This week I was aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California! This was a business event organized by [Key Info Systems], a valued IBM Business Partner. Key Info resells IBM servers, storage and switches.

The Queen Mary retired in 1967, and has been converted into a hotel and events venue. The locals just parked their car and walked on board, but I got to stay Tuesday through Thursday in one of the cabins. It was long and narrow, with round windows! There were four dials for the bathtub: Cold Salt, Hot Fresh, Cold Fresh, and Hot Salt.

Stepping on the boat was like walking back in time through history! If you decide to go see it, check out the [Art Deco bar at the front of the Promenade deck. The ship is still in the water, but is permanently docked. It is sectioned off to prevent the ocean waves from affecting it, so we did not have the nauseous moving back and forth normally associated with cruise ships.

(It is with a bit of irony that we are on the Queen Mary just days after the tragedy of the [Costa Concordia], the largest Italian cruise ship that ran aground near Isola de Giglio. The captain will have to explain how he [fell into a lifeboat] before he had a chance to wait for everyone else to get safely off the shipwreck. He was certainly no [Captain Sulley]! I am thankful that most of the 4,200 people survived the incident.)

Executive Welcome

Lief Morin, Founder and Chief Executive for Key Info Systems, kicked off the meeting with highlights of 2011 successes. I have known Lief for years, as Key Info comes to the Tucson EBC on a frequent basis. This event was designed to give his sellers an update of what is the latest for each product line, and what to look forward to in the next 12-18 months.

Power Systems

My colleague Pat O'Rourke from Austin EBC presented [IBM Power Systems], from the smallest [POWER-based blade servers for BladeCenter] to the largest [Power 795 server]. When it comes to UNIX servers, IBM is [kickin' butt and takin' names], leaving HP and Oracle/Sun to fend for scraps.

Vision Solutions

The next speaker was from Vision Solutions that provides High Availability solutions for IBM i on Power Systems. In 2010, their company nearly doubled in size with the acquisition of Double-Take, which provides data replication for x86 servers running Windows, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V and other hypervisors. The capabilities of Double-Take sounded similar to what IBM offers with [Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack] and [Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments].

Dinner at Sir Winston's

Rather than take the "Ghosts and Legends" tour, I opted for dinner at the Queen Mary's signature restaurant, Sir Winston's. This is a fancy place, so dress accordingly. If you want the Raspberry soufflé, order it early as it takes 30 minutes to prepare!

System Storage

I presented on a variety of storage topics:

• Storage Strategy
• [DS8000 Disk System], with focus on DS8800 and the R6.2 microcode release
• [XIV Storage System], with focus on the new Gen3 hardware models and 11.0 microcode release
• [Scale-Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS)], with focus on R1.3 that we announced last October
• [Tape Storage Systems], with focus on the new TS1140 and the [Linear Tape File System (LTFS)]
• [Storwize V7000], including the new Storwize V7000 Unified configuration

Storage is an important part of the Key Info Systems revenue stream, so I was glad to have lots of questions and interactions from the audience.

Murder Mystery Dinner

The acting troupe from [Dinner Detective] put on quite the show for us! With all that is going on in the world, it is good to laugh out loud every now and then.

In other murder mystery dinners I have participated in, each person is assigned a "character" and given a script of what to say and when to say it. This was different, we got to pick our own characters. I chose "Doctor Watson", from the Sherlock Holmes series. Several attendees thought it was a double meaning with [IBM Watson], the computer that figured out the clues on Jeopardy! television game show, and has since been [put to work at Wellpoint] to help out the Healthcare industry.

After the "murder" happened, two actors portraying policemen selected members of the audience to answer questions. We didn't get a script of what to say, so everyone had to "ad lib". I was singled out as a suspect, and had fun playing along in character. One of the attendees afterwards said he was impressed that I was able to fabricate such amusing and elaborate responses to their personal and embarassing questions. As a public speaker for IBM, I have had a lot of practice thinking quickly on my feet.

Fibre Channel and Ethernet Switches

The next two speakers gave us an update on Fibre Channel and Ethernet switches, and their thoughts on the inevitability of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). One of the exciting new developments is the [Brocade Network Subscription] which creates a flexible pay-per-use Ethernet port rental model for customers. This is especially timely given the Financial Accounting Standards Board proposed [FASB Change 13] that affects operating leases in the balance sheet.

With the Brocade Network Subscription, you pay monthly for the ports you are using. Need more ports, Brocade will install the added gear. Use fewer ports, Brocade will take the equipment back. There is no term endpoint or residual value like tradtional leasing, so when you are done using the equipment, give it back any time. This is ideal for companies that may need to have a lot of Ethernet ports for the next 2-3 years, but then plan to taper down, and don't want to get stuck with a long-term commitment or capital depreciation.

VMware

The last speaker was from VMware. IBM is the #1 reseller of VMware, and VMware commands an impressive 81 percent marketshare in the x86 virtualization space. The speaker presented VMware's strategy going forward, which aligns well with IBM's own strategy, to help companies Cloud-enable their existing IT infrastructures, in preparation for eventual moves to Hybrid or Public cloud deployments.

Special thanks to Lief Morin for sponsoring this event, Raquel Hernandez from IBM for coordinating my travel, and Pete, Christina and Kendrell from Key Info Systems for organizing the activities!

technorati tags: IBM, Queen Mary, Key Info, Art Deco, Costa Concordia, Lief Morin, Pat O'Rourke, Power 795, DS8000, XIV, SONAS, Tape, TS1140, LTFS, Storwize V7000, Unified storage, FCoE, BNS, VMware, Cloud Computing

Tags:  cloud+computing sonas ibm key+info costa+concordia queen+mary unified+storage fcoe ts1140 pat+o'rourke ltfs art+deco vmware ds8000 tape xiv bns lief+morin storwize+v7000 power+795

Every January, we look back into the past as well as look into the future for trends to watch for the upcoming year. Ray Lucchesi of Silverton Consulting has a great post looking back at the [Top 10 storage technologies over the last decade]. I am glad to see that IBM has been involved with and instrumental in all ten technologies.

Looking into the future, Mark Cox of eChannel has an article [Storage Trends to Watch in 2011], based on his interviews with two fellow IBM executives: Steve Wojtowecz, VP of storage software development, and Clod Barrera, distinguished engineer and CTO for storage. Let's review the four key trends:

Cloud Storage and Cloud Computing

No question: Cloud Computing will be the battleground of the IT industry this decade. I am amused by the latest spate of Microsoft commercials where problems are solved with someone saying "...to the cloud". Riding on the coat tails of this is "Cloud Storage", the ability to store data across an Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as 10GbE Ethernet, in support of Cloud Computing applications. Cloud Storage protocols in the running include NFS, CIFS, iSCSI and FCoE. Mark writes "..vendors who aren't investing in cloud storage solutions will fall behind the curve."

Economic Downturn forces Innovation

The old British adage applies: "Necessity is the mother of invention." The status quo won't do. In these difficult economic times, IT departments are running on constrained budgets and staff. This forces people to evaluate innovative technologies for storage efficiency like real-time compression and data deduplication to make better use of what they currently have. It also is forcing people to take a "good enough" attitude, instead of paying premium prices for best-of-breed they don't really need and can't really afford.

IT Service Management

Companies are getting away from managing individual pieces of IT kit, and are focusing instead on the delivery of information, from the magnetic surface of disk and tape media, to the eyes and ears of the end users. The deployment mix of private, hybrid and public clouds makes this even more important to measure and manage IT as a set of services that are delivered to the business. IT Service Management software can be the glue, helping companies implement ITIL v3 best practices and management disciplines.

Smarter Data Placement

A recent survey by "The Info Pro" analysts indicates that "managing storage growth" is considered more critical than "managing storage costs" or "managing storage complexity". This tells me that companies are willing to spend a bit extra to deploy a tiered information infrastructure if it will help them manage storage growth, which typically ranges around 40 to 60 percent per year. While I have discussed the concept of "Information Lifecycle Management" (ILM), for the past four years on this blog, I am glad to see it has gone mainstream, helped in part with automated storage tiering features like IBM System Storage Easy Tier feature on the IBM DS8000, SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000 disk systems. Not all data is created equal, so the smart placement of data, based on the business value of the information contained, makes a lot of sense.

These trends are influencing what solutions the various different vendors will offer, and will influence what companies purchase and deploy.

technorati tags: IBM, Steve Wojtowecz, Clod Barrera, Mark Cox, Cloud Computing, Cloud, Storage, NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, FCoE, real-time compression, deduplication, IT Service Management, Easy Tier, DS8000, SVC, Storwize V7000

Tags:  it+service+management mark+cox clod+barrera ibm ds8000 iscsi real-time+compression easy+tier deduplication cloud+computing cifs +storage nfs svc cloud fcoe steve+wojtowecz storwize+v7000

Continuing my coverage of the [IBM Storage Innovation Executive Summit], this is my second in a series of blog posts on this event.

Optimizing Storage Infrastructure for Growth and Innovation

This session started off with my former boss, Brian Truskowski, IBM General Manager of System Storage and Networking.

We've come a long way in storage. In 1973, the "Winchester Drive" was named after the famous Winchester 3030 rifle. The disk drive was planning to have two 30MB platters, hence the name. When it finally launched, it would have two 35MB platters, for a total raw capacity of 70MB.

Today, IBM announced the verison 6.2 of SAN Volume Controller with support for 10GbE iSCSI. Since 2003, IBM has sold over 30,000 SAN Volume Controllers. An SVC cluster can now manage up to 32PB of disk storage.

IBM also announced new 4TB tape drive (TS1140), LTFS Library Edition, the TS3500 Library Connector, improved TS7600 and TS7700 virtual tape libraries, enhanced Information Archive for email, files and eDiscovery, new Storwize V7000 hardware, new Storwize Rapid Application bundles, new firmware for SONAS and DS8000 disk systems, and Real-Time Compression support for EMC disk systems. I plan to cover each of these in follow-on posts, but if you can't wait, here are [links to all the announcements].

Customer Testimonial - CenterPoint Energy

"CenterPoint is transforming its business from being an energy distribution company that uses technology, to a technology company that distributes energy."
-- Dr. Steve Pratt, CTO of CenterPoint Energy

The next speaker was Dr. Steve Pratt is CTO of [CenterPoint Energy]. CenterPoint is 110 years old (older than IBM!) energy company that is involved in electricity, gasoline distribution, and natural gas pipeline. CenterPoint serves Houston, Texas (the fourth largest city in the USA) and surrounding area.

CenterPoint are transforming to a Smart Grid involving smart meters, and this requires the best IT infrastructure you can buy, including IBM DS8000, XIV and SAN Volume Controller disk systems, IBM Smart Analytics System, Stream Analytics, IBM Virtual Tape Library, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center.

Dr. Pratt has seen the transition of information over the years:

1. Data Structure, deciding how to code data to record it in a structured manner
2. Information Reporting, reporting to upper management what happened
3. Intelligence Aggregation, finding patterns and insight from the data
4. Predictive Analytics, monitoring real-time data to take pro-active steps
5. Autonomics, where automation and predictive analysis allows the system to manage itself

What does the transition to a Smart Grid mean for their storage environment? They will go from 80,000 meter reads, to 230,400,000 reads per day. Ingestion of this will go from MB/day to GB/sec. Reporting will transition to real-time analytics.

Dr. Pratt prefers to avoid trade-offs. Don't lose something to get something else. He also feels that language of the IT department can help. For example, he uses "Factor" like 25x rather than percent reduction (96 percent reduced). He feels this communicates the actual results more effectively.

Today's smarter consumers are driving the need for smarter technologies. Individual consumers and small businesses can make use of intelligent meters to help reduce their energy costs. Everything from smart cars to smart grids will need real-time analytics to deal with the millions of events that occur every day.

IBM's Data Protection and Retention Story

Brian Truskowski came back to provide the latest IBM messaging for Data Protection and Retention (DP&R). The key themes were:

1. Stop storing so much
2. Store more with what's on the floor
3. Move data to the right place

IBM announced today that the IBM Real-Time Compression Appliances now support EMC gear, such as EMC Celerra. While some of the EMC equipment have built-in compression features, these often come at a cost of performance degradation. Instead, the IBM Real-Time compression can offer improved performance as well as 3x to 5x reduction in storage capacity.

OVer 70 percent of data on disk has not be accessed in the last 90 days. IBM Easy Tier on the DS8700 and DS8800 now support FC-to-SATA automated tiering.

IBM is projecting that backup and archive storage will grow at over 50 percent per year. To help address this, IBM is launching a new "Storage Infrastructure Optimization" assessment. All attendees at today's summit are eligible for a free assessment.

Analytics are increasing the value of information, and making it more accessible to the average knowledge worker. The cost of losing data, as well as the effort spent searching for information, has skyrocketed. Users have grown to expect 100 percent uptime availability.

An analysis of IT environments found that only 55 percent was spent on revenue-producing workloads. The remaining 45 percent was spent on Data Protection and Retenion. That means that for every IT dollar spent on projects to generate revenue, you are spending another 90 cents to protect it. Imagine spending 90 percent of your house payments for homeowners' insurance, or 90 percent of your car's purchase price for car insurance.

IBM has organized its solutions into three categories:

1. Hyper-Efficient Backup and Recovery
2. Continuous Data Availability
3. Smart Archiving

What would it mean to your business if you could shift some of the money spent on DP&R over to revenue-producing projects instead? That was the teaser question posed at the end of these morning sessions for us to discuss during lunch.

Tags:  steve+pratt sonas ts1140 nyc iscsi ibm storwize+v7000 10gbe svc centerpoint brian+truskowski

Yes, it's Tuesday, and that means more IBM Announcements! A lot was announced today, so I have selected an eclectic mix for your enjoyment.

Microsoft Windows support on IBM Mainframes

Last year's announcement of the new IBM zEnterprise included the zEnterprise BladeCenter Extention (zBX) which could run POWER7 and x86 operating systems, but managed by the mainframe's overall Unified Resource Manager. Initially, this was intended for AIX and Linux-x86, but today, IBM [announced a statement of general direction to support Microsoft Windows] on the zBX extension by end of this year. Of course, the standard disclaimer applies: All statements regarding IBM's plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice. Any reliance on these statements of general direction is at the relying party's sole risk and will not create liability or obligation for IBM.

New 15K RPM drives for IBM Storwize V7000

Last October, when IBM introduced the Storwize V7000, it offered both large (3.5 inch) and small form factor (2.5 inch) drives. Unfortunately, a few people were upset that there were no 15K RPM drives for the small form factor models. There were SSD and 10K RPM drives, but nothing in between. Today, IBM [announced new 15K RPM drives of 146GB capacity] have been qualified for both the controller and expansion drawers.

New RVU licensing for IBM Tivoli products

IBM [announced it is changing over to this new RVU licensing model], from the previous PVU license, based on processor value units. What is an RVU? An RVU is a unit of measure by which the program can be licensed. RVU Proofs of Entitlement (PoE) are based on the number of units of a specific resource used or managed by the program. This makes sense, resource management software should be charged by the amount of resources you manage, not the size of the server the software runs on. This change also enables running on server virtualization and live movement of VM guest images from one type of host machine to another.

If you are contemplating a visit to an IBM [Executive Briefing Center], then April and May is a great time to come to Tucson. The weather is ideal here. The cold snap appears to be over, and spring is in the air!

technorati tags: IBM, zEnterprise, zBX, Microsoft, Windows, Storwize V7000, RVU, Tivoli

Tags:  zbx storwize+v7000 zenterprise tivoli microsoft windows ibm rvu

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

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

Today, I am in New York visiting clients. The weather is a lot nicer than I expected. Here is a picture of the Hudson River through some trees with leaves turning color. Something we don't see in Tucson! Our cactus and pine trees stay green year-round!

The announcements today center around the IBM PureSystems family of expert integrated systems. The PureFlex is based on Flex System components. The Flex System chassis is 10U high that hold 14 bays, consisting of 7 rows by 2 columns. Computer and Storage nodes fit in the front, and switches, fans and power supplies in the back. Here is a quick recap:

IBM Flex System Compute Nodes

The x220 Compute Node is a single-bay low-power 2-socket x86 server. The x440 Compute Node is a powerful double-bay (1 row, 2 columns). The p260 Compute Node is a single-bay server based on the latest POWER7+ CPU processor.

IBM Flex System Expansion Nodes

Do you remember those old movies where a motorcycle would have a sidecar that could hold another passenger, or extra cargo? IBM introduces "Expansion Nodes" for the x200 series single-bay Compute nodes. The idea here is that in a single column, you have one bay for the Compute node, and then on the side in the next bay (same column) you have an Expanions node. There are two choices:

• Storage Expansion Node allows you to have eight additional drives
• PCIe Expansion Node allows to to have four PCIe cards, which could include the SSD-based PCIe cards from IBM's recent acquisition, Texas Memory Systems.

There are times where one or two internal drives are just not enough storage for a single server, and these expanion nodes could just be the perfect solution for some use cases.

IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node

I saved the best for last! The Flex System V7000 Storage Node is basically the IBM Storwize V7000 repackaged to fit into the Flex System chassis. This means that in the front of the chassis, the Flex System V7000 takes up four bays (2 rows by 2 columns). In the back of the chassis are the power supplies, fans and switches.

The new Flex System V7000 supports everything the Storwize V7000 does except the upgrade to "Unified" through file modules. For those who want to have Storwize V7000 Unified in their PureFlex systems, IBM will continue to offer the outside-the-chassis original Storwize V7000 that can have two file modules added for NFS, CIFS, HTTPS, FTP and SCP protocol support.

IBM Flex System Converged Network Switch

The Converged Network Switch provide Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) directly from the chassis. This eliminates the need for a separate "Top-of-Rack" switch, and allows the new Flex System V7000 Storage Node to externally virtualize FCoE-based disk arrays.

Patterns of Expertise for Infrastructure

The original patterns of expertise focused on the PureApplication Systems. Now IBM has added some for the Infrastructure on PureFlex systems.

IBM has sold over 1,000 Flex System and PureFlex systems, across 40 different countries around the world, since their introduction a few months ago in April! These latest enhancements will help solidify IBM's industry leadership,

technorati tags: IBM, PureFlex, Storwize V7000, Flex System V7000, PureSystems, PureApplication, Patters of Expertise

Tags:  puresystems patters+of+expertise ibm storwize+v7000 pureflex flex+system+v7000 pureapplication

This week, I am in Melbourne, Australia for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium]. Here is a recap of Day 1:

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v4.2.2 Overview and Update

This was an updated version of the presentation I gave last July in Orlando, Florida (see my post [IBM Storage University - Day 1]). Since it might have been awhile since the Australian audience had heard about the latest and greatest for Tivoli Storage Productivity Center, I decided to cover the enhancements of 4.2.0, 4.2.1 and 4.2.1 combined.

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is an important part of IBM's "Storage Hypervisor" solution, combining a single pane of glass for management with non-disruptive storage virtualization with SVC and Storwize V7000.

IBM Storwize V7000 and SVC integration with VMware

Alexi Giral from IBM Sydney presented this session on how Storwize V7000 and SVC serve as the "Storage Hypervisor" for VMware server virtualization environments. The focus was on the FCP and iSCSI block-only access modes of these devices, although one could use IBM Storwize V7000 Unified to provide NFS file-level access to VMware. Alexi covered both VMware Vsphere v4 and v5, as there are a few differences.

IBM Storwize V7000 and SVC supports thin provisioning, VMware's VAAI interface, VMware's Site Recovery Manager, and provides a storage management plug-in to Vmware's vCenter. The SVC has extended the distance for split-cluster configurations that support VMware's vMotion live partition mobility and High Availiability (HA) up to 300km using active DWDM.

Want best practices for configuring SVC or Storwize V7000 with VMware? IBM has published the [VMware Proof of Practice and Performance Guidelines on the SAN Volume Controller] redbook, and the [VMware Multipathing with the SAN Volume Controller] redpaper.

Tape Storage Reinvented: What's New and Exciting in the Tape World?

Special thanks to Jim Fisher and Jim Karp for providing me this presentation, videos and supporting materials for me to present this session. I gave this as the first break-out session on Tuesday, and then repeated as the last break-out session on Thursday. Several of the attendees in the audience mocked my title, with taunts like "What could be NEW or EXCITING about tape?" I covered four key areas:

• The new TS1140 tape drive, including the corresponding model-JC tape that holds 4TB native (12 TB compressed!).
• The enhanced TS3500 with the Tape Library Connector Shuttle. I had a video that shows how tapes can be sent from one TS3500 tape library string to another.
• The new Linear Tape File System (LTFS), both the single drive edition and the library edition
• The new 3592-C07 FICON controller for our mainframe clients

By the end of the session, the folks that taunted me were honestly impressed that they learned a few things, and had not realized so much has been developed recently in the world of tape.

This week is also hosting [The Presidents Cup] golf tournament at the [Royal Melbourne Golf Club] featuring 24 of the top golfers, including Tiger Woods, as well as [celebrities like Michael Jordan].

technorati tags: IBM, Storage, Symposium, Melbourne, Australia, TPC, Storage Hypervisor, Storwize V7000, SVC, VAAI, vMotion, DWDM, TS1140, 3592-E07, TS3500, LTFS, Emmy, 3592-C07, FICON, The Presidents Cup, Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan

Tags:  vmotion 3592-e07 melbourne michael+jordan storwize+v7000 australia storage+hypervisor ltfs vaai tpc tiger+woods ficon storage symposium ibm emmy ts1140 3592-c07 royal+melbourne ts3500 dwdm presidents+cup svc

Continuing my coverage of the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium], I thought I would start with some photos. I took these with cell phone, and without realizing how much it would cost, uploaded them to Flickr at international data roaming rates. Oops!

Here are some of the banners used at the conference. Each break-out session room was outfitted with a "Presentation Briefcase" that had everything a speaker might need, including power plug adapters and dry-erase markers for the whiteboard. What a clever idea!

Here is a recap of the last and final day 3:

Understanding IBM's Storage Encryption Options

Special thanks to Jack Arnold for providing me his deck for this presentation. I presented IBM's leadership in encryption standards, including the [OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol] that allows many software and hardware vendors to interoperate. IBM offers the IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM v2) for Windows, Linux, AIX and Solaris operating systems, and the IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager (v1.1) for z/OS.

Encrypting data at rest can be done several ways, by the application at the host server, in a SAN-based switch, or at the storage system itself. I presented how IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, the IBM SAN32B-E4 SAN switch, and various disk and tape devices accomplish this level of protection.

NAS @ IBM

Rich Swain, IBM Field Technical Sales Specialist for NAS solutions, provided an overview of IBM's NAS strategy and the three products: Scale-Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS), Storwize V7000 Unified, and N series.

IBM System Networking Convergence CEE/DCB/FCoE

Mike Easterly, IBM Global Field Marketing Manager for IBM System Networking, presented on Network convergence. He wants to emphasize that "Convergence is not just FCoE!" rather it is bringing together FCoE with iSCSI, CIFS, NFS and other Ethernet-based protocols. In his view, "All roads lead to Ethernet!"

There are a lot new standards that didn't exist a few years ago, such as PCI-SIG's Single Root I/O Virtualization [SR-IOV], Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator [VEPA], and [VN-Tag], Data Center Bridging [DCB], Layer-2 Multipath [L2MP], and my favorite: Transparent Interconnect of Lots of Links [TRILL].

Last year, IBM acquired Blade Network Technologies (BNT), which was the company that made IBM BladeCenter's Advanced Management Module (AMM) and BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager (BOFM). BNT also makes Ethernet switches, so it has been merged with IBM's System Storage team, forming the IBM System Storage and Networking team. Most of today's 10GbE is either fiber optic, Direct Attach Copper (DAC) that supports up to 8.5 meter length cables, or 10GBASE-T which provides longer distances of twisted pair. IBM's DS3500 uses 10GBASE-T for its 10GbE iSCSI support.

Last month, IBM announced 40GbE! I missed that one. The IT industry also expects to deliver 100GbE by 2013. For now, these will be used as up-links between other switches, as most servers don't have the capacity to pump this much data through their buses. With 40GbE and 100GbE, it would be hard to ignore Ethernet as the common network standard to drive convergence.

Fibre Channel, such as FCP and FICON, are still the dominant storage networking technology, but this is expected to peak around 2013 and start declining thereafter in favor of iSCSI, NAS and FCoE technologies. Already the enhancements like "Priority-based Flow Control" made to Ethernet to support FCoE have also helped out iSCSI and NAS deployments as well.

The iSCSI protocol is being used with Microsoft Exchange, PXE Boot, Server virtualization hypervisors like VMware and Hyper-V, as well as large Database and OLTP. IBM's SVC, Storwize V7000, XIV, DS5000, DS3500 and N series all support iSCSI.

IBM's [RackSwitch] family of products can help offload traffic at $500 per port, compared to traditional $2000 per port for IBM SAN32B or Cisco Nexus5000 converged top-of-rack switches.

IBM's System Networking strategy has two parts. For Ethernet, offer its own IBM System Networking product line as well as continue its partnership with Juniper Networks. For Fibre Channel and FCoE, continue strategic partnerships with Brocade and Cisco. IBM will lead the industry, help drive open standards to adopt Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), provide flexibility and validate data center networking solutions that work end-to-end.

Well, that marks the end of this week in Auckland, New Zealand. I am off now to Melbourne, Australia for the [IBM System Storage Technical Symposium] next week.

technorati tags: IBM, EKM, TKLM, SKLM, SONAS, SAN32B-E4, Storwize+V7000, CEE, DCB, FCoE, iSCSI, NAS, CIFS, NFS, Ethernet, PCI-SIG, SR-IOV, VEPA, VN-Tag, DCB, L2MP, TRILL, BNT, BOFM, AMM, DAC, 10GBASE-T, DS3500, 40GbE, , FCP, FICON, PXE, SVC, Cisco, Nexus5000, RackSwitch

Tags:  l2mp fcp rackswitch bnt fcoe dac vn-tag nexus5000 san32b-e4 nas vepa sklm sonas dcb ethernet sr-iov pci-sig trill ficon ibm ds3500 storwize+v7000 10gbase-t cee amm 40gbe pxe iscsi tklm nfs ekm svc bofm cisco cifs

Continuing my coverage of the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium], here is a recap of Day 2:

XIV: Implementation, Migration and Optimization

Special thanks to Anthony Vandewerdt, who sent me his version of this presentation that he planned to present in Australia next week. I "smartened it up" (or whatever the appropriate phrase is the opposite of "dumbed it down") for the technical audience.

• Recovery procedures for single and double drive failures. A double drive failure on an XIV typically involves less recovery effort than traditional RAID5-based disk systems, and in many cases results in no data loss whatsoever. I provided details on this in my blog post [Double Drive Failure Debunked: XIV Two Years Later], so no need to repeat myself here.
• Replacing the Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) non-disruptively. To support either single-phase and triple-phase power sources, the XIV uses an ATS to take two independent power feeds, and distribute this out to the three Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).
• Built-in Migration capability to copy data off other disk systems over to the XIV.
• Configuring Synchronous and Asynchronous mirroring using either the Fibre Channel or Internet Protocol ports.
• Optimizing the use of XIV for VMware, AIX and other operating systems.

The IBM XIV Storage System is quite popular in New Zealand, with four times more boxes sold per capita than the other countries in the Asia Pacific region. I covered both the A14 model as well as the new Gen3 model.

Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) Update: Lessons, Planning, Solutions

My colleague Vic Peltz from IBM Almaden presented on lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and various other natural disasters. Unlike tradtional presentations the focus on technology, Vic took a different approach, focusing on people and procedures. I was here last year when the earthquake hit Christchurch on the south island, so I was well aware that BC/DR was top of mind for many of the attendees. Throughout this week, I have felt tremors, and many of the locals told me that these happen all the time.

Introduction to IBM Storwize V7000

I knew I was in trouble when the request for me to present Storwize sounded like something from [Mission Impossible]:

"Good morning, Mr. Pearson. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves presenting Storwize V7000 in Auckland, New Zealand. You may also present the Storwize V7000 Unified, but it is essential that you not cover the SAN Volume Controller or SONAS products from which they are based upon, as you will not have enough time. The audience is very technical, so be careful. As always, should any questions come up that you cannot answer, the conference coordinators will disavow all knowledge of your actions, nor reimburse your laundry charges. This message will self-destruct in five seconds."

Well, I accomplished my mission in 75 minutes. I was able to cover the block-only version of the IBM Storwize V7000, with support for clustering the control enclosures, expansion drawers and external storage virtualization. I then spent a few minutes on the block-and-file Storwize V7000 Unified, which adds support for CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, FTP and SCP protocols through two new "file modules", with integrated support for backup and anti-virus checking. I covered both IBM Easy Tier for sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-State Drives (SSD) and spinning disk, as well as Active Cloud Engine for file-based movement between disk and tape.

SAN Best Practices

Rich Swain presented IBM's best practices for deploying a Storage Area Network. This was an [updated version of the one from Orlando] by Jim Blue from IBM's SAN Central team.

technorati tags: IBM, System x, Storage Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, XIV, BC/DR, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Storwize V7000, V7000 Unified, SAN, best practices

Tags:  v7000+unified disaster+recovery xiv system+x business+continuity aucklan bc+dr new+zealand storage+symposium best+practices ibm storwize+v7000 san