Dino Quintero's Redbooks Blog

5 things to know about IBM Spectrum Scale:

• Spectrum Scale was introduced in 1998, formerly known as IBM GPFS, and also formerly known as code name IBM Elastic Storage.
• Spectrum Scale was designed from the beginning to support high performance parallel workloads, and has since proven effectiveness for a variety of applications.
• Spectrum Scale is designed to help organizations tackle emerging file storage challenges.
• A Spectrum Scale file system is built from a collection of storage devices that contain the file system data and metadata.
• Spectrum Scale helps simplify data management with integrated tools designed to help manage petabytes of data and billions of files

For more information, refer to the following website:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/spectrum/scale/index.html

5 Things to Know about the IBM Elastic Storage Server (ESS):

• The Elastic Storage Server (ESS) is built on IBM Spectrum Scale (formerly IBM GPFS) for Linux.
• The Elastic Storage Server solution combines the CPU and I/O capability of the IBM POWER8 architecture.
• The Elast Storage Server deploys the latest solid state (SSD), SAS and Nearline SAS drives.
• The Elastic Storage Server is equipped to manage the complete data lifecycle.
• The Elastic Storage Server solution is designed for a variety of workloads.

For more information, refer to the following website:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/spectrum/ess/

• New generation of data management innovation for cost effective analytics
• Next generation database for data intensive analytics and reporting
• New technology in DB2 for analytic queries taking advantages of the optimization with the IBM POWER platform
• Industry solution delivering storage savings, performance, and time to value
• This solution combines the experience and expertise of IBM to deliver technology leadership

5 Things You Should Know about IBM Data Engine for Genomics - Power Systems Edition

• The architecture is designed to address the grand challenge of analyzing increasingly large genome-related datasets.
• The high-throughput architecture and reference design enables fast turnaround for a wide variety of workflows including genomic medicine, agrigenomics, biofuels, forensics and drug development. 
• This solution is based on multi-year collaborations with leaders in the Life Sciences industry.
• This dynamic platform integrates high performance compute, storage, workflow orchestration and portal access, and can also be easily adapted to support large scale and cloud based deployments. 
• The most recent solution version further exploits the capabilities of IBM POWER8 and introduces the IBM Elastic Storage Server (ESS), defining a complete solution containing all of the hardware and software elements required to accomplish genomics processing for data analysis.

For more information about IBM Data Engine for Genomics – Power Systems Edition Architecture and Reference Design Version 3.0, refer to the following website:

http://ibm.co/1i1NPzi

For more information about IBM Health Care and Life Sciences solutions, refer to the following website:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/solutions/industry/healthcare.html

• 5 things you should know about IBM High performance computing (HPC) and technical computing solutions:
• IBM Power Systems high performance computing and technical computing solutions deliver faster time to value with intuitive and powerful solutions. 
• Configurable into highly scalable Linux clusters, Power Systems offer extreme performance for demanding workloads such as genomics, finance, computational chemistry, oil and gas exploration, and high performance data analytics.
• Hardware, solutions and ecosystem:
  • IBM Power LC server line for clusters and clouds
  • Scale-out servers for Linux
  • Elastic Storage Server (ESS)
  • OpenPOWER Foundation
• Software, solutions, and ecosystem:
  • IBM Platform Computing software
  • IBM Spectrum Scale Storage Software (formerly GPFS)
  • Extreme Cloud Administraton Toolkit (xCAT)
  • Parallel Environment (PE)
  • Engineering and Scientific Subroutine Library (ESSL) and Parallel ESSL
• About the OpenPOWER Foundation:  The OpenPOWER Foundation is a collaboration encouraging the adoption of an open server architecture for data centers. It has grown to more than 150 members across 22 countries. IBM’s POWER architecture is the cornerstone of innovation for OpenPOWER, creating a computing platform available to all.  For more information about the OpenPOWER Foundation, refer to the following website: http://openpowerfoundation.org/

For more information on IBM High Performance Computing (HPC) and Technical Computing Solutions, refer to the following website:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/solutions/high-performance-computing/index.html

• Seamlessly tap cloud resources
• Policy-based access control
• Flex resource up and down to manage cost
• Report usage and costs by project or department
• Reduce IT infrastructure costs

To understand more about this offering and its capabilities, refer to the IBM Platform Computing Cloud Service narrated demonstration by Gord Sissons at:

https://ibm.biz/BdRKv3

https://www-304.ibm.com/connections/blogs/platformcomputing/entry/tappingthecloud?lang=en_us

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/technicalcomputing/platformcomputing/

For more detailed information on IBM Platform Computing solutions including IBM Platform HPC, refer to:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/technicalcomputing/platformcomputing/

• Spectrum Scale now part of IBM Spectrum Storage family, part of IBM's $1 Billion investment in software defined storage.
• Single global namespace across all data tiers, including flash and cloud (service on Softlayer).
• Object storage with integration with Swift (will be better with 4.1.1 release, not sure you can say that in a blog).
• Scalability to handle the massive, ever-growing amounts of data in the new CAMS world. 
• Open and flexible, available as software (on almost any hardware), as a bundled IBM solution, or as a service running on Softlayer.

5 Things You Should Know about IBM Watson:

• IBM Watson is made of a cluster of IBM Power Systems servers
• The cluster also contains additional I/O, network and cluster controller nodes
• IBM Watson is designed to find insight, discover breakthroughts, and predict outcomes
• IBM Watson is unfolding cognitive thinking by predicting events and taking preemtive actions
• IBM Watson can help businesses analize their data and help them become more competitive

For more information, refer to the following website:  http://ibm.co/1VCgjCa

5 Things you should know about the IBM Data Engine for Analytics Solution - Power Systems Edition

• The IBM Data Engine for Analytics is a customizable infrastructure solution with integrated software optimized for big data and analytics workloads. 
• The IBM Data Engine is ideal for workloads such as Hadoop or Spark and provides flexible and adjustable storage and compute resources that are easy to deploy and align to specific line business requirements. 
• This means you can move or add more storage and compute when and where it’s needed to address multiple workloads as requirements change and evolve. It provides an easy onramp for clients to lay the foundation for bringing different big data and analytics workloads together onto one infrastructure.
• Built on IBM Power Systems, the IBM Data Engine for Analytics fully integrates the innovative capabilities of IBM Elastic Storage Server, IBM Platform Computing and networking components with Linux on Power scale-out systems.  Clients can add big data and analytics software such as IBM InfoSphere BigInsights for Hadoop and Spark based analytics, IBM InfoSphere Streams for high ingest streaming analytics, and IBM Watson Explorer analytical components for advanced Natural Language Processing of unstructured data. 
• The deep integration and optimization of analytics workload performance on Power Systems enables businesses to reach unparalleled performance to deliver insights to the business faster.

The following are the features and benefits of the solution:

Rapid Deployment

• Complete, pre-assembled and tested infrastructure with big data and analytics software preloaded.
• On-site services for fast configuration and data center integration.
• Intelligent cluster management and automation for effective deployment.

Flexibility

• Easily set-up and manage workloads for multiple tenants.
• Adjustable resource allocation to meet diverse line of business demands.
• Scalable and extendable as needs change and as the enterprise grows.

Efficiency

• Reliability without data duplication.
• Tailored big data and analytics optimizations.
• Lays the foundation for consolidating traditional data analytics with new workloads such as Hadoop and Spark.

For more information, refer to the following website:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/solutions/bigdata-analytics/data-engine/

• PowerHA is the IBM Power Systems solution for high availability
• Developed for and integrated with AIX for robust reliable operations
• Industry leading continuously available options with HyperSwap
• Multi-site solutions for both high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) scenarios
• 100% IBM service and support