For most of us in the United States, it is cold out there, so you better "bundle up!"

Today, IBM announces the [IBM Storwize Rapid Application Storage] bundle, an integrated solution that improves storage efficiency and application availability. It comes in two offerings:

Basic

The "Basic" offering includes a single IBM Storwize V7000 controller enclosure, and three year warranty package that includes software licenses for IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager (FCM) and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Disk - Midrange Edition (MRE). Planning, configuration and testing services for the software are included and can be performed by either IBM or an IBM Business Partner.

Standard

The "Standard" offering allows for multiple IBM Storwize V7000 enclosures, provides three year warranty package for the FCM and MRE software, and includes implementation services for both the hardware and the software components. These services can be performed by IBM or an IBM Business Partner.

Why bundle? Here are the key advantages for these offerings:

• Increased storage utilization! First introduced in 2003, IBM SAN Volume Controller is able to improve storage utilization by 30 percent through virtualization and thin provisioning. IBM Storwize V7000 carries on this tradition. Space-efficient FlashCopy is included in this bundle at no additional charge and can reduce the amount of storage normally required for snapshots by 75 percent or more. IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager can manage these FlashCopy targets easily.
• Improved storage administrator productivity! The new IBM Storwize V7000 Graphical User Interface can help improve administrator productivity up to 2 times compared to other midrange disk solutions. The IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Disk - Midrange Edition provides real-time performance monitoring for faster analysis time.
• Increased application performance! This bundle includes the "Easy Tier" feature at no additional charge. Easy Tier is IBM's implementation of sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-State Drives (SSD) and spinning disk. Easy Tier can help improve application throughput up to 3 times, and improve response time up to 60 percent. Easy Tier can help meet or exceed application performance levels with its internal "hot spot" analytics.
• Increased application availability! IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager provides easy integration with existing applications like SAP, Microsoft Exchange, IBM DB2, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server. Reduce application downtime to just seconds with backups and restores using FlashCopy. The built-in online migration feature, included at no additional charge, allows you to seamlessly migrate data from your old disk to the new IBM Storwize V7000.
• Significantly reduced implementation time! This bundle will help you cut implementation time in half, with little or no impact to storage administrator staff. This will help you realize your return on investment (ROI) much sooner.

To learn more, check out the IBM [landing page].

technorati tags: IBM, bundle, Storwize V7000, Tivoli, FlashCopy Manager, Productivity Center, TPC, MRE, SSD, Easy Tier, SAP, Exchange, DB2, Oracle, Microsoft, SQL Server

Continuing my coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], Tuesday afternoon I presented "Choosing the Right Storage for your Server Virtualization". In 2008 and 2009, I attended this conference as a blogger only, but this time I was also a presenter.

The conference asked vendors to condense their presentations down to 20 minutes. I am sure this was inspired by the popular 18-minute lectures from the [TED conference] or perhaps the [Pecha Kucha] night gatherings in Japan where each presenter speaks while showing 20 slides for 20 seconds each, This forces the presenters to focus on their key points and not fill the time slot with unnecessary marketing fluff. This also allows more vendors to have a chance to pitch their point of view.

Here are my charts on SlideShare.net:

I am thankful I had a great turn-out, with nearly every seat taken.

technorati tags: IBM, Storwize V7000, VMware, Hyper-V, PowerVM, zLPAR, Xen, OracleVM, Citrix, KVM, Redhat, RHEV, SVC, TED.com, Pecha Kucha

Continuing my post-week coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], Wendesday afternoon included a mix of sessions that covered storage and servers.

Enabling 5x Storage Efficiency

Steve Kenniston, who now works for IBM from recent acquisition of Storwize Inc, presented IBM's new Real-Time Compression appliance. There are two appliances, one handles 1 GbE networks, and the other supports mixed 1GbE/10GbE connectivity. Files are compressed in real-time with no impact to performance, and in some cases can improve performance because there is less data written to back-end NAS devices. The appliance is not limited to IBM's N series and NetApp, but is vendor-agnostic. IBM is qualifying the solution with other NAS devices in the market. The compression can compress up to 80 percent, providing a 5x storage efficiency.

Townhall - Storage

The townhall was a Q&A session to ask the analysts their thoughts on Storage. Here I will present the answer from the analyst, and then my own commentary.

Are there any gotchas deploying Automated Storage Tiering?

Analyst: you need to fully understand your workload before investing any money into expensive Solid-State Drives (SSD).

Commentary: IBM offers Easy Tier for the IBM DS8000, SAN Volume Controller, and Storwize V7000 disk systems. Before buying any SSD, these systems will measure the workload activity and IBM offers the Storage Tier Advisory Tool (STAT) that can help identify how much SSD will benefit each workload. If you don't have these specific storage devices, IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Disk can help identify disk performance to determine if SSD is cost-justified.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just have separate storage arrays for different performance levels?

Analyst: No, because that would complicate BC/DR planning, as many storage devices do not coordinate consistency group processing from one array to another.

Commentary: IBM DS8000, SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000 disk systems support consistency groups across storage arrays, for those customers that want to take advantage of lower cost disk tiers on separate lower cost storage devices.

Can storage virtualization play a role in private cloud deployments?

Analyst: Yes, by definition, but today's storage virtualization products don't work with public cloud storage providers. None of the major public cloud providers use storage virtualization.

Commentary: IBM uses storage virtualization for its public cloud offerings, but the question was about private cloud deployments. IBM CloudBurst integrated private cloud stack supports the IBM SAN Volume Controller which makes it easy for storage to be provisioned in the self-service catalog.

Can you suggest one thing we can do Monday when we get back to the office?

Analyst: Create a team to develop a storage strategy and plan, based on input from your end-users.

Commentary: Put IBM on your short list for your next disk, tape or storage software purchase decision. Visit [ibm.com/storage] to re-discover all of IBM's storage offerings.

What is the future of Fibre Channel?

Analyst 1: Fibre Channel is still growing, will go from 8Gbps to 16Gbps, the transition to Ethernet is slow, so FC will remain the dominant protocol through year 2014. Analyst 2: Fibre Channel will still be around, but NAS, iSCSI and FCoE are all growing at a faster pace. Fibre Channel will only be dominant in the largest of data centers.

Commentary: Ask a vague question, get a vague answer. Fibre Channel will still be around for the next five years. However, SAN administrators might want to investigate Ethernet-based approaches like NAS, iSCSI and FCoE where appropriate, and start beefing up their Ethernet skills.

Will Linux become the Next UNIX?

Linux in your datacenter is inevitable. In the past, Linux was limited to x86 architectures, and UNIX operating systems ran on specialized CPU architectures: IBM AIX on POWER7, Solaris on SPARC, HP-UX on PA-RISC and Itanium, and IBM z/OS on System z Architecture, to name a few. But today, Linux now runs on many of these other CPU chipsets as well.

Two common workloads, Web/App serving and DBMS, are shifting from UNIX to Linux. Linux Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) is approaching the levels of UNIX. Linux has been a mixed blessing for UNIX vendors, with x86 server margins shrinking, but the high-margin UNIX market has shrunk 25 percent in the past three years.

UNIX vendors must make the "mainframe argument" that their flavor of UNIX is more resilient than any OS that runs on Intel or AMD x86 chipsets. In 2008, Sun Solaris was the number #1 UNIX, but today, it is IBM AIX with 40 percent marketshare. Meanwhile HP has focused on extending its Windows/x86 lead with a partnership with Microsoft.

The analyst asks "Are the three UNIX vendors in it for the long haul, or are they planning graceful exits?" The four options for each vendor are:

• Milk it as it declines
• Accelerate the decline by focusing elsewhere
• Impede the market to protect margins
• Re-energize UNIX base through added value

Here is the analyst's view on each UNIX vendor.

IBM AIX now owns 40 percent marketshare of the UNIX market. While the POWER7 chipset supports multiple operating systems, IBM has not been able to get an ecosystem to adopt Linux-on-POWER. The "Other" includes z/OS, IBM i, and other x86-based OS.

HP has multi-OS Itanium from Intel, but is moving to Multi-OS blades instead. Their "x86 plus HP-UX" strategy is a two-pronged attack against IBM AIX and z/OS. Intel Nehalem chipset is approaching the RAS of Itanium, making the "mainframe argument" more difficult for HP-UX.

Before Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, Oracle was focused on Linux as a UNIX replacement. After the acquisition, they now claim to support Linux and Solaris equally. They are now focused on trying to protect their rapidly declining install base by keeping IBM and HP out. They will work hard to differentiate Solaris as having "secret sauce" that is not in Linux. They will continue to compete head-on against Red Hat Linux.

An interactive poll of the audience indicated that the most strategic Linux/UNIX platform over the next next five years was Red Hat Linux. This beat out AIX, Solaris and HP-UX, as well as all of the other distributions of Linux.

The rooms emptied quickly after the last session, as everyone wanted to get to the "Hospitality Suites".

technorati tags: IBM, Steve Kenniston, Real-Time Compression, LSC29, NAS, Easy Tier, DS8000, Storwize V7000, iSCSI, FCoE, AIX, Oracle, Solaris, HP, HP-UX, RedHat, Linux

Continuing my post-week coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], Thursday morning had some interesting sessions for those that did not leave town last night.

Interactive Session Results

In addition to the [Profile of Data Center 2010] that identifies the demographics of this year's registrants, the morning started with highlights of the interactive polls during the week.

External or Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization

The analyst presented his views on the overall External/Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization marketplace. He started with the key selling points.

• Avoid vendor lock-in. Unlike the IBM SAN Volume Controller, many of the other storage virtualization products result in vendor lock-in.
• Leverage existing back-end capacity. Limited to what back-end storage devices are supported.
• Simplify and unify management of storage. Yes, mostly.
• Lower storage costs. Unlike the IBM SAN Volume Controller, many using other storage virtualization discover an increase in total storage costs.
• Migration tools. Yes, as advertised.
• Consolidation/Transition. Yes, over time.
• Better functionality. Potentially.

Shortly after several vendors started selling external/heterogeneous storage virtualization solutions, either as software or pre-installed appliances, major storage vendors that were caught with their pants down immediately started calling everything internally as also "storage virtualization" to buy some time and increase confusion.

While the analyst agreed that storage virtualization simplifies the view of storage from the host server side, it can complicate the management of storage on the storage end. This often comes up at the Tucson Briefing Center. I explain this as the difference between manual and automatic transmission cars. My father was a car mechanic, and since he is the sole driver and sole mechanic, he prefers manual transmission cars, easier to work on. However, rental car companies, such as Hertz or Avis, prefer automatic transmission cars. This might require more skills on behalf of their mechanics, but greatly simplifies the experience for those driving.

The analyst offered his views on specific use cases:

• Data Migration. The analyst feels that external virtualization serves as one of the best tools for data migration. But what about tech refresh of the storage virtualization devices themselves? Unlike IBM SAN Volume Controller, which allows non-disruptive upgrades of the nodes themselves, some of the other solutions might make such upgrades difficult.
• Consolidation/Transition. External virtualization can also be helpful, depending on how aggressive the schedule for consolidation/transition is performed.
• Improved Functionality/Usability. IBM SAN Volume Controller is a good example, an unexpected benefit. Features like thin provisioning, automated storage tiering, and so on, can be added to existing storage equipment.

The analyst mentioned that there were different types of solutions. The first category were those that support both internal storage and external storage virtualization, like the HDS USP-V or IBM Storwize V7000. He indicated that roughly 40 percent of HDS USP-V are licensed for virtualization. The second category were those that support external virtualization only, such as IBM SAN Volume Controller, HP Lefthand and SVSP, and so on. The third category were software-only Virtual Guest images that could provide storage virtualization capabilities.

The analyst mentioned EMC's failed product Invista, which sold less than 500 units over the past five years. The low penetration for external virtualization, estimated between 2-5 percent, could be explained from the bad taste that left in everyone considering their options. However, the analyst predicts that by 2015, external virtualization will reach double digit marketshare.

Having a feel for the demographics of the registrants, and specific interactive polling in each meeting, provides a great view on who is interested in what topic, and some insight into their fears and motivations.

technorati tags: IBM, ITIL, storage growth, unstructured data, external, storage virtualization, SVC, Storwize V7000, HDS, USP-V, EMC, Invista, HP, Lefthand, SVSP

Continuing my coverage of the 30th annual [Data Center Conference]. Here is a recap of the Monday afternoon sessions:

IBM Watson and your Data Center

Steve Sams, IBM VP of Site and Facilities Services, cleverly used IBM Watson as a way to explain how analytics can be used to help manage your data center. Sadly, most of the people at my table missed the connection between IBM Watson and Analytics. How does answering a single trivia question in under three seconds relate to the ongoing operations of a data center? If you were similarly confused, take a peak at my series of IBM Watson blog posts:

• [IBM Watson: What's in that one Terabyte?]
• [IBM Watson: Tucson Watch Event]
• [IBM Watson: Business Intelligence, Data Retrieval and Text Mining]
• [IBM Watson: How to build your own Watson Jr. in your Basement]

Devising a Cloud Computing Strategy

The analyst who presented this topic was probably the fastest-speaking Texan I have met. He covered various aspects of Cloud Computing that people need to consider. Why hasn't Cloud taken off sooner? The analyst feels that Cloud Computing wasn't ready for us, and we weren't ready for Cloud Computing. The fundamentals of Cloud Computing have not changed, but we as a society have. Now that many end users are comfortable consuming public cloud resources, from Facebook to Twitter to Gmail, they are beginning to ask for similar from their corporate IT.

• Legal issues - see this hour-long video, [Cloud Law & Order], which discusses legal issues related to Cloud Computing.
• Employee staffing - need to re-tool and re-train IT employees to start thinking of their IT as a service provider internally.
• Hybrid Cloud - rather than struggle choosing between private and public cloud methodologies, consider a combination of both.

University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Cracks Code on Data Growth

Often times, the hour is split, 30 minutes of the sponsor talking about various products, followed by 30 minutes of the client giving a user experience. Instead, I decided to let the client speak for 45 minutes, and then I moderated the Q&A for the remaining 15 minutes. This revised format seemed to be well-received!

University of Rochester is in New York, about 60 miles east of Buffalo, and 90 miles from Toronto across Lake Ontario. Six years ago, Rick Haverty joined URMC as the Director of Infrastructure services, managing 130 of the 300 IT personnel at the Medical Center. I met Rick back in May, when he presented at the IBM [Storage Innovation Executive Summit] in New York City.

URMC has DS8000, DS5000, XIV, SONAS, Storwize V7000 and is in the process of deploying Storwize V7000 Unified. He presented how he has used these for continuous operations and high availability, while controlling storage growth and costs.

The Q&A was lively, focusing on how his team manages 1PB of disk storage with just four storage administrators, his choice of a "Vendor Neutral Archive" (VNA), and his experiences with integration.

This was a great afternoon, and I was glad to get all my speaking gigs done early in the week. I would like to thank Rick Haverty of URMC for doing a great job presenting this afternoon!

technorati tags: IBM, Steve Sams, Watson, Analytics, Cloud Computing, Hybrid Cloud, University of Rochester, Medical Center, URMC, Rick Haverty, SONAS, Storwize V7000, XIV, DS8000, DS5000

This week, I am in Orlando, Florida presenting, blogging and tweeting at the IBM Edge conference. The first day began with opening main tent sessions. Deon Newman, IBM VP of Marketing, was the emcee. The four-person [Bella Electric Strings] rocked the house with some electric violins.

Game Change on a Smarter Planet: A New Era in IT

Rod Adkins, IBM Senior VP for the Systems and Technology Group, presented IBM's Smarter Computing strategy. For those not familiar with this, a little context might help.

Back in 2008, IBM launched its corporate-wide strategy called "Smarter Planet", which focused on solving the world's biggest problems through the effective use of Information Technology. To get there, everything needs to be instrumented to monitor and gather information, interconnected with centralized processing, and analyzed through intelligent algorithms.

Over the past few years, this general approach has been made more specific to tackle problems in particular industries. Detailed approaches like Smarter Cities, Smarter Energy, Smarter Education, Smarter Retail, Smarter Water and Smarter Food, are a few examples of this.

As IBM pursued solutions in each of these areas, clients realized they needed some guidance on the underlying IT infrastructure needed to deploy these solutions. Last year, IBM launched the Smarter Computing, which I [explained in great detail in my blog post last March].

• Designed for the Data - to be fair, IBM systems have always been designed for the data. When the System/360 first came out, the bulk of data was stored in structured databases, so systems were designed for this. Today, over 80 percent of data is unstructured, not in a database, so the design and approach for systems today must reflect that new reality. For example, Big Data analytics is often used against spreadsheets, documents, social media feeds, and other unstructured sources.
  
  
• Workload-Optimized Systems - There are two ways to have a workload-optimized system. The first is to start with general purpose components and tune them, and the second is to integrate expertise into the design.
  
  
• Managed with Cloud technologies - Cloud computing has introduced new levels of standardization, automation and virtualization.

Rod wrapped up his session discussing the IBM PureSystems family of expert-integrated systems that IBM announced in April. This includes the PureFlex infrastructure system and the PureApplication platform system.

A New Approach to Storage

Brian Truskowski, IBM General Manager for System Storage and Networking, presented IBM's new approach to storage to support Smarter Computing environments.

• Efficient by Design - Storage needs to be designed for the data, to store it efficiently, and be able to scale in the expected growth, driven by trends such as Big Data analytics.
  
  
• Self-Optimizing - Storage needs to be self-optimizing for their particular application workloads, to avoid manual performance tuning efforts. Policies to handle Qualities of Service help optimize performance and costs based on business requirements.
  
  
• Cloud Agile - Storage needs to be part of a virtualized environment, managed by Cloud technologies. This includes working seemlessly in environments with server hypervisors, storage hypervisors, virtual LANs, SANs and tape libraries.

With this new approach, clients will be able to increase competitiveness, while reducing both capital and operational expenses.

Snowball Studios

Yoni Cohen is the founder and CEO of Snowball Studios. They started with five artists, and grew to 60 people in a few years to take on bigger projects. They produce digital animation for television shows and commercials.

Despite their small size, they have a dedicated "IT" department. In addition to developing in-house tools for the artists to produce animation, they also were tasked to find the best storage solutions. Files storing 3D video can be quite large. After exhausting research into all the storage options, they chose IBM, and complemented this with the Real-Time Compression appliance for their NAS environments.

The results were stunning. A project that took 417GB before took only 148GB. a 64 percent data footprint reduction! He found he got this 3x reduction across his environment.

University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC)

University of Rochester is in New York state, about 60 miles east of Buffalo, and 90 miles from Toronto across Lake Ontario. Six years ago, Rick Haverty joined URMC as the Director of Infrastructure services, managing 130 of the 300 IT personnel at the Medical Center. I met Rick last year, when he presented at the [IBM Storage Innovation Executive Summit] in New York City. Last December, I co-presented with Rick on a session for SONAS at the [Data Center Conference].

URMC has DS8000, DS5000, XIV, SONAS, Storwize V7000 and is in the process of deploying Storwize V7000 Unified. He presented how he has used these for his Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA). For Rick, the IT Infrastructure has become the new "dial tone", everyone expects it to work 100 percent of the time.

For those not familiar with VNA, Rick has 36 different departments, and each was storing archives of their medical images in separate silos of storage. Using software from [Acuo Technologies], he was able to have all 36 different PACS systems store data onto a single storage repository. The side benefit is that all medical images are now readily available to the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system.

Main Tent for Technical Edge

After the opening session, the folks in Technical Edge moved to a different room for the main tent session. Mike Kuhn, IBM VP of Systems Lab Services, was the emcee. There were three guest speakers:

• Clod Barrera, IBM Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Strategist for IBM System Storage, presented on storage trends and directions, and how this will influence workload-optimized systems, Cloud computing, Easy Tier, and Active Cloud Engine.
• Jeff Jonas, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist for IBM Entity Analytics, presented "Fantasy Analytics" which explained his work in the Business Analytics. He used "jigsaw puzzles" as an analogy to help explain for the type of work he is researching.
• Dan McMillan, Chief Comedy Officer of his own company, was formerly an engineer, but now stand-up comedian. He poked fun at the IT industry, how things have changed since he was an engineer, and his ideal "Universal Business Translator".

This was a great way to kick off the week!

technorati tags: IBM, Deon Newman, Bella Electric Strings, Rod Adkins, Smarter Planet, Smarter Computing, Brian Truskowski, Smarter Storage, Yoni Cohen, Snowball Studios, Rick Haverty, URMC, SONAS, Storwize V7000, VNA, Acuo Technologies

Well it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means... IBM announcements! Yesterday, at the IBM Edge conference here in Orlando, Florida, IBM announced its new apporach to storage, and a whole bunch of storage products, enhancements, and services. I will focus on some key ones here, and save the rest for next week.

IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) v6.4

The SVC is IBM's enterprise-class storage hypervisor. The latest software release, v6.4, can be installed on any SVC hardware, from the 2145-8F2 introduced back in 2005, to newer models like the 2145-CG8. Here are the key features:

• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) -- This is complete end-to-end support. For SVC units with 10GbE ports, these ports can be now be used for FCoE. This allows hosts to attach to SVC via FCoE, allows SVC node-to-node communication for clustering, and allows SVC to communicate to back-end devices via FCoE.
  
  
• Real-Time Compression -- IBM ported over the patent Random Access Compression Engine (RACE) from the Real-Time Compression Appliances to SVC v6.4. This allows primary data, accessed via block-based protocols, to be compressed up to 80 percent. This feature is an extra priced feature by TB.
  
  
• Non-Disruptive Volume move between I/O Groups -- If you don't already have SVC, you don't need to worry about this. For existing SVC customers, this allows volumes to be associated with two or more I/O groups, and that you can add or remove I/O groups non-disruptively. For example, if you want to move a volume from IOG1 to IOG2, then you add IOG2 to the list of I/O groups for the volume, let the multi-pathing software discover the additional paths, the remove IOG1, which then marks the previous IOG1 paths inactive. All this can be done while applications read and write data.
  
  
• Dedicate FCP ports for Replication -- If you activate the two 10GbE Ethernet ports for FCoE, you can free up two FCP ports that you can dedicate for long-distance Metro Mirror or Global Mirror.

If you have SVC today, but are running an old release like v4.3 or v5.1, I recommennd you upgrade up to at least v6.2.05 release now. This release has been out for a year and is very stable, and serves as a great platform for a later upgrade to SVC v6.4.

IBM Storwize V7000 v6.4

The Storwize V7000 is IBM's midrange storage hypervisor. The latest software release, v6.4, can be installed on existing block-only Storwize V7000 units in the field. The Storwize V7000 v6.4 gets all the features listed above, as well as the following:

• Four-way clustering -- Previously, you could cluster two Storwize V7000 controller enclosures together (4 canisters total). To cluster three or four controllers required an RPQ. Now, IBM supports up to four Storwize V7000 controller enclosures (8 canisters) without an RPQ.
  
  
• Direct Fibre Channel attach -- A lot of people are using Storwize V7000 inside single-rack configurations, so it makes sense not to require a SAN switch for just a few Windows, Linux or VMware servers. An RPQ is now available to allow this to happen.

 

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC) v5.1

TPC is already ranked one of the best Storage Infrastructure Management software in the market, and this release will just solidify its lead. Key features include:

• Upward integration to higher level management systems
• A new, intuitive, easy-to-use web-based GUI inspired by the XIV GUI
• Integration of COGNOS to be able to generate and customize reports
• Support for SONAS systems

There are several presentations on TPC this week that will go into more detail. Check out the [TPC Facebook page].

My latest book Inside System Storage: Volume IV is now available!

Yes, can you believe it? I have published my fourth volume in my "Inside System Storage" series! It is available in three formats:

• Hardcover with dust jacket
• Paperback
• eBook (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

You can order this, and all my other books, in all formats, directly from my [Author Spotlight] page. The paperback will also be available soon from other online booksellers, search for ISBN 978-1-105-72213-4.

IBM DS3500 Express

The DS3500 is our entry-level block-based device, designed specifically for random I/O workloads. This includes databases, email repositories, traditional business applications, and on-line transactional workloads. Here are the new features:

• Dynamic Disk Pooling, similar to what XIV does to reduce disk rebuild times, but using a RAID-6 like approach per chunk of data.
• Thin Provisioning using Dynamic Disk Pooling
• Asynchronous Logical Unit Access (ALUA) failover
• Enhanced FlashCopy, improved scalability, consistency groups and rollback support
• VMware API for Array Integration (VAAI) support. This includes Write Same, Extended Copy, and Atomic Test & Set.

The DS3500 replaces the previous models of DS3200, DS3300 and DS3400 models.

IBM DCS3700

The DCS3700 is our entry-level/midrange block-based device, replacing the DCS9900 model, designed specifically for sequential I/O workloads. This includes Big Data analytics, Hadoop, High Performance Computing (HPC), video surveillance, and television broadcasting. It holds 60 drives in a 4U controller enclosure.

For more on any of these announcements, see the [June 4th Announcement Page], or follow the Twitter tag #transformITnow.

technorati tags: IBM, SVC, Storwize V7000, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, DS3500, DCS37000

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

Data Footprint Reduction: Understanding IBM Storage Options

View more presentations from Tony Pearson on the IBM Expert Network..

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

IBM Storage Strategy in the Era of Smarter Computing

View more presentations from Tony Pearson on the IBM Expert Network.

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

IBM SONAS and the Cloud Storage Taxonomy

View more presentations from Tony Pearson on the IBM Expert Network.

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

This week I am in Orlando, Florida for the IBM Edge conference. Thursday evening after all the other sessions, we had a Free-for-All, a Q&A panel across all storage topics, moderated by Scott Drummond. The conference officially ends at noon tomorrow, but for many, this is the last session, as people fly out Friday morning. Here are the questions and the panel responses during the session.

When will IBM unify their storage management between Mainframe z/OS and the distributed systems platforms?

IBM offers a Change and Configuration Management Data Base (CCMDB) for this purpose with appropriate collectors from z/OS and distributed systems, but hasn't sold well.

When will IBM devices have RESTful interfaces?

Both IBM Systems Director and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC) offer RESTful APIs. IBM Systems Director can manage z/VM and Linux on System z, as well as Power Systems and x86 based distributed systems. Since October 2008, IBM's Project Zero introduced RESTful interfaces to PHP and Groovy software running on WebSphere sMash environments. We have not heard much about this since 2008.

Will IBM TPC support NPIV on Power Systems?

TPC 5.1 has toleration support for this, showing the first port connection discovered, but not all connections, and we expect to retrofit this toleration to TPC 4.2.2 Fixpack 2. Hopefully, we will have full support in a future release.

We would like TPC for Replication to run on Linux for System z. We do not run z/OS at the disaster recovery site location.

Submit an IBM Request for Enhancement [RFE] for this. We have TPC for Replication on z/OS, as well as the distributed systems version that runs on Windows, Linux and AIX.

We have enhancements we would like to see for XIV and SONAS also, can we use the RFE process for this also?

Yes, submit the requirements for our review.

We heard the Statement of Direction that there would be storage integrated into the PureSystems. What exactly does that mean?

The PureSystems family of expert-integrated systems is based on a new chassis that has a front part, a midplane, and a back-part. All IBM System Storage products that support x86 and Power Systems can work with PureSystems. However, IBM does not yet offer storage that fits in the front part of the PureFlex chassis, but the Statement of Direction indicates that we intend to offer that option. Until then, the IBM Storwize V7000 is the storage of choice that can be put into the PureSystems rack, but outside the individual chasses.

We see some features like Real-Time Compression being put into the SAN Volume Controller (SVC), and other features put into the back-end devices. How are we supposed to make sense of this?

IBM's new pilot program, the SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center, to bring these all together. In general, we have design teams of system architects that determine which features go in which products, and prioritize accordingly.

We heard the IBM Executives during the opening session indicate that IBM's strategy involves supporting Big Data, but I haven't seen any storage that supports native Hadoop interfaces. Did I miss something?

First, I want to emphasize that Big Data is more than just MapReduce workloads. IBM offers Streams and BigInsights software to handle text, as well as Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse solutions for structured data. IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) has a Shared-Nothing-Cluster (SNC) mode with Hadoop interfaces that runs twice as fast as Hadoop's native HDFS file system. The storage products we recommend for Big Data are the SONAS and the DCS3700 disk systems, as both are optimized for the sequential workloads Big Data represents.

Everytime we upgrade our SVC, we review the list for SDDPCM multi-pathing and see that we need to upgrade our back-end DS8000 microcode up to recommended levels. Can we get a list of combinations that work from other customers?

The advantage of storage hypervisors like SVC is that we can separate the multi-pathing driver from the back-end managed disk systems. You only need the SDDPCM to support the SVC, not the back-end devices. For the most part, SVC has not dropped support for any level of previously supported OS or multi-pathing software.

On SVC, when we migrate volumes (vDisks) from one storage pool to another, we would like to throttle this process during FlashCopy.

Yes, we had several requests like this, which is why we now recommend using Volume Mirorring to perform migrations. In fact the GUI wizard uses Volume Mirroring by default when migrations are performed. As for throttling, IBM has implemented "I/O Priority Manager" that offers Quality of Service classes for DS8000 and XIV Gen3, and might consider porting this to other products in our portfolio.

Sizing systems is an art. I just need to know if the DS8000 is running hot. Can we have the equivalent of "red lines" for our disk systems similar to automobile engines?

Storage Optimizer was added to TPC 4.2 to help in this area, identifying heat-maps for IBM DS8000, DS6000, DS5000, DS4000, SVC and Storwize V7000. We recommend you look at the performance violation reports.

How can we evaluate the characteristics of our workloads?

Yes, TPC can do this.

When we are replacing non-IBM storage with IBM, we don't have good tools to evaluate the non-IBM equipment. What is IBM doing for this?

IBM's Disk Magic modeling tool can take inputs from a variety of sources, including iostat from the servers themselves. You can also install a 90-day trial of TPC to help with this.

We really like EMC's "Grab" program, does IBM have one also?

Yes, IBM has one also. See the [SSIC Discovery Utility].

Updating the Host Attachment Kit (HAK) for AIX is quite painful for the SVC. We prefer the method employed for the XIV.

Thanks for the feedback.

For SVC, we need to correlate disk with VMware and VIOS. Can we get vSCSI information on VIOS?

TPC 5.1 has this support, and we believe it has been retrofitted to TPC 4.2.2 Fixpack 2, coming out this month.

Currently, with SVC, when volumes are part of a Global Mirror (GM) session, we need to cancel GM, expand the source volume, expand the target volume, then restart GM. We would like this to be fully automated and non-disruptive.

Sounds like a great requirement to submit for the RFE process.

Can we get an RSS Feed for the RFE community.

Yes, you can subscribe to it. You can also set up "Watch Lists".

Thanks to all of the IBM experts on the panel for their participation at this event!

technorati tags: IBM, Edge2012, Free-for-All, CCMDB, Project Zero, RESTful, TPC, SVC, RFE, Storwize V7000, PureSystems, PureFlex, SmartCloud, Virtual Storage Center, Big+Data, SONAS, XIV, DS8000, Global Mirror

This week I am in Orlando, Florida for the IBM Edge conference. This is the last day, so it ends early for people who want to get home to their datacenters (er.. families) for the weekend.

How Real-Time Compression Can Maximize Storage Efficiency for Production Applications

This was a split session with two speakers. First, Ian Rimmer, Senior IT Engineer and Architect at iBurst, presented their experience with the IBM Real-Time Compression Appliance in front of NetApp NAS storage arrays. Second, Jerry Haigh, IBM offering manager for IBM System Storage, presented the new Real-Time compression feature announced this week on IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and Storwize V7000.

iBurst is the #1 Wireless Telecom for South Africa. The also offer cable broadband and VOIP. They have 200 employees servicing 120,000 subscriber/households. They need to keep five years' worth of text files, and have chosen real-time compression of their NAS storage. This was before IBM acquired the Storwize company, as they have been using it for the past six years.

The monetary savings from compression was used to purchase Performance Accelerator Modules (PAM) cards for their NetApp NAS gear, which benefit from the compression (more data stored in SSD to improve performance).

For backup, they use NDMP with Symantec NetBackup that keeps data in its compressed form as it is written to tape. They have an IBM TS3100 library with LTO tape as the backup repository.

Jerry Haigh presented Real-Time compression for primary disk data. Unlike the competition, this is designed to be used with primary data, including databases, and does this real-time, not post-process. In some performance tests, DB2 compressed on 48 drives out-performed the same data uncompressed on 96 drives. In another test focused on VMware Vmark benchmark, the compressed data was able to be same or better performance as uncompressed. In a third test with SVC virtualizing XIV running Oracle ORION test, the Oracle databases compressed 50 to 64 percent, and had better performance.

For those who already have SVC or Storwize V7000, consider a 45-day trial to check out compression for yourself.

NAS File Systems: Access and Authentication

Mark Taylor, IBM Technical Specialist for SONAS, N series and Storwize V7000 Unified, presented the nuances of authentication and authorization for NAS file systems. The differences between these two are:

• Authentication - Yes, you are who you are.
• Authorization - Yes, you are permitted to do what you are trying to do

(Prior to working with SONAS, my only experience with access and authentication in NAS was setting up my LAN at home, which I have connecting my Mac, Linux and Windows machines. I have both N series and SONAS at the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson, Arizona, so I know first-hand how complicated NAS access and authentication systems can be. A few months ago, I taught "Intro to NAS" as one of my topics at the Top Gun class in Argentina and Brazil. Several of the students had mentioned they thought they knew NAS solutions but had not realized all the technical issues with access and authentication that I discussed in my presentation.)

Mark explained the differences between Windows NTFS-style System identifiers (SID), versus UNIX-style user and group identifiers (UID, GID). For NAS solutions that support both CIFS and NFS, there are four options:

1. Microsoft Active Director (AD) extended with Identity Management for UNIX, formerly known as Services for UNIX (SFU). AD servers normally store SID information, but the extensions add extra columns to hold UID/GID mappings.
2. AD with Network Information Service (NIS) server. The problem with this approach is that AD and NIS are separate databases, and you need to coordinate updates to them, and their backups.
3. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) with SAMBA extensions. LDAP holds UID/GID information, and the SAMBA extensions adds extra columns to hold SID mapping.
4. Local mapping. The dangerous part of local mapping is that the storage admin is also the security admin, and you may want different people doing these roles.

Of these four methods, Mark recommends the first and third as best practices for multi-protocol authentication.

Device	CIFS	Mixed	NFS
N series	NTFS-style	SID-to-UID mapping, UID-to-SID mapping	UNIX-style
SONAS and Storwize V7000	SID-to-UID/GID mapping, NFS v4 ACLs		NFS v4 ACLs

Mark then explained how NFS v4 ACLs work, basically an ordered collection of "Access Control Elements" or ACEs. Each ACE on the ACL may "allow" or "deny" the request. You want to avoid "Inheritance" as that can cause problems and unxpected results.

That's it folks. Next week, I am spending time with my research buddies at the Almaden Research Center near San Jose, California, and then it is off to Moscow, Russia to kick off a series of IBM events called "Edge Comes to You" (ECTY).

The ECTY conferences will be a smaller subset of the Edge conference here in Orlando, but offered in other countries for those who were unable to travel to the United States.

technorati tags: IBM, Edge2012, Real-Time Compression, NetApp, SVC, Storwize V7000, iBurst, PAM, NDMP, SONAS, Active Directory, NIS, LDAP, SAMBA, Acess Control Lists, NFS, CIFS, ECTY

Every year, I teach hundreds of sellers how to sell IBM storage products. I have been doing this since the late 1990s, and it is one task that has carried forward from one job to another as I transitioned through various roles from development, to marketing, to consulting.

This week, I am in the city of Taipei [Taipei] to teach Top Gun sales class, part of IBM's [Sales Training] curriculum. This is only my second time here on the island of Taiwan.

As you can see from this photo, Taipei is a large city with just row after row of buildings. The metropolitan area has about seven million people, and I saw lots of construction for more on my ride in from the airport.

The student body consists of IBM Business Partners and field sales reps eager to learn how to become better sellers. Typically, some of the students might have just been hired on, just finished IBM Sales School, a few might have transferred from selling other product lines, while others are established storage sellers looking for a refresher on the latest solutions and technologies.

I am part of the teach team comprised of seven instructors from different countries. Here is what the week entails for me:

• Monday - I will present "Selling Scale-Out NAS Solutions" that covers the IBM SONAS appliance and gateway configurations, and be part of a panel discussion on Disk with several other experts.
  
  
• Tuesday - I have two topics, "Selling Disk Virtualization Solutions" and "Selling Unified Storage Solutions", which cover the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), Storwize V7000 and Storwize V7000 Unified products.
  
  
• Wednesday - I will explain how to position and sell IBM products against the competition.
  
  
• Thursday - I will present "Selling Infrastructure Management Solutions" and "Selling Unified Recovery Management Solutions", which focus on the IBM Tivoli Storage portfolio, including Tivoli Storage Productivity Center, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), and Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager (FCM). The day ends with the dreaded "Final Exam".
  
  
• Friday - The students will present their "Team Value Workshop" presentations, and the class concludes with a formal graduation ceremony for the subset of students who pass. A few outstanding students will be honored with "Top Gun" status.

These are the solution areas I present most often as a consultant at the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson, so I can provide real-life stories of different client situations to help illustrate my examples.

To learn more about a Top Gun class in your area, see the [Top Gun class schedule].

The weather here in Taipei calls for rain every day! I was able to take this photo on Sunday morning while it was still nice and clear, but later in the afternoon, we had quite the downpour. I am glad I brought my raincoat!

technorati tags: IBM, Sales Training, Top Gun, Taipei, Taiwan, NAS, SONAS, disk, virtualization, unified+storage, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, Storwize V7000, Storwize V7000 Unified, Infrastructure Management, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, Unified Recovery Management, TSM, FlashCopy, FCM

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

Today also happens to be [Election Day] in the United States, and some have questioned IBM's logic of making major storage announcements on Election Day. During the campaigns, a major theme was to help Small and Medium size businesses, because these are the engines of economic growth and improved employment.

To tie in with this Election Day theme, all of today's [storage announcements are designed for Small and Medium size business workloads]! Whether you want to [Move Forward] with new features and functions to help transform your business for the future; [Live Free] with improved flexibility and ease-of-use for your storage infrastructure; adopt a more [Green and Environmentally-friendly] platform; or merely [Take Back Control] of uncontrolled growth in storage expenses, IBM has efficient, easy-to-use storage that fits your budget!

Hopefully, you all saw today's Launch Webcast on these announcements, but in case you missed it, waiting in line at the polling station to cast your vote, or caught without electricity or Internet access from [Superstorm Sandy], it is now available [On-Demand].

Here is a quick recap:

IBM Storwize V3700 Disk System

The latest addition to the Storwize family is the new [IBM Storwize V3700 disk system] which offers a smaller, entry-level version of the amazingly successful IBM Storwize V7000. Here is a quick [3-minute YouTube video]:

[]

The 2U control enclosure can have up to four additional 2U expansion enclosures, for a maximum of 120 drives, or 180TB of raw disk capacity. Like the Storwize V7000, the Storwize V3700 supports a [large number of servers and operating systems.] Many of the features you already know from the Storwize V7000 are carried forward:

Feature	Storwize V7000	Storwize V3700
Protocols (included)	1GbE iSCSI + 8GbFC	1GbE iSCSI
Protocols (optional)	10GbE iSCSI/FCoE	8GbFC, 10GbE iSCSI/FCoE, Statement of Direction for 6Gb SAS
Cache	8GB per canister	4GB per canister, upgradeable to 8GB
Expansion	Up to 4 control enclosures in a clustered system, each with up to 9 expansion enclosures	Up to 4 expansion enclosures
Maximum Number of drives/TB	960 drives/1.44PB	Up to 120 drives/180TB
RAID levels supported	0,1,5,6,10	0,1,5,6,10
User Interfaces	GUI, CLI, SMI-S API	GUI, CLI, SMI-S API
Thin Provisioning	Included	Included
Virtualization	Internal (included), external (optional)	Internal only (included)
Non-disruptive data migration	Two-directional (included)	One-directional (migrate to Storwize V3700, included)
Easy Tier	included	Statement of direction
FlashCopy	Up to 256 targets (included)	Up to 64 targets (included) Statement of Direction for optional 2,040 targets
Remote Mirror	Metro Mirror and Global Mirror (optional)	Statement of Direction (optional)
Real-time Compression	Optional	Not available

The IBM Storwize V3700 is offered at attractive leasing options through IBM Global Financing.

IBM LTO-6 drives and midrange tape libraries

Last month, IBM's [Tape and Storage Hypervisor Announcements] included LTO-6 for the enterprise-class TS3500 tape library. Today, the LTO-6 support is complete with support for midrange tape drives and libraries.

There are two tape drive models. The TS2260 is based on the half-height drive, intended for occasional 9-to-5 usage. The TS2360 is based on the full-height drive, intended for 24x7 access. These drives can read LTO-4 and LTO-5 tape cartridge media, and can write LTO-5 cartridge media. The new LTO-6 tape cartridge media is expected to be available next month.

In addition to the IBM TS3500 Enterprise Tape Library, LTO-6 is now supported on all of the midrange tape libraries: TS2900, TS3100, TS3200 and TS3310.

IBM Linear Tape File System Library Edition V2.1.2

There are two levels of [Linear Tape File System], or LTFS for short. The first is the Single Drive Edition (LTFS-SDE), which allows you to attach an LTO-5, LTO-6 or TS1140 tape drive to a single workstation, and allow you to mount tape cartridges as easy as mounting USB memory sticks. This presents a full file system view that allows you to read, edit, create, and even drag-and-drop files to other file systems. The LTFS-SDE driver is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

The second is the Library Edition (LTFS-LE), which allows you to mount the entire tape library as a file system. Each tape cartridge in the library is presented as a subdirectory folder, that you can access like any file system on disk. This was only available for Linux systems, which could then export the files through NFS, FTP or HTTP protocols to other clients. Now, with release v2.1.2, LTFS-LE supports Windows servers, so that you can share the files with other clients through CIFS as well.

Whether you are a midsize business looking to expand, or a large enterprise with midsize workloads, these products could be just the right solution for you! To learn more, see the [November 6th Storage Announcement Landing Page].

technorati tags: IBM, LTFS-LE, TS3200, Storwize V7000, LTFS-SDE, TS2900, LTFS, midrange, FlashCopy, TS3500, TS3310, Storwize V3700, TS1140, TS2260, TS2360, LTO-6, TS3100

Well, it's Wednesday, and you know what that means... IBM Announcements!

(Actually most IBM announcements are on Tuesdays, but IBM gave me extra time to recover from my trip to Europe!)

Today, IBM announced [IBM PureSystems], a new family of expert-integrated systems that combine storage, servers, networking, and software, based on IBM's decades of experience in the IT industry. You can register for the [Launch Event] today (April 11) at 2pm EDT, and download the companion "Integrated Expertise" event app for Apple, Android or Blackberry smartphones.

(If you are thinking, "Hey, wait a minute, hasn't this been done before?" you are not alone. Yes, IBM introduced the System/360 back in 1964, and the AS/400 back in 1988, so today's announcement is on scheduled for this 24-year cycle. Based on IBM's past success in this area, others have followed, most recently, Oracle, HP and Cisco.)

Initially, there are two offerings:

IBM PureFlex™ System

IBM PureFlex is like IaaS-in-a-box, allowing you to manage the system as a pool of virtual resources. It can be used for private cloud deployments, hybrid cloud deployments, or by service providers to offer public cloud solutions. IBM drinks its own champagne, and will have no problem integrating these into its [IBM SmartCloud] offerings.

To simplify ordering, the IBM PureFlex comes in three tee-shirt sizes: Express, Standard and Enterprise.

IBM PureFlex is based on a 10U-high, 19-inch wide, standard rack-mountable chassis that holds 14 bays, organized in a 7 by 2 matrix. Unlike BladeCenter where blades are inserted vertically, the IBM PureFlex nodes are horizontal. Some of the nodes take up a single bay (half-wide), but a few are full-wide, take up two bays, the full 19-inch width of the chassis. Compute and storage snap in the front, while power supplies, fans, and networking snap in the back. You can fit up to four chassis in a standard 42U rack.

Unlike competitive offerings, IBM does not limit you to x86 architectures. Both x86 and POWER-based compute nodes can be mixed into a single chassis. Out of the box, the IBM PureFlex supports four operating systems (AIX, IBM i, Linux and Windows), four server hypervisors (Hyper-V, Linux KVM, PowerVM, and VMware), and two storage hypervisors (SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000).

There are a variety of storage options for this. IBM will offer SSD and HDD inside the compute nodes themselves, direct-attached storage nodes, and an integrated version of the Storwize V7000 disk system. Of course, every IBM System Storage product is supported as external storage. Since Storwize V7000 and SAN Volume Controller support external virtualization, many non-IBM devices will be supported automatically as well.

Networking is also optimized, with options for 10Gb and 40Gb Ethernet/FCoE, 40Gb and 56Gb Infiniband, 8Gbps and 16Gbps Fibre Channel. Much of the networking traffic can be handled within the chassis, to minimize traffic on external switches and directors.

For management, IBM offers the Flex System Manager, that allows you to manage all the resources from a single pane of glass. The goal is to greatly simplify the IT lifecycle experience of procurement, installation, deployment and maintenance.

IBM PureApplication™ System

IBM PureApplication is like PaaS-in-a-box. Based on the IBM PureFlex infrastructure, the IBM PureApplication adds additional software layers focused on transactional web, business logic, and database workloads. Initially, it will offer two platforms: Linux platform based on x86 processors, Linux KVM and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); and a UNIX platform based on POWER7 processors, PowerVM and AIX operating system. It will be offered in four tee-shirt sizes (small, medium, large and extra large).

In addition to having IBM's middleware like DB2 and WebSphere optimized for this platform, over 600 companies will announce this week that they will support and participate in the IBM PureSystems ecosystem as well. Already, there are 150 "Patterns of Expertise" ready to deploy from IBM PureSystem Centre, a kind of a "data center app store", borrowing an idea used today with smartphones.

By packaging applications in this manner, workloads can easily shift between private, hybrid and public clouds.

If you are unhappy with the inflexibility of your VCE Vblock, HP Integrity, or Oracle ExaLogic, talk to your local IBM Business Partner or Sales Representative. We might be able to buy your boat anchor off your hands, as part of an IBM PureSystems sale, with an attractive IBM Global Financing plan.

To learn more, check out the [IBM PureSystems] landing page, follow the twitter handle [@IBMPureSystems] or hashtag #ExpertIntSys, watch the videos on the [YouTube channel], or read the [Expert Integrated Systems] blog.

technorati tags: IBM, PureSystems, PureFlex, PureApplication, Flex System Manager, Storwize V7000, Storage Hypervisor, SVC, Pattern of Expertise, DB2, WebSphere, VMware, KVM, Hyper-V, PowerVM, AIX, IBM i, Linux, Windows, HP, Integrity, Oracle, Exalogic, Cisco, UCS, VCE, Vblock

Well, it's Thursday, and today IBM is having a major launch for storage. We have lots of exciting announcements today, so here is the major highlights:

IBM Storwize V7000 midrange disk system

Fellow blogger Rolf Potts just completed his [No Baggage Challenge], travelling around the world, twelve countries in six weeks with no luggage. I first learned of this trip from fellow published author and blogger Tim Ferriss in his post [How to Travel 12 Countries with No Baggage Whatsoever]. This trip was sponsored by a travel agency [BootsnAll.com] and travel clothing manufacturer [ScotteVest].

From New York, Rolf went to London, Paris, Madrid, Morocco, Cairo, South Africa, Bangkok Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and then back to United States. I was hoping to run into him while I was in Australia and New Zealand last month, but our schedules did not line up.

  Travelingwithout baggage is more than just a convenience, it is a metaphor for the philosophy that we should keep only what we need, and leave behind what we don't. This was the approach taken by IBM in the design of the IBM Storwize V7000 midrange disk system.

The IBM Storwize V7000 disk system consists of 2U enclosures. Controller enclosures have dual-controllers and drives. Expansion enclosures have just drives. Enclosures can have either 24 smaller form factor (SFF) 2.5-inch drives, or twelve larger 3.5-inch drives. A controller enclosure can be connected up to nine expansion enclosures.

The drives are all connected via 6 Gbps SAS, and come in a variety of speeds and sizes: 300GB Solid-State Drive (SSD); 300GB/450GB/600GB high-speed 10K RPM; and 2TB low-speed 7200 RPM drives. The 12-bay enclosures can be intermixed with 24-bay enclosures on the same system, and within an enclosure different speeds and sizes can be intermixed. A half-rack system (20U) could hold as much as 480TB of raw disk capacity.

This new system, freshly designed entirely within IBM, competes directly against systems that carry a lot of baggage, including the HDS AMS, HP EVA, an EMC CLARiiON CX4 systems. Instead, we decided to keep the what we wanted from our other successful IBM products.

• Inspired by our successful XIV storage system, IBM has developed a web-based GUI that focuses on ease-of-use. This GUI uses the latest HTML5 and dojo widgets to provide an incredible user experience.
• Borrowed from our IBM DS8000 high-end disk systems, state-of-the-art device adapters provide 6 Gbps SAS connectivity with a variety of RAID levels: 0, 1, 5, 6, and 10.
• From our SAN Volume Controller, the embedded [ SVC 6.1 firmware] provides all of the features and functions normally associated with enterprise-class systems, including Easy Tier sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-State Drives and Spinning disk, thin provisioning, external disk virtualization, point-in-time FlashCopy, disk mirroring, built-in migration capability, and long-distance synchronous and asynchronous replication.

To learn more on this, read the [announcement letter], [landing page], [product page], [services page], as well as the blog posts from fellow master inventor and blogger Barry Whyte (IBM) at his [Storage Virtualization] blog.

My New Book is Now Available!

Finally, the various "internal NDA" that kept me from publishing this sooner have expired, so now I have the long-awaited [Inside System Storage: Volume II], documenting IBM's transformation in its storage strategy, including behind-the-scenes commentary about IBM's acquisitions of XIV and Diligent. Available initially in paperback form. I am still working on the hard cover and eBook editions. For those who have not yet read my first book, Inside System Storage: Volume I, it is still available from my publisher Lulu, in [hard cover], [paperback] and [eBook] editions.

IBM System Storage DS8800

A lesson IBM learned long ago was not to make radical changes to high-end disk systems, as clients who run mission-critical applications are more concerned about reliability, availability and serviceability than they are performance or functionality. Shipping any product before it was ready meant painfully having to fix the problems in the field instead.

(EMC apparently is learning this same lesson now with their VMAX disk system. Their Engenuity code from Symmetrix DMX4 was ported over to new CLARiiON-based hardware. With several hundred boxes in the field, they have already racked up over 150 severity 1 problems, roughly half of these resulted in data loss or unavailability issues. For the sake of our mutual clients that have both IBM servers and EMC disk, I hope they get their act together soon.)

To avoid this, IBM made incremental changes to the successful design and architecture of its predecessors. The new DS8800 shares 85 percent of the stable microcode from the DS8700 system. Functions like Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, and Metro/Global Mirror, are compatible with all of the previous models of the DS8000 series, as well as previous models of the IBM Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) line.

The previous models of DS8000 series were designed to take in cold air from both front and back, and route the hot air out the top, known as chimney design. However, many companies are re-arranging their data centers into separate cold aisles and hot aisles. The new DS8800 has front-to-back cooling to help accommodate this design.

My colleague Curtis Neal would call the rest of this a "BFD" announcement, which of course stands for "Bigger, Faster and Denser". The new DS8800 scales-up to more drives than its DS8700 predecessor, and can scale-out from a single-frame 2-way system to a multi-frame 4-way system. IBM has upgraded to faster 5GHz POWER6+ processors, with dual-core 8 Gbps FC and FICON host adapters, 8 Gbps device adapters, and 6 Gbps SAS connectivity to smaller form factor (SFF) 2.5-inch SAS drives. IBM Easy Tier will provide sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-State Drives and spinning disk. The denser packaging with SFF drives means that we can pack over 1000 drives in only three frames, compared to five frames required for the DS8700.

To learn more, read the [landing page] or the announcement letters for the machine types [2421], [2422], [2423], [2424].

IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller v6.1

The [IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller] software release v6.1 brings Easy Tier sub-LUN automated tiering to the rest of the world. IBM Easy Tier moves the hottest, most active extents up to Solid-State Drives (SSD) and moves the coldest, least active down to spinning disk. This works whether the SSD is inside the SVC 2145-CF8 nodes, or in the managed disk pool.

Tired of waiting for EMC to finally deliver FAST v2 for your VMAX? It has been 18 months since they first announced that someday they would have sub-LUN automatic tiering. What is taking them so long? Why not virtualize your VMAX with SVC, and you can have it sooner!

SVC 6.1 also upgrades to a sexy new web-based GUI, which like the one for the IBM Storwize V7000, is based on the latest HTML5 and dojo widget standards. Inspired by the popular GUI from the IBM XIV Storage System, this GUI has greatly improved ease-of-use.

To learn more, read the [announcement letter] and [SVC product page].

These are just a subset of today's announcements. To see the rest, read [What's New].

technorati tags: IBM, announcements, #IBMstorage, Storwize V7000, DS8800, Lulu, SVC, Easy Tier, SAS

A lot was announced yesterday, so I decided to break it up into several separate posts. This is part 2 in my 3-part series, focusing on: Storwize V7000 Unified, LTO-6 tape, and the SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center.

(to read the rest of the series, see [Part 1-Enterprise Systems: DS8000, TS7700 and XIV])

IBM Storwize® V7000 Unified disk system

The Storwize V7000 Unified is a product that consists of a 2U-high Storwize V7000 control enclosure that provides block-based access, combined with two 2U-high File Modules that provide file-based NAS protocols: CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, SCP and FTP. The problem was that when it was introduced, it was based on Storwize V7000 v6.3, so when the Storwize V7000 v6.4 features were announced last June, they did not apply to the Storwize V7000 Unified.

That is all fixed now, so the Storwize V7000 Unified now supports the full v6.4 features, including Real-time Compression for both file and block-based access to primary data, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) for block access.

The two File Modules are no longer limited to a single Storwize V7000 control enclosure, you can now connect to up to four control enclosures clustered together. Combined with up to nine expansion enclosures for additional disk raises the total maximum to 960 drives.

If you don't already have an Active Directory or LDAP server, the Storwize V7000 Unified now offers an embedded LDAP server, for smaller deployments that want to reduce the number of servers they need to purchase for a complete solution.

Like the [IBM XIV Gen3 storage system], both the Storwize V7000 and V7000 Unified now also support the OpenStack Nova-volume interface.

Lastly, if you have a Storwize V7000 v6.4, you can upgrade it to a Storwize V7000 Unified by simply adding the two File Modules. This can be done in the field.

IBM LTO-6 for tape libraries and drives

IBM introduces the sixth generation of Linear Tape Open (LTO-6) drives, which can be used as stand-alone IBM TS1060 drives, or in IBM tape libraries. As with previous models of LTO, the LTO-6 can read two older generations (LTO-4 and LTO-5) tape media, and can write to previous generation (LTO-5) tape media. You can buy the LTO-6 drives now, and use the older media until LTO-6 tape cartridges are available (hopefully later this year!)

My friend, Brad Johns, from Brad Johns Consulting, has a great post on this [LTO-6 Announcement]. While you expect the new drives to be faster with a denser tape media format, the key advantage to the LTO-6 is that it improves the compression algorithm, from the previous 2:1 to the new 2.5:1 compression ratio:

Level	Uncompressed		Compressed
LTO-5	1.5TB	140 MB/sec	3.00TB	280 MB/sec
LTO-6	2.5TB	160 MB/sec	6.25TB	400 MB/sec

Thus, with the improved compression, the LTO-6 is 40 percent faster, with double the tape cartridge density. This can reduce backup times by 30 percent, increase the amount of data that sits in your automated tape libraries, and reduce the courier costs sending tapes off-site.

IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center v5.1

Last year, IBM coined the phrase "Storage Hypervisor" to refer to the underlying technology in the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and Storwize V7000 disk systems.

At the IBM Edge conference last June, my colleague Mike Griese presented [SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center]. Back then, it was a pilot program (beta test), and this week, IBM announces that it will be formally available as a product.

The idea was simple: take the basic storage hypervisor, and add the necessary software to make it a complete solution.

If all of your disk is currently virtualized behind IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), or you want to put all of your data behind SVC, then SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center is for you. Basically, for one per-TB price, you get all of the following:

• The software features of SAN Volume Controller v6.4, including FlashCopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror.
  
  
• The full advanced features of IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v5.1, including the Storage Analytics Engine that does "Right-Tiering", recommending which LUNs should be moved entirely from one disk system to another, based on policies and access patterns.
  
  
• IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager v3.2 which manages FlashCopy with full coordination with applications, including Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, SAP, and VMware. This ensures that the FlashCopy destination copies are clean, eliminating the need to run backout or redo logs to correct any incomplete units of work.

If this combination sounds familiar, it was based on IBM's previous attempt called [Rapid Application Storage] which combined the Storwize V7000 with Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Midrange Edition and FlashCopy Manager.

The key difference is that SmartCloud VSC does not include the SVC hardware itself, you buy this separately. If you want Real-time Compression, that is charged separately for the subset of TB of the volumes that you select for compression.

Confused? You can read all the details in the [IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center - Announcement Letter].

To learn more about all of the announcements today, see the [Storage Landing Page].

technorati tags: IBM, Storwize V7000, Unified, storage, NAS, FCoE, Real-Time Compression, OpenStack, Nova-volume, Brad Johns, LTO-6, SmartCloud, Virtual Storage Center, Storage Hypervisor, SVC, FlashCopy

IBM had its big launch yesterday of the [IBM Storwize V7000 midrange disk system], and already some have discussed IBM's choice of the name. Fellow blogger Stephen Foskett has an excellent post titled [IBM’s Storwize V7000: 100% SVC; 0% Storwize]. On The Register, Chris Mellor writes [IBM's Midrange Storage Blast - Storwize. But Without Compression]. In his latest [Friday Rant], fellow blogger Chuck Hollis (EMC) feels "the new name is cool, if a bit misleading."

In the spirit of the [HP Product Line Decoder Ring] and [Microsoft Codename Tracker], here is your quick IBM product name decoder ring:

If you think this is the first time a company like IBM has pulled shenanigans with product names like this, think again. Here are a few posts that might refresh your memory:

• In my September 2006 post, [A brand by any other name...] I explain that I started blogging specifically to promote the new "IBM System Storage" product line name, part of the "IBM Systems" brand resulting from merging the "eServer" and "TotalStorage' brands.
• In my January 2007 post, [When Names Change], I explain our naming convention for our disk products, including our DS family, SAN Volume Controller and N series.
• In my February 2008 post, [Getting Off the Island], I cover how the x/p/i/z designations came about for our various IBM server product lines.

But what about acquisitions? When [IBM acquired Lotus Development Corporation], it kept the "Lotus" brand. New products that fit the "collaboration" function were put under the Lotus brand. I think most people can accept this approach.

But have we ever seen an existing product renamed to an acquired name?

In my post January 2009 post [Congratulations to Ken on your QCC Milestone], I mentioned that my colleague Ken Hannigan worked on an internal project initially called "Workstation Data Save Facility" (WDSF) which was changed to "Data Facility Distributed Storage Manager" (DFDSM), then renamed to "ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager" (ADSM), and finally renamed to the name it has today: IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).

Readers reminded me that [IBM acquired Tivoli Systems, Inc.] in 1996, so TSM could not have been an internally developed product. Ha! Wrong! Let's take a quick history lesson on how this came about:

• In the late 1980s, IBM Almaden research had developed a project to backup personal computers and workstations, which they called "Workstation Data Save Facility" or WDSF.
• This was turned over to our development team, which immediately discarded the code, and wrote from scratch its replacmeent, called Data Facility Distributed Storage Manager (DFDSM), named similar to the Data Facility products on the mainframe (DFP, DFHSM, DFDSS). As a member of the Data Facility family, DFDSM didn't really fit. The rest processed mainframe data sets, but DFDSM processed Windows and UNIX files. That a version of DFDSM server was available to run on the mainframe was the only connection.
• Then, in the early 1990s, there were discussions of possibly splitting IBM into a bunch of smaller "Baby Blues", similar to how [AT&T was split into "Baby Bells"], and how Forbes and Goldman Sachs now want to split Microsoft into [Baby Bills]. IBM considered naming the storage spin-off as ADSTAR, which stood for "Advanced Storage and Retrieval." Pre-emptively, IBM renamed DFDSM to "ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager" or ADSM.
• Fortunately, in 1993, IBM brought a new sheriff to town, Lou Gerstner, who quickly squashed any plans to split up IBM. He quickly realized that IBM's core strength was building integrated stacks, combining systems, software and services to solve business problems.
• In 1996, IBM acquired Tivoli Systems, Inc. to expand its "Systems Management" portfolio, and renamed ADSM over to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, since "storage management" is an essential part of "systems management". Later, IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center would be renamed to "IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center."

I participated in five months of painful meetings to figure out what to name our new internally-developed midrange disk system. Since it ran SAN Volume Controller software, I pushed for keeping the SVC designation somehow. We considered DS naming convention, but the new midrange product would not fit between our existing DS5000 and DS6000 numbering scheme. A marketing agency we hired came up with nonsensical names, in the spirit of product names like Celerra, Centera and CLARiiON, using name generators like [Wordoid]. Luckily, in the nick of time, IBM acquired Storwize for its compression technology, and decided that Storwize as a name was way better fit than any of the names we came up with already.

However, the new IBM Storwize V7000 midrange product had nothing in common with the appliances acquired from Storwize, the company, so to avoid confusion, the latter products were renamed to [IBM Real-time Compression]. Fellow blogger Steven Kenniston, the Storage Alchemist from Storwize fame now part of IBM from the acquisition, gives his perspective on this in his post [Storwize – What is in a Name, Really?]. While I am often critical of the names and terms IBM uses, I have to say this last set of naming decisions makes a lot of sense to me and I support it wholeheartedly.

To learn more about the IBM Storwize V7000 midrange disk system, watch the latest videos on the IBM Virtual Briefing Center (VBC). We have a [short summary version for CFO executives] as well as a [longer version for IT technical professionals].

technorati tags: IBM, Storwize, Storwize V7000, Stephen Foskett, decoder+ring, real-time+compression, microsoft, codename, Lou Gerstner, ADSM, TSM, SVC

The IBM Storwize V7000 was introduced last October, and has proven to be wildly successful. I saw two awesome reviews recently of the IBM Storwize V7000 disk system that I thought I would bring to your attention.

The first review is [IBM Storwize V7000] from Roger Howorth of ZDNet UK. Here are some quotes:

• "Under the hood, the Storwize V7000 is built from technologies originally developed for IBM's enterprise-class storage systems, so the V7000 benefits from a comprehensive set of high-end features that have been scaled down for mid-range buyers."
• "Initial configuration couldn't be simpler."
• "We really liked the layout and functionality of the GUI."

The second review is [IBM Storwize V7000 Disk System: Enterprise-class Function in a Midrange Storage Package] from Tony Palmer of Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). Here are some quotes:

• "Storwize V7000 is virtual storage that offers efficiency and flexibility through built-in SSD optimization and "thin provisioning" technologies while enabling users to virtualize and re-use existing disk systems..."
• "Storwize V7000 advanced functionality also enables non-disruptive migration of data from existing storage, simplifying implementation and minimizing disruption to users."
• "The Storwize V7000 graphical user interface is a browser-based, easy to navigate intuitive GUI."
• "ESG Lab found that getting started with the Storwize V7000 disk system was intuitive and straightforward."
• "Easy Tier increases the efficiency and simplicity of deploying SSD drives."

This is a great review, following the February ESG Report on [IBM Storwize V7000: Real-world Mixed Workload Performance in VMware Environments].

If you are looking for midrange storage with a nice set of enterprise-class features, consider the Storwize V7000!

technorati tags: IBM, Storwize V7000, Roger Howorth, ZDNet, Tony Palmer, ESG, GUI

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

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

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

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

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.

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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

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

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.

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

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

Here are upcoming conferences I will be presenting at for November 2011.

Next week, I will be in Auckland, New Zealand for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium], similar to the one I attended in Orlando, Florida last July. Here are the sessions I will present:

xST03 - Introduction to IBM Storwize V7000

An exciting new addition to the IBM storage line, the Storwize V7000 is a very versatile and solid choice as a midrange storage device. This session will cover a technical overview of the controller as well as its positioning within the overall IBM storage line.

xST04 - XIV Implementation, Migration and Optimization

Attend this session to learn how to integrate the IBM XIV Storage System in your IT environment. After this session, you should understand where the IBM XIV Storage system fits, and understand how to take full advantage of the performance capabilities of XIV Storage by using the massive parallelism of its grid architecture. You will learn how to migrate data onto the XIV and hear about real world client experiences.

xST05 - IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era

Want to understand IBM's storage strategy better? This session will cover the three key themes of IBM's Smarter Computing initiative: Big Data, Optimized Systems, and Cloud. IBM System Storage strategy has been aligned to meet the storage efficiency, data protection and retention required to meet these challenges.

xST06 - Understanding IBM's Storage Encryption Options

IBM offers encryption in a variety of ways. Data can be encrypted on the server, in the SAN switch, or on the disk or tape drive. This session will explain how encryption works, and explain the pros and cons with each encryption option.

The week after that, I will be in Melbourne, Australia for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium]. Here are the sessions I will present:

sAC01 - IBM Information Archive for email, Files and eDiscovery

IBM has focused on data protection and retention, and the IBM Information Archive is the ideal product to achieve it. Come to this session to discuss archive solutions, compliance regulations, and support for full-text indexing and eDiscovery to support litigation.

sGE04 - IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era

Want to understand IBM's storage strategy better? This session will cover the three key themes of IBM's Smarter Computing initiative: Big Data, Optimized Systems, and Cloud. IBM System Storage strategy has been aligned to meet the storage efficiency, data protection and retention required to meet these challenges.

sSM03 - IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center – Overview and Update

IBM's latest release of IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is v4.2.2, a storage resource management tool that manages both IBM and non-IBM storage devices, including disk systems, tape libraries, and SAN switches. This session will give an overview of the various components of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center and provide an update on what's new in this product.

sSN06 - SONAS and the Smart Business Storage Cloud (SBSC)

Confused over IBM's Cloud strategy? Trying to figure out how IBM Storage plays in private, hybrid or public cloud offerings? This session will cover both the SONAS integrated appliance and the Smart Business Storage Cloud customized solution, and will review available storage services on the IBM Cloud.

sTA01 - Tape Storage Reinvented: What's New and Exciting in the Tape World?

This very informative session will keep you up to date with the latest tape developments. These include the TS3500 tape library connector Model SC1 (Shuttle). The shuttle enables extreme scalability of over 300,000 tape cartridges in a single library image by interconnecting multiple tape libraries with a unique, high speed transport system. The world's fastest tape drive, the TS1140 3592-E07, will also be presented. The performance and functionality of the new TS1140 as well as the new 4TB tape media will be discussed. Also, the IBM System Storage Linear Tape File System (LTFS), including the Library Edition, will be presented. LTFS allows a disk-like, drag-and-drop interface for tape. This is a not-to-be-missed session for all you tape lovers out there!

In December, I will be going to Gartner's Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, but the agenda has not been finalized, so I will save that for another post.

technorati tags: IBM, Storage Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia, Storwize V7000, XIV, Storage Strategy, Smarter Computing, Encryption, Information Archive, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, SONAS, SBSC, TS3500, LTFS