Continuing my coverage of the IBM Systems Technical University in Orlando, here are the sessions that I presented or attended on Day 1 (Monday).

Storage Keynote Session

This was a three-part kick-off keynote session. Mo McCullough, IBM Systems Lab Services and Training, coordinated the storage track of this event and provided some details on how to use the website portal and smartphone app.

Clod Barrera, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Strategist for Storage, presented the future of the storage industry, including trends in storage media technologies, data plane and control plane level enhancements, and broader system-wide considerations.

Tony Pearson, IBM Master Inventor and Senior Software Engineer, wrapped up the session with an overview of IBM's Smarter Storage strategy.

IBM Software Defined Storage Overview, Concepts and IBM SDS Family

Brian Sherman, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Client Technical Specialist for Advanced Technical Skills in the Americas, provided an overview of Software Defined Environments and how storage fits in that view, especially IBM's Spectrum Storage family.

IBM Cloud Storage Options

Tony Pearson presented on IBM's various Cloud Storage options.

IBM Cloud Storage Options from Tony Pearson

While my original focus was on-premise storage solutions for use by Data Centers and Cloud Service providers, there was a lot of interest in IBM's storage available from SoftLayer and other Cloud providers. During this week, IBM announced its acquisition of CleverSafe, which I had not incorporated into the deck.

What's New in IBM Spectrum Protect v7.1.3

Tricia Jiang, IBM Technical Enablement Specialist for IBM Spectrum Storage, presented the latest release of IBM Spectrum Protect. That's an inside joke--this is the first release, but since it was based on IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) v7.1.2, it was easier just to continue the same numbering scheme.

The main features of v7.1.3 is the new in-line dedupe capability, the new "deduplication containers" concept, and support for backing up to object storage either on-premise or in the cloud

IBM Spectrum Scale v4.1 Overview

Glen Corneau, IBM Client Technical Specialist for Power Systems, presented the latest features of IBM Spectrum Scale, formerly known as IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS). It was interesting to hear this from a Power Systems perspective, as IBM Spectrum Scale supports both AIX and Linux on POWER.

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.

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmechu, Clod Barrera, Brian Sherman, Mo McCullough, Tricia Jiang, Glen Corneau, Smarter Storage, Cloud Storage, Spectrum Storage, Spectrum Protect, Spectrum Scale, SDS, Software Defined Storage, AIX, Linux POWER, TSM, GPFS

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.

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmtechu, Seshadri Subbanna, Frank DeGilio, Bill Starke, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, IoT, context multiplier effect, Rio Brazil, weather prediction, GPU, FPGA, POWER8, cognitive computing, TED talk, Watson

This week I am in beautiful Orlando, Florida for the [Systems Technical University].

Here are the sessions I will be speaking at:

Day	Time	Topic
Monday	10:15am	Opening Session - Storage
	01:45am	IBM's Cloud Storage Options
	05:30pm	Solution Center Reception
Tuesday	11:30am	Software Defined Storage - Why? What? How?
	03:15pm	The Pendulum Swings Back - Understanding Converged and Hyperconverged Environments
	04:30pm	New Generation of Storage Tiering: Less Management, Lower Cost, and Increased Performance
	05:30pm	Solution Center Reception
Wednesday	09:00am	What is Big Data? Architectures and Use Cases
	01:45pm	Data Footprint Reduction - Understanding IBM Storage Efficiency Options
	03:15pm	IBM Spectrum Virtualize - SVC, Storwize and FlashSystem V9000
	06:00pm	Event Night
Thursday	10:15am	IBM Spectrum Scale and Elastic Storage Server
	01:45am	IBM Spectrum Scale for File and Object storage
	01:45am	IBM Storage Integration with OpenStack
	05:30pm	Storage! Meet the Experts
Friday	10:15am	IBM Spectrum Virtualize - SVC, Storwize and FlashSystem V9000

It looks like a busy week!

technorati tags: IBM, Systems, STU, Orlando, Conference

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.

• June 2012: [Day 3 of IBM Edge breakout sessions"], Steve Foskett was excited over solving the "I/O Blender" problem.
   
• October 2012: [IBM Storage VMware Integration: Get ready for VM Volumes], I went into more detail of what to expect.

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:

• The first method is to have fewer VMDK files per datastore. By defining smaller datastores with just a few VMs associated with each, you can then have a closer mapping of VMDK files to datastore LUNs. Unfortunately, VMware ESXi has a 256 limit on the number of different datastores that can be attached, so this method has its own limitations.
   
• The other method around this is "Raw Device Mapping" (RDM) which allowed Virtual Machines to be attached to specific LUNs. Some of the earlier restrictions and limitations for RDMs have since been relaxed over the releases, but your disk system still needs to expose the SCSI identifiers of each LUN to make this work, and additional setup is required if you plan to cluster two or more systems together, such as for a Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS).

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!

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:

Date	Time	Title
Monday	11:30	Software Defined Storage: IBM Vision and Strategy
	14:45	Software Defined Storage: Technical Overview
Tuesday	11:30	IBM's Cloud Storage Options
	16:00	What is Big Data? Architectures and Practical use Cases
Wednesday	10:15	IBM Spectrum Storage Integration with OpenStack
	14:45	New Generation of Storage Tiering: Less Management, Lower Costs and Increased Performance

If you are attending next week in Istanbul, I will see you there!

technorati tags: IBM, Systems Technical Symposium, Istanbul Turkey, Software Defined Storage, Cloud Storage, Big Data, Spectrum Storage, OpenStack, Storage Tiering

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.

IBM Spectrum Storage™ Integration with OpenStack

See the [entire deck] on SlideShare!

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 [chocolate-and-peanut-butter] situation! Combining the two topics worked out well.

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.

Storwize V7000 Unified with Spectrum Scale (formerly Elastic Storage)

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!

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmedge, Edge2015, System Storage, IBM Expert Network, SlideShare, OpenStack, OpenStack Cinder, OpenStack Manila, OpenStack Swift, Cameron McAllister, Shankar Balasubramanian, Spectrum Scale, Elastic Storage, Storwize V7000 Unified

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 various sessions on the fourth day, Wednesday, May 14, 2015.

Object Storage and Its Use with OpenStack

Rich Swain, IBM Storage Team Lead Engineer, presented this in three sections. First, he covered the advantages of object storage versus block or file-based storage. This includes the idea that each object comes with rich metadata that can be searched.

Rich then went to explain the specifics of OpenStack Swift, an open standard for object storage. A simple three-tier hierarchy of account, container, and object.

Rich wrapped up his talk with an overview of Spectrum Scale and Elastic Storage Server offerings from IBM.

Driving Timely Business Insights on the IBM Data Engine for Analytics

Linton Ward, IBM Distinguished Engineer, POWER Systems Big Data and Analytics, presented Big Data analytics from a POWER Systems perspective. He gave an overview of Big Data analytics, and how IBM POWER Systems provide advantages to analyze data quickly.

Linton had helped me with my Big Data presentation, so I decided to participate in his presentation during his section on Spectrum Scale, but no questions came up that he couldn't handle on his own.

The Pendulum Swings Back -- Understanding Converged and Hyper-converged Environments

 

See the [entire deck] on SlideShare!

This presentation has an interesting back-story. At a client briefing, I was asked to explain the difference between "Converged" and "Hyper-converged" systems, which I did with the analogy of a pendulum. I used the whiteboard, and then later made it into a single chart.

 

At the far left, I start with mainframe systems of the early 1950s that had internal storage. As the pendulum swings to the middle, I discuss the added benefits of external storage, from RAID protection to centralized management.

To the far right, the pendulum swings over to networked storage, from NAS to SAN attached devices for flash, disk and tape. This offers excellent advantages, including greater host connectivity, and greater distances supported to help with things like disaster recovery.

Here is where the pendulum swings back. IBM introduced PureSystems that combined servers, storage and switches into a single rack configuration. Other vendors had similar offerings, such as VCE vBlock, Flexpod from NetApp and Cisco, and Oracle Exadata.

Lately, the pendulum has swung fully back to internal storage, with storage-rich servers running specialized software. There are two kinds. First there are pre-built systems like Nutanix, Simplivity or EVO:Rail which are x86 based server systems with built-in flash and disk. Second, there is software that can be deployed on your own choice of hardware, such as IBM Spectrum Scale FPO or VMware VSAN.

 

So, what I presented on a single slide before, has been fleshed out into a full blown hour-long presentation!

Common Performance Pitfalls and the Value of Latency

Erik Eyberg and Woody Hutsell from IBM FlashSystem team presented the differences between MB/sec, IOPS and latency. IBM FlashSystem is the world's fastest storage with incredibly low latency that is two to five times faster than most major competitors in the all-flash arrays category.

Accelerate with OpenStack: Flexible and Rapid Deployed Orchestration for Your Cloud

Ohad Atia, IBM Systems Development Manager for XIV Cloud Storage Solutions, presented how the OpenStack Cinder interface works, then explained the new IBM Spectrum Accelerate, based on the software from XIV.

Ronen Kat, IBM Research Manager and Cloud Storage Research Scientist, gave a live demo on how easy it is to deploy Spectrum Accelerate in a public cloud. First, you request three or more bare metal servers with specific amounts of RAM and spinning disk. Optionally, Spectrum Accelerate can support a single Solid State Driver (SSD) as read cache in each server. You can either install VMware ESXi 5.5 yourself, or have the Cloud provider do it for you. This step can be done quickly to initiate, but then the Cloud provider might take 24-72 hours depending on how busy they are.

Like cooking shows, where they take out an already prepared item from the oven or refrigerator to save time, Ronen started with four servers that were already configured above from IBM SoftLayer. The second step was to deploy the Spectrum Accelerate code, supplied as an OVF file that VMware can use to start up each virtual machine.

The third step is to connect all of the IP addresses, since Spectrum Accelerate uses TCP/IP for everything from iSCSI host attachment to inter-node communication.

Steps 2 and 3 took less than 5 minutes! I was impressed how simple and easy it was. Even when you factor in the few days it might take IBM SoftLayer to provide you access to the servers, it is still way faster than ordering your own on-premise storage.

A Powerful Virtualization Solutions Delivered by the VMware and IBM Storage Partnership

Impressed with their last presentation, I stayed in the room for this one. Ohad Atia presented IBM Spectrum Control Base edition, and how this provides VMware VVol support through its VASA 2.0 provider code.

IBM Spectrum Control Base edition is entitled to all IBM owners of XIV, Spectrum Accelerate, DS8000 and Storwize family products to provide a consistent VMware interface experience.

Storage Meet the Experts, hosted by Maurice McCullough

For those not familiar with Edge, Maurice "Mo" McCullough is the lead organizer of the storage portion of Technical Edge, as well as various Systems Technical University events held throughout the year.

On the Thursday evening of Edge every year, Mo hosts this popular session for everyone to ask their questions to the experts at the front of the room. There were similar sessions for z Systems and POWER Systems experts in the adjoining rooms.

Joining me on the storage expert panel were Clod Barrera, Shelly Howrigon, Mike Griese, Barry Whyte, Jim Blue, Sven Oehme, and several others. Generally, there isn't a question we don't have an answer to, but if you stump the panel, we will take you out to dinner. The audience was ready to take that challenge!

After Storage Meet the Experts, I had dinner and went to see [Frank: The Man, The Music] musical show at the Venetian hotel. Bob Anderson impersonates Frank Sinatra, singing a popular selection of Frank's many recordings, intermixed with highlights from his television and film career. Bob was accompanied by a 32-piece orchestra that brought the music of the era back to life.

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmedge, Edge2015, System Storage, IBM Expert Network, SlideShare, Rich Swain, OpenStack, OpenStack Swift, , OpenStack Cinder Object Store, Spectrum Scale, Elastic Storage Server, Linton Ward, POWER Systems, Big Data, Analytics, Erik Eyberg, Woody Hutsell, FlashSystem, All-Flash Array, Pendulum Swings Back, Converged Systems, Hyper-converged Systems, FPO, Nutanix, Simplivity, EVO:Rail, VMware VSAN, Ohad Atia, Ronen Kat, XIV, Spectrum Accelerate, Spectrum Control, VMware, VASA, VVol, Clod Barrera, Shelly Howrigon, Mike Griese, Barry Whyte, Jim Blue, Sven Oehme, Maurice McCullough, Frank Sinatra, Bob Anderson, Venetian Hotel

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 a quick recap of my sessions I presented on the third day, Wednesday, May 13, 2015.

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

 

See the [entire deck] on SlideShare!

I organized this into three sections. In the first section, I talked about single-system optimization by moving extents within single volumes on a single system. For IBM, I focused on Easy Tier on DS8000 as an example of this methodology, and all the enhancements IBM introduced since its introduction, including Easy Tier Server, Easy Tear Application API, and Easy Tear Heat Map Transfer utility.

 

In the second section, I covered data center optimization using Spectrum Control Storage Analytics Engine. This involves moving entire volumes/LUNs from one storage system to another. At IBM's Boulder Facility, this methodology saved $17 million dollars per year, roughly 50 percent reduction of its storage budget.

The third section covered the global optimization with Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Hierarchical storage Management (HSM) and Active File Management (AFM) features in Spectrum Scale. This provides a seamless movement of data from flash to disk to tape media. Spectrum Scale has been around in one form or another since 1998, and over 200 of the TOP500 supercomputers are using it today.

IBM Spectrum Scale (Elastic Storage) Offerings

 

See the [entire deck] on SlideShare!

At the IBM Edge conference last year,IBM announced "Codename: Elastic Storage." IBM had to rename its General Parallel File System (GPFS) because it is not just a file system for two very good reasons:

 

• Spectrum Scale can support volumes, files and objects.
• Spectrum Scale provides active data management, including Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Hierarchical storage Management (HSM) and Active File Management (AFM) features.

This year, IBM now has several offerings: Spectrum Scale software, Elastic Storage Server pre-built system, Storwize V7000 Unified pre-built system, and Elastic Storage on IBM Managed Cloud services.

IBM Winning Edge - CASE Training

IBM Winning Edge is focused on Business Partner and IBM seller training. Part of this is CASE (Cloud and Analytics Sales Enablement). I co-presented "Systems Infrastructure Offerings for Cloud" with Elan Freedberg.

For Wednesday evening, I had dinner with Dr. Steve Hetzler, IBM Almaden Research, to discuss his paper on "touch rate" that Clod Barrera mentioned at the Monday kickoff.

Later that evening, I was invited to enjoy some champagne and cigars with Eric Herzog, Jamie Thomas and other IBM Executives. I brought along fellow blogger Elisabeth Stahl, who recently was promoted to Distinguished Engineer!

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmedge, Edge2015, System Storage, IBM Expert Network, SlideShare, Easy Tier, SVC, Storwize, FlashSystem V9000, Spectrum Control, Spectrum Virtualize, SmartCloud VSC, Spectrum Scale, ILM, HSM, AFM, CASE Training, Steve Hetzler, Eric Herzog, Jamie Thomas, Elisabeth Stahl

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. Check out this short two-minute [YouTube video on IBM Edge2015].

Here is my quick recap of the sessions that I either presented myself, or presented by others that I found interesting, on Tuesday, May 12, 2015.

What Is Big Data? Architectures and Practical Use Cases

See the [entire deck] on SlideShare!

Not everyone understands the storage implications of Big Data analytics. I started this session explaining the basics of Big Data, and how it changes the entire information pipeline, from storage administrators to data scientists to empowered employees making decisions and taking actions.

I then gave some real-life use cases, from Vestas using Big Data to shorted a 3-week decision process down to 15 minutes, to University of Ontario using Big Data to save the lives of new-born babies.

I then provided a broad overview of IBM's Analytics platform, including IBM InfoSphere BigInsights, BigSQL and Platform Symphony. IBM is a major backer of the Open Data Platform to help provide standards-based choices in the analytics marketplace.

I wrapped up the session with IBM Spectrum Scale™ which has a Hadoop Connector which allows Map/Reduce programs to run unchanged against Spectrum Scale data. This eliminates the waste of ingesting data from other sources into an HDFS file system, then discarding the data after the analytics processing completes.

IBM Smarter Storage Strategy

See the [entire deck] on SlideShare!

At past events, I normally present this on the first day, to provide context for all other presentations later in the week. However, this time, Ken Keverian presented IBM's Corporate strategy on the Tuesday keynote general session, so the event coordinators scheduled my session afterward. I was able to explain how IBM's Smarter Storage strategy fits hand-in-glove IBM's larger Corporate strategy.

As with all IBM strategies, there were three parts. First, IBM is helping clients deal with data growth, resulting from everything from the Internet of Things to Big Data analytics. IBM offers the market leading Real-time Compression capability, for example, to help reduce the amount of capacity consumed.

Second, IBM cannot forget its support of traditional "Systems of Record" applications, like ERP, SCM and CRM transactional workloads. IBM is helping clients deal with business pressures to balance performance versus cost across a variety of storage media, from the world's fastest non-volatile flash storage, IBM FlashSystem, to the least expensive options with tape.

Third, IBM strongly feels the IT industry is shifting to Cloud deployments, including private, public and hybrid clouds. IBM is helping clients with this transition, with support for Software Defined Environments from OpenStack, VMware and Microsoft. IBM ranks #1 in Software Defined Storage with over 40 percent marketshare.

Royal Caribbean Cruise Line's Success with IBM FlashSystem

This was a part IBM, part client testimonial session. Joe Rendace, IBM Technical Flash Channel Manager, and Barry Whyte, fellow IBM Master Inventor and IBM ATS for Storage Virtualization, provided IBM's point of view on Flash technology. Last year, IBM shipped more Flash capacity than the next two closest competitors combined!

Jorge L. González, Enterprise SAN & Storage Architect for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line (RCCL) presented his company's success using IBM's FlashSystem products.

Archive Strategies in the Software-Defined Data Center

Jon Toigo, fellow author and blogger, Managing Principal Toigo Partners International and long-time friend presented this lively topic. Here is a great quote from his presentation:

"Moving data intelligently across different storage tiers (and into archives) is a lot like using a claw machine to get your crying kid a toy at the Chuck E. Cheese!

I can always rely on Jon to provide a unique viewpoint on the latest strategies and technologies. He never disappoints.

IBM Edge Special Events

For Tuesday evening, I went to see the world-famous [Penn & Teller] perform their unique form of magic and comedy show.

For the past 40 years, Penn & Teller have performed magic together, and watching them, up close and personal from just a few dozen feet away on stage, was truly amazing!

technorati tags: IBM, #ibmedge, Edge2015, System Storage, IBM Expert Network, SlideShare, Big Data, IBM Analytics, IBM BigInsights, IBM BigSQL, Open Data Platform, Hadoop, HDFS, Platform Symphony, Spectrum Scale, Smarter Storage Strategy, FlashSystem, RCCL, Royal Caribbean, Jorge Gonzales, Joseph Rendace, Barry Whyte, Penn Teller