Hi all,   Just a quick notices post to remind everyone that the next Spectrum Virtualize UK User Group sessions are happening at IBM Hursley on 8th and 9th of May.   8th May - Business Partner Day 9th May - Customer Day   For more details, and registration information, see the...   [Continue Reading]

I completely missed the announcement a couple of weeks ago for version 7.8.1 of the Spectrum Virtualize software. Traveling too much at the end of last month and forgot to post an update on whats new. This release I am dubbing the ‘customer council’ release. Last year we started a...   [Continue Reading]

Here’s another topic I often get asked about. Things used to be quite simple and I covered this for many years in my Configuring for Optimal Performance series of technical university presentations (also here on the blog - parts 1, 2, 3) - and the basics are still the same when configuring...   [Continue Reading]

Spectrum Virtualize Quorum Happy New Year to all. I’ve been getting a few questions relating to quorum devices, and in particular the IP quorum and what happens when various different failure scenarios occur. I thought it was worth detailing things here. So first some background. What are...   [Continue Reading]

7.8.0 Spectrum Virtualize Back in November we announce the 7.8 updates for SVC, Storwize and V9000 - the products running Spectrum Virtualize software, and a new expansion enclosure offering over 1.4PB RAW capacity in just 5U rack space… Transparent Cloud Tiering TCT is IBM’s general...   [Continue Reading]

 Today we are lucky to have the first in a series of guest posts from Dr Bill Scales. Bill is one of the lead product architects in the storage team in Hursley. Bills depth and breadth of knowledge of storage systems is second to none, which means there is always a queue of people waiting to...   [Continue Reading]

IBM Software Defined solutions take agility to the next level – the ability to easily move data and workloads to and from public clouds.   "Today’s businesses are driven by data and the infrastructure has to provide the agility needed to quickly address new requirements....   [Continue Reading]

Yesterday I spent an hour or so looking for something I knew was out in the blogosphere so I could pull down the reference to it, its frustrating that even when you know something is out there, and no amount of google search phrases can find it for you. But what I did find was a couple of my old...   [Continue Reading]

Just to make life as difficult as possible for the development and test teams, and not content with refreshing the lower end Storwize V5000 products earlier this year, today IBM is announcing a refresh to the Storwize V7000, FlashSystem V9000 and SVC platforms, some new all-flash variants of...   [Continue Reading]

A few weeks back myself and Lloyd Vickery, from the IBM NZ Systems team, attended an IDG run CIO roundtable event. The insights from those attending give a great view into the concerns and needs of CIO's today - when it comes to data, getting useful information from the data, and the ethics...   [Continue Reading]

New “Differential” Licensing Over the years its become clear that a TB isn’t what it used to be, for example the maximum tier of SVC license capacity back in 2003 was 32TB… so things have changed. We wanted to reflect this in the managed (mdisk) capacity licensing. Not all...   [Continue Reading]

Last week I covered some of the main updates in the 7.7.0 release of Spectrum Virtualize, this week I am in IBM RTP in North Carolina and can fill you in on yet more! New Flash and Drive Options   Lower Cost Flash Drives Just as we have had different price and performance point spinning HDD...   [Continue Reading]

Last week while in Sweden and Denmark I posted about the new 7.7.0 Spectrum Virtualize software that was announced while I was there. Back home in New Zealand now, and got some time to fill you in on the rest of the features this new release brings to SVC, Storwize, FlashSystem V9000 and VersaStack....   [Continue Reading]

Introducing Spectrum Virtualize Version 7.7.0 Software This week I have been travelling in the Nordics. Despite now living in New Zealand, I can’t escape from the great User Group events that the Swedish team have been running for many years now, and its great to actually visit Stockholm in...   [Continue Reading]