b mathematical model, she ran 30,000 iterations. After 5,000 iterations, the model was already guessing correctly 55 percent of the time, by the time we hit 30,000 this was up to 68 percent accuracy.

TensorFlow also supports "hidden layers", basically intermediate variables that are then used in subsequent layers for more complicated calculations. This is the way our brain works with neural networks. With two added layers, she re-ran the 30,000 iterations, and now was up to 73 percent accuracy.

Normally, this kind of analysis would take hours or days, but since TensorFlow takes advantage of the IBM Power8 CPU and NVidia Tesla K80 GPU in the IBM Power server, the whole thing finished in five minutes!

The demo is available to IBMers and IBM Business Partners on the [IBM Systems Client Experience Portal].

 

Tuhin Mahmed: Lightning Talk on IBM Data Science Experience (DSX)

Tuhin Mahmed, IBM Software Developer, is the organizer for the Big Data/AI meetup group. He wants to promote the idea of "Lightning Talks" where each person presents for just 10-15 minutes. This is a variant of the popular [Pecha Kucha] events.

To get things started, he presented 10-15 minutes on [IBM Data Science Experience], or DSX for short. Taking Multiple Listing Service (MLS) real estate data of closing prices on houses sold in a range of zip codes from the Austin Area, he mapped these on x-y axis. The x axis was square feet, and the y axis was closing price.

Using DSX, he was able to develop a mathematical model that estimates house closing prices based on their zip code and square footage.

This was a simple example, but it showed the power of Jupyter Notebooks, and how anyone can get a 30-day free trial of DSX for their own experimentation.

Currently, being a data scientist is more of an art than a science. This is one of those fields that takes only a few months to learn, but years to master.

Rather than building a model from scratch, data scientists can take existing models, and modify them to fit their needs. There are a variety of existing models available in what is called the "Model Zoo". Google has over 2,000 projects already.

Those interested in trying this out TensorFlow for themselves were directed to [Nimbix], a Cloud Service Provider that offers POWER servers with NVidia GPUs.

There were about 50 attendees, more than half identified themselves data scientists. As the first inaugural sponsored event for the IBM Austin EBC, I think this was a success!

If you are in the Austin area, the next meetup will be at the [Capital Factory] on Brazos Street on November 30, 2017.

technorati tags: IBM, hackathon, meetup, EBC, IBM Watson, Cognitive, Big Data, Artificial Intellgience, AI, TensorFlow, Data Science Experience, DSX, Clarisse Taaffe-Hedglin, machine learning, supervised learning, self-driving cars, self-driving trucks, video surveillance, speech recognition, Internet minute, CPU, GPU, POWER8, IBM Power, Nvidia K80, Github, Python, R Language, SQL, MapReduce, Microsoft Excel, Chainer, Torch, Theano, Stock Market, Binary Classification, Linear Regression, IBM Systems Client Experience Portal, Tuhin Mahmed, Lightning Talk, Pecha Kucha, MLS, Jupyter Notebook, Model Zoo, Google, Nimbix, Austin EBC, Capital Factor, Austin Texas

This week, I am presenting at the IBM Systems Technical University for IBM Storage and POWER Systems. This conference is being held in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 16-20, 2017, at the beautiful Hyatt Regency. There were about 800 clients attending.

This is my recap for the last few sessions before I left town, spanning Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon.

Reasons why IBM hyperconverged systems powered by Nutanix surpass other HCI from HPE, Cisco and more

Rob Simpson, Senior Strategic Marketing Manager at Nutanix, presented Nutanix hyperconverged systems. Nutanix runs on both x86 and POWER. For x86, it supports VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer, as well as their own Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) derived from Linux KVM. For POWER, it uses AHV re-compiled for POWER chip set.

Hyperconverged systems can be sold in full rack configurations, as individual appliances, or as software that can be deployed on your own servers. Rob compared Nutanix against three competitive appliances: Dell EMC VxRAIL based on VMware VSAN, HPE Simplivity, and Cisco HyperFlex.

Everything you wanted to know about IBM Spectrum Scale metadata but didn't know to ask

Eric Sperley, IBM Software Defined Infrastructure Architect, presented the internal metadata structures used in IBM Spectrum Scale.

Why, oh why, did I attend this presentation? I had worked on Spectrum Scale back when it was called GPFS over 15 years ago, and thought I already knew everything about "inodes" that I ever wanted to, but Eric proved me wrong!

"Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."
--John Godfrey Saxe

A lot has changed! There have been a lot of improvements to the internal structures to improve parallel I/O performance, and reduce latency of administrative tasks.

IBM Spectrum Scale can be divided into different file systems, each of which can be configured with different performance characteristics and block size, such as random small files for scanned images, versus large sequential files for streaming videos.

IBM Spectrum Scale for File and Object Storage

Slides are available on IBM Expert
Network on [Slideshare.net]

My presentation was nowhere near as technical as Eric's above. I provided an overview of how IBM Spectrum Scale is configured, how it works, and how it interacts with IBM Cloud Object Storage System, Spectrum Protect, and System Archive.

I also covered the latest GSxS and GLxS models of the Elastic Storage Server, or ESS for short. These models provide awesome performance at low cost. The GSxS models are all-flash arrays for high performance. The GLxS models are hybrid with 2 Solid-State Drives and the rest NL-SAS 7200 rpm spinning disk for high capacity.

IBM COS new features

Andy Kutner, IBM Channel and Alliances Architect, presented the latest features in IBM Cloud Object Storage, IBM COS for short.

Compliance Enabled Vaults, or CEV for short, offer Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable (NENR) tamperproof protection for objects. Objects written to a CEV vault can not be deleted or replaced with newer versions, for a specific retention period.

(Note: Some folks mistakenly use the term "Write Once, Read Many" (WORM) for this. WORM applies only to tape, optical, paper tape, punched cards, and non-erasable ROM chips. For this reason, the term "Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable" (NENR), used in the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC 17a-4) regulation, has been created to extend this tamperproof protection to flash, disk and cloud-based storage architectures.)

The entry-level systems lowers the minimum capacity of systems. Before, IBM recommended at least 500 TB capacity to consider IBM COS. Now, the combination of embedded Accessers and Concentrated Dispersal mode, can lower the starting point to as low as 72 TB, but still allow you to grow to multiple PBs.

For more on these features, see my blog post [IBM announces LTO-8 and Cloud Object Storage enhancements].

This was a great week. Unfortunately, I had to leave on Wednesday afternoon, and missed out on the rest of the great presentations, poster session and Mardis Gras themed dinner.

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmtechu, Rob Simpson, Nutanix, Nutanix POWER, VMware, Hyper-V, Citrix, XenServer, Acropolis Hypervisor, AHV, Dell EMC, VxRAIL, VMware VSAN, HPE, Simplivity, Linux KVM, Cisco, HyperFlex, Eric Sperley, GPFS, Spectrum Scale, inodes, John Godfrey Saxe, file storage, object storage, IBM Cloud, IBM COS, Cloud Object Storage, Spectrum Protect, Spectrum Archive, GSxS, GLxS, Elastic Storage Server, ESS, Andy Kutner, Cloud Enabled Vault, CEV, Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable, NENR, WORM, Embedded Accesser, Concentrated Dispersal mode

This week, I am presenting at the IBM Systems Technical University for Storage and POWER Systems. This conference is being held in New Orleans, Louisiana, October 16-20, 2017, at the beautiful Hyatt Regency.

This is my recap for sessions on Day 2 morning.

FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R Overview

Andy Walls, IBM Fellow, CTO and Chief Architect,and Brent Yardley, IBM STSM and Master Inventor, co-presented this session. This was the "deep dive" of the A9000/R, a basic continuation of the one they did yesterday.

The Pendulum Swings Back -- Understanding converged and hyperconverged integrated systems

Slides are available on IBM Expert
Network on [Slideshare.net]

With IBM's partnership with Nutanix, this has become a particularly popular topic. I cover the last 50 years of storage evolution, from internal storage and external storage to NAS and SAN storage networks.

More recently, people have been willing to give up all those gains for something simpler, less powerful, less reliable, less expensive. Enter Converged and Hyperconverged Systems. IBM PureSystems and VersaStack lead the pack for Converged Systems, along with IBM Spectrum Scale, Spectrum Accelerate and Nutanix on IBM Power Systems for Hyperconverged Integrated Systems.

New Generation of Storage Tiering -- Less Management, Lower Costs, and Improved Performance

Slides are available on IBM Expert
Network on [Slideshare.net]

There are orders of magnitude between the fastest All-Flash Array and the least expensive tape storage. Ideally, there would be a "slider bar" that allowed people to select from the fastest to the least expensive. IBM offers a variety of solutions to offer this "slider bar", with automation to move data as needed between tiers.

I start with IBM Easy Tier, available on DS8000 and Spectrum Virtualize products, to IBM Virtual Storage Center where advanced analytics moves data to the right location, to IBM Spectrum Scale which provides the ultimate tiering, across multiple locations, between flash, disk and tape.

The lunches at these conferences are amazing, but then the "Big Easy" is known for its food!

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmtechu, FlashSystem, FlashSystem A9000, FlashSystem A9000R, Pendulum Swings, Spectrum Accelerate, Spectrum Scale, Nutanix, Converged Systems, Hyperconverged, HCI, Easy Tier, DS8000, SVC, Storwize, Virtual Storage Center, Spectrum Control, Spectrum Virtualize, Spectrum Archive, Big Easy