Are you trying to find the right way to explain Storage Management concepts to your friends and family at the next holiday cocktail party?
One of my readers made the following request:
Hi Tony,
Having been around IBM Storage for some time, I was wondering if by chance you might recall an old recording about the "Hierarchical Sock Manager", I have a vague recollection, but I can't remember who did it or when, which means that I have no way to ask if anyone has a copy. This was an analogy comparing levels of storage of socks (i.e. footwear) to dresser drawers and boxes in the garage. Sound familiar?
I had mentioned this video in my 2007 blog post [Re-arranging the Sock Drawer], so I felt I needed to at least make an effort to track it down.
As it turns out, the IBM sales executive in the video, Charles "C.D." Larson, now works for another company (Hitachi Data Systems). Thanks to social media, I was able get in contact with him, and he sent me a copy of this 1989 video, and granted me permission to post it on YouTube.
To put it on YouTube, I had to convert the VOB file to something YouTube could understand. Since I run Linux, I was able to use the [ffmpeg] utility to do this. The result is now an [18-minute video], uploaded for all to enjoy.
The concepts discussed back then still apply today. Yes, we still have DFSMS for the mainframe mentioned in the video, but we also have extended these concepts to the Active Cloud Engine in the SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified, as well as the hieararchy management included in the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) Enterprise Edition (LTFS-EE) solutions.
Happy Winter Solstice, or whatever holiday you may choose to celebrate this season!
technorati tags: IBM, DFSMS, DFHSM, DFDSS, RACF, ISMF, ABARS, DFSMShsm, HSM, CD Larson, HDS, ffmpeg, YouTube, SONAS, Storwize+V7000+Unified, LTFS, LTFS-EE
Tags: 
active+cloud+engine
dfsms
ltfs
|
Are you trying to find the right way to explain Storage Management concepts to your friends and family at the next holiday cocktail party?
One of my readers made the following request:
Hi Tony,
Having been around IBM Storage for some time, I was wondering if by chance you might recall an old recording about the "Hierarchical Sock Manager", I have a vague recollection, but I can't remember who did it or when, which means that I have no way to ask if anyone has a copy. This was an analogy comparing levels of storage of socks (i.e. footwear) to dresser drawers and boxes in the garage. Sound familiar?
I had mentioned this video in my 2007 blog post [Re-arranging the Sock Drawer], so I felt I needed to at least make an effort to track it down.
As it turns out, the IBM sales executive in the video, Charles "C.D." Larson, now works for another company (Hitachi Data Systems). Thanks to social media, I was able get in contact with him, and he sent me a copy of this 1989 video, and granted me permission to post it on YouTube.
To put it on YouTube, I had to convert the VOB file to something YouTube could understand. Since I run Linux, I was able to use the [ffmpeg] utility to do this. The result is now an [18-minute video], uploaded for all to enjoy.
The concepts discussed back then still apply today. Yes, we still have DFSMS for the mainframe mentioned in the video, but we also have extended these concepts to the Active Cloud Engine in the SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified, as well as the hieararchy management included in the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) Enterprise Edition (LTFS-EE) solutions.
Happy Winter Solstice, or whatever holiday you may choose to celebrate this season!
technorati tags: IBM, DFSMS, DFHSM, DFDSS, RACF, ISMF, ABARS, DFSMShsm, HSM, CD Larson, HDS, ffmpeg, YouTube, SONAS, Storwize+V7000+Unified, LTFS, LTFS-EE
Tags: 
dfsms
active+cloud+engine
ltfs
|
This week I am in Orlando, Florida for the IBM Edge conference. Here is a recap of Day 3.
- Data Footprint Reduction: Understanding IBM Storage Efficiency Options
-
Earlier this year, I wrote a Web article titled [Data Footprint Reduction] which covered data deduplication and compression, and was asked to present this at IBM Edge. I have expanded it to include:
- Thin Provisioning
- Space-Efficient Point-in-Time copies
- Data Deduplication
- Compression
After I presented the basic concepts, Sanjay Bhikot, a Unix and Storage admin at RICOH, presented his real-world experiences with data deduplication using the IBM ProtecTIER and real-time compression Beta experience using the SAN Volume Controller (SVC).
- IBM Active Cloud Engine Implementation on IBM SONAS 1.3 and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified
John Sing (IBM) presented the latest enhancements in the v1.3.2 release of SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified.
- Introducing VMware vSphere Storage Features
-
Fellow blogger Stephen Foskett presented this session on VMware's storage features. This included VMware APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), VMware Array Storage Awareness (VASA), vCenter plug-ins, and a new concept he called "vVol" which de-multiplexes the "I/O Blender" that server hypervisors do by tagging individual requests to individual OS guests to provide added benefit. IBM is a leading reseller of VMware, so it makes sense that most of our storage meets all of Steve's requirements for recommendation.
- IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era
-
Last year, I presented this on the fourth day of the conference, and feedback we received from attendees was that this should have been presented sooner in the week, as it provides great context for the more detailed product presentations.
To address this concern, the IBM executives presented IBM strategy on Monday's keynote session, but allowed me to present this on Wednesday for several reasons:
- You may have missed the keynote session. For example, you may not have arrived in time to hear the executives speak due to weather or mechanical problems causing travel delays.
- You may have attended the keynote session, but want to hear it again. Maybe you were a bit hung-over, or just may have been overwhelmed with the size and scope of this event. I have read for strategic topics, audiences may have to hear the message five to seven times before they truly appreciate and understand it.
- You may want to ask questions, and explore the implications in more detail. While keynote sessions can reach a broader audience, the communication is very much uni-directional. With break-out sessions with a few hundred people, the venue is more intimate and can afford opportunties for information exchange.
This was well attended, so the plan worked!
- IBM SONAS and the Cloud Storage Taxonomy
-
The title of this session rolls off the tongue nicely, much like "James and the Giant Peach", "Harold and the Purple Crayon", or "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".
When people say they are interested in "Cloud Storage", what exactly do they mean. After discussions with hundreds of clients, IBM has worked out a "taxonomy" that identifies four distinct types of storage:
- Persistent storage
- Ephemeral storage
- Hosted storage
- Reference storage
In this session, I presented how IBM SONAS addresses all four of these categories, as well as other IBM storage products that can address specific categories in the taxonomy.
In the evening, the attendees at IBM Edge joined the attendees from Innovate2012 (focused on IBM Rational products) at SeaWorld, with BBQ dinner, rides, Shamu the whale show, and a concert featuring Foreigner!
technorati tags: IBM, Stephen Foskett, Sanjay Bhikot, Data Footprint Reduction, Compression, Deduplication, Space-Efficient, Point-in-time, RICOH, SVC, Storwize V7000, SONAS, Active Cloud Engine, Smarter Computing, Smarter Storage, Foreigner, SeaWorld, Innovate2012
Tags: 
stephen+foskett
svc
sonas
compression
seaworld
point-in-time
foreigner
storwize+v7000
deduplication
ricoh
innovate2012
data+footprint+reduction
sanjay+bhikot
active+cloud+engine
smarter+storage
ibm
space-efficient
smarter+computing
|
Continuing my coverage of the 30th annual [Data Center Conference]. Here is a recap of more of the Tuesday afternoon sessions:
- IBM CIOs and Storage
Barry Becker, IBM Manager of Global Strategic Outsourcing Enablement for Data Center Services, presented this session on Storage Infrastructure Optimization (SIO).
A bit of context might help. I started my career in DFHSM which moved data from disk to tape to reduce storage costs. Over the years, I wouuld visit clients, analyze their disk and tape environment, and provide a set of recommendations on how to run their operations better. In 2004, this was formalized into week-long "Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) Assessments", and I spent 18 months in the field training a group of folks on how to perform them. The IBM Global Technology Services team have taken a cross-brand approach, expanding this ILM approach to include evaluations of the application workloads and data types. These SIO studies take 3-4 weeks to complete.
Over the next decade, there will only be 50 percent more IT professionals than we have today, so new approaches will be needed for governance and automation to deal with the explosive growth of information.
SIO deals with both the demand and supply of data growth in five specific areas:
- Data reclamation, rationalization and planning
- Virtualization and tiering
- Backup, business continuity and disaster recovery
- Storage process and governance
- Archive, Retention and Compliance
The process involves gathering data and interview business, financial and technical stakeholders like storage administrators and application owners. The interviews take less than one hour per person.
Over the past two years, the SIO team has uncovered disturbing trends. A big part of the problem is that 70 percent of data stored on disk has not been accessed in the past 90 days, and is unlikely to be accessed at all in the near future, so would probably be better to store on lower cost storage tiers.
Storage Resource Management (SRM) is also a mess, with over 85 percent of clients having serious reporting issues. Even rudimentary "Showback" systems to report back what every individual, group or department were using resulted in significant improvement.
Archive is not universally implemented mostly because retention requirements are often misunderstood. Barry attributed this to lack of collaboration between storage IT personnel, compliance officers, and application owners. A "service catalog" that identifies specific storage and data types can help address many of these concerns.
The results were impressive. Clients that follow SIO recommendations save on average 20 to 25 percent after one year, and 50 percent after three to five years. Implementing storage virtualization averaged 22 percent lower CAPEX costs. Those that implemented a "service catalog" saved on average $1.9 million US dollars. Internally, IBM's own operations have saved $13 million dollars implementing these recommendations over the past three years.
- Reshaping Storage for Virtualization and Big Data
The two analysts presenting this topic acknowledged there is no downturn on the demand for storage. To address this, they recommend companies identify storage inefficiencies, develop better forecasting methodologies, implement ILM, and follow vendor management best practices during acquisition and outsourcing.
To deal with new challenges like virtualization and Big Data, companies must decide to keep, replace or supplement their SRM tools, and build a scalable infrastructure.
One suggestion to get upper management to accept new technologies like data deduplication, thin provisioning, and compression is to refer to them as "Green" technologies, as they help reduce energy costs as well. Thin provisioning can help drive up storage utilization to rates as high as you dare, typically 60 to 70 percent is what most people are comfortable with.
A poll of the audience found that top three initiatives for 2012 are to implement data deduplication, 10Gb Ethernet, and Solid-State drives (SSD).
The analysts explained that there are two different types of cloud storage. The first kind is storage "for" the cloud, used for cloud compute instances (aka Virtual Machines), such as Amazon EBS for EC2. The second kind is storage "as" the cloud, storage as a data service, such as Amazon S3, Azure Blob and AT&T Synaptic.
The analysts feel that cloud storage deployments will be mostly private clouds, bursting as needed to public cloud storage. This creates the need for a concept called "Cloud Storage Gateways" that manage this hybrid of some local storage and some remote storage. IBM's SONAS Active Cloud Engine provides long-distance caching in this manner. Other smaller startups include cTera, Nasuni, Panzura, Riverbed, StorSimple, and TwinStrata.
A variation of this are "storage gateways" for backup and archive providers as a staging area for data to be subsequently sent on to the remote location.
New projects like virtualization, Cloud computing and Big Data are giving companies a new opportunity to re-evaluate their strategies for storage, process and governance.
technorati tags: IBM, SIO, SRM, deduplication, 10GbE, SSD, Amazon, EBS, EC2, Azure, SONAS, Active Cloud Engine, Cloud Computing, virtualization, Big Data
Tags: 
amazon
srm
sonas
ssd
big+data
azure
active+cloud+engine
cloud+computing
virtualization
ebs
deduplication
10gbe
ibm
ec2
sio
|
Well, it's Tuesday, and you know what that means... IBM announcements!
In today's environment, clients expect more from their storage, and from their storage provider. The announcements span the gamut, from helping to use Business Analytics to analyze Big Data for trends, insights and patterns, to managing private, public and hybrid cloud environments, all with systems that are optimized for their particular workloads.
There are over a dozen different announcements, so I will split these up into separate posts. Here is part 1.
- IBM Scale Out Network Attach Storage (SONAS) R1.3
I have covered [IBM SONAS] for quite some time now. Based on IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS), this integrated system combines servers, storage and software into a fully functional scale-out NAS solution that support NFS, CIFS, FTP/SFTP, HTTP/HTTPS, and SCP protocols. IBM continues its technical leadership in the scale-out NAS marketplace with new hardware and software features.
The hardware adds new disk options, with 900GB SAS 15K RPM drives, and 3TB NL-SAS 7200 RPM drives. These come in 4U drawers of 60 drives each, six ranks of ten drives each. So, with the high-performance SAS drives that would be about 43TB usable capacity per drawer, and with the high-capacity NL-SAS drives about 144TB usable. You can have any mix of high-performance drawers and high-capacity drawers, up to 7200 drives, for a maximum usable capacity of 17PB usable (21PB for those who prefer it raw). This makes it the largest commercial scale-out NAS in the industry. This capacity can be made into one big file system, or divided up to 256 smaller file systems.
In addition to snapshots of each file system, you can divide the file system up into smaller tree branches and snapshot these independently as well. The tree branches are called fileset containers. Furthermore, you can now make writeable clones of individual files, which provides a space-efficient way to create copies for testing, training or whatever.
Performance is improved in many areas. The interface nodes now can support a second dual-port 10GbE, and replication performance is improved by 10x.
SONAS supports access-based enumeration, which means that if there are 100 different subdirectories, but you only have authority to access five of them, then that's all you see, those five directories. You don't even know the other 95 directories exist.
I saved the coolest feature for last, it is called Active Cloud Engine™ that offers both local and global file management. Locally, Active Cloud Engine placement rules to decide what type of disk a new file should be placed on. Management rules that will move the files from one disk type to another, or even migrates the data to tape or other externally-managed storage! A high-speed scan engine can rip through 10 million files per node, to identify files that need to be moved, backed up or expired.
Globally, Active Cloud Engine makes the global namespace truly global, allowing the file system to span multiple geographic locations. Built-in intelligence moves individual files to where they are closest to the users that use them most. This includes an intelligent push-over-WAN write cache, on-demand pull-from-WAN cache for reads, and will even pre-fetch subsets of files.
No other scale-out NAS solution from any other storage vendor offers this amazing and awesome capability!
-
- IBM® Storwize® V7000
Last year, we introduced the [IBM Storwize V7000], a midrange disk system with block-level access via FCP and iSCSI protocols. The 2U-high control enclosure held two cannister nodes, a 12-drive or 24-drive bay, and a pair of power-supply/battery UPS modules. The controller could attach up to nine expansion enclosures for more capacity, as well as virtualize other storage systems. This has been one of our most successful products ever, selling over 100PB in the past 12 months to over 2,500 delighted customers.
The 12-drive enclosure now supports both 2TB and 3TB NL-SAS drives. The 24-drive enclosures support 200/300/400GB Solid-State Drives (SSD), 146 and 300GB 15K RPM drives, 300/450/600GB 10K RPM drives, and a new 1TB NL-SAS drive option. For those who want to set up "Flash-and-Stash" in a single 2U drawer, now you can combine SSD and NL-SAS in the 24-drive enclosure! This is the perfect platform for IBM's Easy Tier sub-LUN automated tiering. IBM's Easy Tier is substantially more powerful and easier to use than EMC's FAST-VP or HDS's Dynamic Tiering.
Last week, at Oracle OpenWorld, there were various vendors hawking their DRAM/SSD-only disk systems, including my friends at Texas Memory Systems, Pure Storage, and Violin Memory Systems. When people came to the IBM booth to ask what IBM offers, I explained that both the IBM DS8000 and the Storwize V7000 can be outfitted in this manner. With the Storwize V7000, you can buy as much or little SSD as you like. You do not have to buy these drives in groups of 8 or 16 at a time.
The Storwize V7000 is the sister product of the IBM SAN Volume Controller, so you can replicate between one and the other. I see two use cases for this. First, you might have a SVC at a primary location, and decide to replicate just the subset of mission-critical production data to a remote location, and use the Storwize V7000 as the target device. Secondly, you could have three remote or branch offices (ROBO) that replicate to a centralized data center SAN Volume Controller.
Lastly, like the SVC, the Storwize V7000 now supports clustering so that you can now combine multiple control enclosures together to make a single system.
-
- IBM® Storwize® V7000 Unified
Do you remember how IBM combined the best of SAN Volume Controller, XIV and DS8000 RAID into the Storwize V7000? Well, IBM did it again, combining the best of the Storwize V7000 with the common NAS software base developed for SONAS into the new "Storwize V7000 Unified".
You can upgrade your block-only Storwize V7000 into a file-and-block "Storwize V7000 Unified" storage system. This is a 6U-high system, consisting of a pair of 2U-high file modules connected to a standard 2U-high control enclosure. Like the block-only version, the control enclosure can attach up to nine expansion enclosures, as well as all the same support to virtualize external disk systems. The file modules combine the management node, interface node and storage node functionality that SONAS R1.3 offers.
What exactly does that mean for you? In addition to FCP and iSCSI for block-level LUNs, you can carve out file systems that support NFS, CIFS, FTP/SFTP, HTTP/HTTPS, and SCP protocols. All the same support as SONAS for anti-virus checking, access-based enumeration, integrated TSM backup and HSM functionality to migrate data to tape, NDMP backup support for other backup software, and Active Cloud Engine's local file management are all included!
-
- IBM SAN Volume Controller V6.3
The SAN Volume Controller [SVC] increases its stretched cluster to distances up to 300km. This is 3x further than EMC's VPLEX offering. This allows identical copies of data to be kept identical in both locations, and allows for Live Partition Mobility or VMware vMotion to move workloads seamlessly from one data center to another. Combining two data centers with an SVC stretch cluster is often referred to as "Data Center Federation".
The SVC also introduces a low-bandwidth option for Global Mirror. We actually borrowed this concept from our XIV disk system. Normally, SVC's Global Mirror will consume all the bandwidth it can to keep the destination copy of the data within a few seconds of currency behind the source copy. But do you always need to be that current? Can you afford the bandwidth requirements needed to keep up with that? If you answered "No!" to either of these, then the low-bandwidth option is you. Basically, a FlashCopy is done on the source copy, this copy is then sent over to the destination, and a FlashCopy is made of that. The process is then repeated on a scheduled basis, like every four hours. This greatly reduces the amount of bandwidth required, and for many workloads, having currency in hours, rather than seconds, is good enough.
-
-
I am very excited about all these announcements! It is a good time to be working for IBM, and look forward to sharing these exciting enhancements with clients at the Tucson EBC.
technorati tags: IBM, SONAS, GPFS, SAS, NL-SAS, Active Cloud Engine, Global+Namespace, Storwize+V7000, V7000U, V7000 Unified, block-only, block-and-file, SVC, SSD, Easy Tier, Flash-and-Stash, Texas Memory Systems, Pure Storage, Violin Memory
Tags: 
sonas
flash-and-stash
global+namespace
svc
ibm
v7000u
storwize+v7000
ssd
block-and-file
texas+memory+systems
v7000+unified
violin+memory
gpfs
pure+storage
nl-sas
active+cloud+engine
sas
easy+tier
block-only
|