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New Cisco MDS9148 fills a gap
I wrote up this blog entry and then deleted the whole entry while editing a typo. It seems to be a glitch in the developerworks Blog interface, but it could also be a code 16 (problem lies 16 inches in front of keyboard). Anyway.... Cisco have filled a gap in the product line with their new MDS9148. IBM have offered the 4 Gbps capable MDS9124 24 ports) and MDS9134 (32 ports plus 2 x 10... [More]
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Don't stand so close to me
Its a given today that SAN implementations have redundancy by design. When we sell SAN switches we always urge clients to use dual fabrics. Its accepted industry best practice. By having hosts with dual HBAs, each host can attach to both fabrics and survive the failure of a SAN switch. . Equally when we sell SAN Volume Controller (SVC) we always sell the SVC nodes in pairs. Each SVC node can run... [More]
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Dont throw away the dust covers!
So something I truly hate to see when visiting computer rooms is fibre cables hanging in the breeze with no dust covers, their precious glass connectors exposed to the world. Even worse are fibre patch panels and HBAs without dust covers. . When new equipment arrives, every HBA, every patch panel port and every fibre optic cable will have a dust cover. So what to do with these little guys once... [More]
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Whats new in SVC 6.1 code?
The SAN Volume Controller ( SVC) has truly come of age in 2010. With release 6.1 we not only combine it with the very mature RAID adapters of
the DS8000 to produce the Storwize
V7000 , but we continue to develop the SVC as the world’s leading Storage
Virtualization platform. For existing SVC clients, you will be able to download SVC code 6.1 once it
reaches the Generally Available (GA) date,... [More]
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Kangaroo Hops with Brocade
(image care of www.interestingfacts.org) If you have Brocade fibre channel switches in your SAN, you need to be aware of the method which Brocade use to manage firmware releases. All 4 and 8 Gbps Brocade SAN switches use a Linux based firmware which Brocade call Fabric Operating System or FOS. Updates to this firmware are released in families. This started with version 4, then version 5... [More]
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Why consider IBM Network Advisor?
Many of the preventable issues that occur in a SAN fabric can be avoided by using the right management and monitoring software. One way to get this software is to create or adapt open source packages. While I really like the idea (and price) of roll-your-own solutions, it is not always practical. Apart from the fact that you need to have staff with the relevant skills to do this, long-term... [More]
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How to simplify your SAN zoning
Lets imagine a new rack server or a new blade server has been added to your Fibre Channel SAN. The first job for the SAN administrator is to zone it to the storage it requires access to. The task normally runs something like this: Identify the WWPNs for the new server HBA. We can do this using Qlogic SAN Surfer or Emulex HBAnywhere, or by looking at the WWPNs reported by the Fibre Channel... [More]
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IBM Storage Fix information as of January 29, 2012
My good friend Rob Jackard from the ATS Group has compiled this list of updates to the IBM Support site. It is a very comprehensive list of updates, flashes, tips and warnings and it is well worth spending a few minutes scanning the list to see if any apply to your environment. There is even a warning about a 497 day bug . Ideally none of these tips should be news to you if you are getting... [More]
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Semmelweis could see the problem
Ignaz Semmelweis I listened to another great podcast from the Freakonomics team recently in which they recounted the story of Doctor Ignaz Semmelweis, which inspired me to make a connection to something I see in my day to day job. Doctor Semmelweis worked at the Vienna General Hospital in the 1840s, delivering babies, teaching students and performing autopsies . Now while working there he... [More]
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Where on earth are the IBM VMware SRAs?
I always laugh when people say to me: I wouldn't know what to blog about! When you work in pre-sales support, you constantly get asked questions and each one of them could be the subject of a new blog post. Right now the most common question I am getting is: I am implementing VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) . One of the components I need are vendor specific Site Recovery Agents (SRA).... [More]
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