Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor, Senior IT Architect and Event Content Manager for [
Christopher Vollmar is a Storage Architect supporting customers in Canada and the Caribbean. He is a Certified Consulting IT Specialist and a Design Thinking practitioner. He has also been a contributing author to the the 
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Arizona 2015 STEM Adventure
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Last Friday, I helped students learn about Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). This was the annual [2015 Arizona STEM Adventure] event in Tucson, Arizona. This year, Pima Community College Northwest Campus provided the venue. 
The event hosted more than 900 students, ranging from fourth to eighth graders. Buses collected them from 31 schools across seven cities and towns in the Tucson area. Home-schooled, private-schooled and charter-schooled children participated as well. I was just one of 130 volunteers. IBM, [Raytheon], [Pima Community College], [Agents of STEM], [SARSEF, [StemAZing], [Office of Pima County School Superintendent], [UA Stem Learning Center], and other individuals volunteered their time to make this happen. 
As I arrived, students lined up to ride this "hover chair". A lawn-blower motor floated a chair attached to a platform. A blue tarp represented water. Volunteers would pull the hover chair across the tarp, giving the kids a fun ride. I wanted to ride it myself, but it was not engineered for my body weight! Students chose among the most interesting of 50 exhibits. IBM led two of these exhibits. First, we had the [Bike Wheel Gyroscope]. The students would stand on a rotating swivel platform, holding a spinning bicycle wheel. When the student tipped the wheel left or right, the students body would rotate on the platform! Second, we had Share with Storyboarding. This is the one I volunteered for. IMHO, the best part of STEM is the Arts and Design aspect needed to make products usable. Perhaps we should rename STEM to STEAM to add "A" for Arts and Design. We held six 30-minute sessions with each group of students. Our team lead, Brenton Elmore, IBM Design Principal, explained what storyboards are, and then gave the students five topics to choose from:
Children paired up in two-person teams based on their topic interest. Why teams? Many creative collaborations involve the strengths of different teammates. For example, an author and an illustrator work together to create a comics or children's book. Broadway musicals often have a writer and composer. 
Each team spent 10 minutes to draw a six-panel storyboard on [Post-it notes]. These would be stuck to a single sheet of paper. The team then would write underneath each panel the narrative of what was occurring. Brenton taped five or six of these to the wall to share with the rest of the class. Each team would then explain to the other students what they drew, and the narrative to go with it. When there were an odd number of students, one of us volunteers paired up with a student. Shown here is Marilynn Franco, IBM Manager, helping young Bailey in explaining their storyboard. I helped young Lili with her storyboard about a new mobile phone app idea she had. Storyboards are an essential part of IBM's [Design Thinking]. We use them in a variety of ways, from designing business strategies and product enhancements, to creating videos about the [IBM Tucson Executive Briefing Center]! When I make presentations to clients at briefings or conferences, I use 36 slides per hour. Each PowerPoint slide serves like a storyboard panel, and I provide the narrative on each one. Special thanks go to Kathy Carlisle, IBM Tucson Site Operations Manager, and Mike Hernandez, IBM IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs Manager, for setting this up! To learn more, see [STEM Adventure Shows Students Science Up Close] by Mariana Dale, and [1,000 students visit STEM fair at Pima college] by Yoohyun Jung.
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IBM Systems Technical University - Day 4 Sessions and Meet the Experts
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Continuing my coverage of the IBM Systems Technical University in Orlando, here are the sessions that I presented or attended on Days 4 (Thursday).
Most IBM conferences are 4.5 days long, which means that there are typically two or three sessions on Friday morning. Unfortunately, the two sessions I was planning to attend on Friday were both cancelled, so Day 4 was the end of my week for this conference.
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IBM Systems Technical University - Day 3 Sessions and Event night
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Continuing my coverage of the IBM Systems Technical University in Orlando, here are the sessions that I presented or attended on Day 3 (Wednesday).
The day ended with a trip to Universal Studios. Dinner on the City Walk offered entertainment with Dueling Pianos. This was then followed by a trip to Hogsmeade, the Harry Potter themed portion of the resort.
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IBM Systems Technical University - Day 2 Breakout Sessions
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Continuing my coverage of the IBM Systems Technical University in Orlando, here are the sessions that I presented or attended on Day 2 (Tuesday).
The second day ended with a "Networking" Reception in the Solution Center, serving food and my favorite grape-flavored beverages.
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IBM Systems Technical University - Day 1 Keynote and Breakout Sessions
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Continuing my coverage of the IBM Systems Technical University in Orlando, here are the sessions that I presented or attended on Day 1 (Monday).
The day ended with a Welcome Reception at the IBM Solution Center that had various z System, Power System and System Storage solutions, as well as solutions from various IBM Business Partners and other third parties.
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IBM Systems Technical University - General Session
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This week I am in beautiful Orlando, Florida for the [IBM Systems Technical University] conference. Amy Hirst, IBM Director, z Systems, Power, & Storage Technical Training, kicked off the general session. Dr. Seshadri "Sesha" Subbanna, IBM Corporate Innovation and Technology Evaluation, asked the audience what capability is needed to drive business growth. A recent poll indicated that the ability for businesses to innovate was the number one response.
The IT industry has had its own version of growth. Consider the Apollo 11 [Guidance Computer] used to land a man on the moon had just 4KB or RAM, and 36KB or ROM. A typical smartphone has 62,000,000 times as much. The Appollo missions led and motivated the Integrated-Circuit technology, but soon, maybe in the next 10 years, Dr. Subbanna feels that Silicon may run its course. Today, both POWER8 and z13 servers are based on 22nm. IBM has projected possible reductions to 17nm, 13nm, 10nm, and finally 7nm. That's it, smaller than 7nm may not be possible without hitting atomic issues. 
The City of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is a good example. In 2010, heavy rains resulted in flooding and landslides that killed over 110 residents. To prevent such high death rates in the future, IBM helped the city government predictive analytics and forecasting that allows "rain simulations" to see how well the city can handle different situations. 
IBM is already looking for a more holistic view of systems, and new technologies like cognitive computing. New 3D technology allows various chip technologies to be stacked as layers on a single chip. For example, you could have computer on the bottom layer, flash non-volatile storage in middle layers, and networking at top layer. Connecting the layers is merely a matter of drilling holds and filling them with metal. The idea that compute is the center of the universe, with a mainframe server surrounded by input and output "peripheral" storage devices, is giving way to a more storage-centric model, where central storage repositories (or data lakes) are accessed by "peripheral" smartphones, tablets and variety of servers. For example, the IBM DB2 Accerlation Appliance acts as a storage-centric model that IBM z System mainframes can connect to, send data in, process complex database queries, and get the results 2000x faster. 
In another client example, IBM helped a bank in China to determine optimal placement of bank branches, based on public information of average salary levels of each neighborhood. CPU processors are also getting help from co-processor accelerators like GPU (Graphical Processing Unit) and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). Comparing a single IBM POWER8 server that is CAPI-attached to an IBM FlashSystem to a stack of x86 servers with internal SSD, the POWER8 solution connsumes 12x less rackspace, consumes 12x less electricity, and reduces per-user costs from $24/user for x86 down to $7.50/user on POWER8. 
While social media, mobile phones and the Internet of Things (IoT) generate a lot data. If you then factor the "context multiplier effect" of all the links, connections and cross-references, you quickly see that data is growing at incredible rates. Another issue is the difficulty to identify application inter-dependencies. Forecasting disruptive anamolies can be quite difficult. In one example, adminstrators received warning messages 65 minutes before a major outage, but they did not respond in time because they were unable to understand the full implications. Cognitive computing is different than the tabulating and programming paradigms of prior decades. It is focused on Natural Language Processing, citing evidence to base responsed, and the ability to learn and improve based on learning from experience. The IBM Watson group is working with Memorial Sloane Kettering to help oncology doctors with cancer patients. 
In an interesting demo, IBM Watson computer analyzed thousands of "TED Talk" videos, and was able to respond to search queries by playing a 30-second video clip that most closely address the search topic. Cognitive computing is also looking at "Neuro-Synaptic" chips that work very much like the neurons and synapses in the brain. I have seen some of this work already at the IBM Almaden Research Center in California. The general session ended with a Q&A panel with Dr. Subbanna, Frank De Gilio, and Bill Starke.
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This week at IBM Systems Technical University 2015 in Orlando Florida
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This week I am in beautiful Orlando, Florida for the [Systems Technical University]. Here are the sessions I will be speaking at:
It looks like a busy week!
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IBM Storage and the Beauty and Benefits of VVols
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This post was originally written as a guest post for VMware for VMworld 2015 conference. Read the full blog post [IBM Storage and the Beauty and Benefits of VVol]. The following is an exerpt: Back in 2012, I had mentioned that VMware was cooking up an exciting new feature called VVol, short for VMware vSphere Virtual Volume.
Officially, the VVol concept was still just a "technology preview" in 2012, to be fleshed out over the next few years through extensive collaboration between VMware and all the major players: IBM, HP, Dell, NetApp and EMC. In 2013 and 2014, IBM attended VMworld with live demonstrations of VVol support. VMware vSphere v6 was not yet available, but when it was, we assured them, IBM would be one of the first vendors with support! When vSphere v6 was finally made available earlier this year, [only four vendors support VVols on Day 1 of vSphere 6 GA]! Keeping true to its promises, IBM was indeed one of them. To understand why VVol is such a game-changer, you have to understand a major problem with VMware version 4 and version 5, namely their Virtual Machine File System, or [VMFS]. Here is a picture to help illustrate:  On the left, we see that VMFS datastore is a set of LUNs from the storage admin perspective, and a set of VMDK and related files from the vCenter admin perspective. If there was a storage-related problem, such as bandwidth performance or latency, how would the two admins communicate to perform troubleshooting? For many disk systems, it is not obvious which VMDK file sits on which LUN. There are also a variety of hardware capabilities that work at the LUN level, such as snapshots, clones or remote distance mirroring, and this would apply to all the VMDK files in the data store across the set of LUNs, which may not be what you want. There are two ways to address this in vSphere v4 and v5:
On the right side of the picture, using VMware v6, vCenter admins can now allocate VVols, which are mapped to specific "VVol Storage Containers" on specific storage systems. The storage admin knows exactly which VVol is in which container, so they can now communicate and collaborate on troubleshooting! The vSphere ESXi host communicates to storage arrays via a new "virtual LUN id" called a "Protocol Endpoint". This is to allow FCP, iSCSI and FCoE traffic to flow correctly through SAN or LAN switches. For NFS, the Protocol Endpoint represents a "virtual mount point", so that traffic can be routed through LAN switches correctly. Storage Policies can help determine which attributes or characteristics you want for your VVol. For example, you may want your VVol to be on a storage container that supports snapshots at the hardware level. The vCenter server can be aware of which storage arrays, and which storage containers in those arrays, through the VMware API for Storage Awareness, or VASA. Different storage manufactures can implement their VASA provider in different ways. IBM has opted to have a single VASA provider for all of its supported devices, so as to provide consistent client experience. When you purchase any VVol-supported storage system from IBM, you are entitled to download the IBM VASA provider at no additional charge! Initially, the IBM VASA provider will focus on IBM XIV Storage System, an ideal platform for your VVol needs. The XIV is a grid-based storage system, utilizing unique algorithms that give optimal data placement for every LUN or VVol created, and virtually guarantees there will be no hot spots. The XIV provides an impressive selection of Enterprise-class features, including snapshot, mirroring, thin provisioning, real-time compression, data-at-rest encryption, performance monitoring, multi-tenancy and data migration capabilities. With the XIV 11.6 firmware level, you can define up to 12,000 VVols across one or more storage containers in a single XIV system. For more details, see IBM Redbook [Enabling VMware Virtual Volumes with IBM XIV Storage System]. Let me give some real world examples from Paul Braren, an IBM XIV and FlashSystem Storage Technical Advisor from Connecticut, who has been working directly with clients over the past five years: 
In addition to XIV, all of IBM's Spectrum Virtualize products also support VVolLs, including SAN Volume Controller, Storwize including the Storwize in VersaStack, and FLashSystem V9000. I am not in San Francisco this week for VMworld, but lots of my IBM colleagues are, so please, stop by the IBM booth and tell them I sent you! |
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Next week - IBM Systems Technical Symposium in Istanbul Turkey
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Next week, I will return to Istanbul, Turkey to present at the [IBM Systems Technical Symposium], June 1-3 at the Hilton Bomonti hotel. (Frequent readers of my blog may remember that I had been to Istanbul for a similar conference last year. I arrived a day earlier to do some sightseeing, which I documented in my April 2014 blog post [Arrived Safely to Istanbul].) Like IBM Edge conference in Las Vegas earlier this month, this conference will not just be for Storage, but also include z Systems and POWER Systems content. Here are the sessions I will be presenting:
If you are attending next week in Istanbul, I will see you there!
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#IBMEdge 2015 Day 5 Sessions and Final thoughts
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The [IBM Edge2015 conference] is premiere conference covering Infrastructure Innovations for IBM System Storage, as well as sessions about z Systems and POWER Systems from our IBM Enterprise conference. Here is my quick recap of my fifth and final day, Friday, May 15, 2015.
At the Systems Technical University in Prague last month, I had submitted "IBM Spectrum Storage overview", while another speaker submitted "Storage Integration with OpenStack" and somehow the two topics got merged into a single title "IBM Spectrum Storage Integration with OpenStack" through perhaps some cut-and-paste error.
It turns out, it was a [cho I first had to explain the basics of OpenStack, how OpenStack manages pools of compute, storage and network resources. Then I explained specific details on Cinder, Swift and Manila interfaces. Finally, having laid the groundwork and reviewed the basics, I was able to explain how IBM's various storage offerings support these OpenStack interfaces. The feedback from the audience was that this should have been presented earlier in the week! Attendees mentioned that other presentations earlier in the week merely assumed the audience was already familiar with OpenStack concepts and terminology, which obviously is not the case. Cameron McAllister, IBM Systems Architect for Spectrum Scale, presented an overview how Storwize V7000 Unified can interconnect with IBM Spectrum Scale deployments. The secret is a feature in both called Active File Management (AFM). Shankar Balasubramanian, IBM Senior Technical Staff Member for Active File Management, went into details on how to set up Active File Management for a variety of use cases. For example, you could have Storwize V7000 Unified boxes in Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) locations replicating data to a centralized Spectrum Scale datacenter. This week was a great conference! I received great feedback overall from many attendees about all the quality presentations they enjoyed this week. Next year, Edge will be held in October 10-14, 2016. Save the date! Mark your calendars now!
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