Barry Whyte is a 'Master Inventor' working in the Systems Group. Now based in Auckland New Zealand, Barry is working for the IBM ATS team covering Storage Virtualization for the AP region. Previously Barry was based in IBM Hursley, UK. Barry primarly works on the IBM SAN Volume Controller and Storwize family of virtual disk systems. Barry graduated from The University of Glasgow in 1996 with a B.Sc (Hons) in Computing Science. In his 20 years at IBM he has also worked on the successful Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) and the IBM DS8000 range. Barry joined the SVC development team soon after its inception and has held many positions before taking on his long running role as performance architect. In 2015 Barry moved to New Zealand, but maintains a part-time working role for the Hursley team working as a performance consultant. Outside of work, Barry enjoys playing golf and all things to do with Rotary Engines. All posts on this blog are (c) Copyright International Business Machines 2007-2016 - reproduction without prior approval is prohibited.
 For those of you in the UK, a chance to come along and see us at the SNIA Datacenter Academy event on 19th May in the QEII conference Centre. I've provided a link (the image) to the IBM customer / end user registration page, please register and come along on the day. This event is aimed at end... [Continue Reading]
There's been much discussion on the inter-web thing and the blogosphere regarding the various RFA (Release for Announce) documents IBM provides prior to official press-releasing products. Well with so much to cover the IBM Information Infrastructure event in France this week was chosen as the launch... [Continue Reading]
 As this is my last day in the office until the new year, I thought I'd take a few minute to quickly wish all my readers all the best over the Festive season. I've already set one of my new year resolutions to make time to blog more - so all being well, I'll be more active on here next year,... [Continue Reading]
Two posts in one week. Doing well. I set one of my resolutions this year to post at least once a week – hence my new numbering scheme. Maybe I’ll use the fact that 2010-2.2 and further double posts count for the odd week I may miss :)  Benchmarketing. It’s a dodgy term, and even dodgier maths. We... [Continue Reading]
Today we are have made available IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) Version 4.2.1 with more function than previously announced, including new VMware support, and also announced that IBM has passed an historic milestone by shipping its 10,000th SVC node. A press release issued today (see... [Continue Reading]
On Tuesday 22nd August we announced the latest code update that will be available soon for the Spectrum Virtualize family. For the first time since 2012 we have bumped the major version number to 8. This signifies some exciting new features that begin with this release in 3Q and will be expanded... [Continue Reading]
I still haven't finished sorting out the photos from the German SVC User Group session I attended last month, but here is your chance to come and visit us in IBM Hursley, the home of SVC development. This event is open to SVC users, primarily in the UK, however if you fancy a trip to the UK in May... [Continue Reading]
Our eldest son (just turned 5) has been on school holidays for the last few weeks - driving my wife round the twist and winding his little sister up a treat at the same time. Today was my last day in the office for a week or so and we have the usual 'kids' stuff planned for next week. Anyway, my son... [Continue Reading]
Two posts in the one day - that's probably a record for me, but this one is really just a link. An interesting interview with IBM Storage General Manager, Andy Monshaw over at eWeek . Andy describes, amongst other things, some of the customer business benefits Storage Virtualization can bring, some... [Continue Reading]
With the GA of IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) v4.2.1 only a couple of weeks away, its been the usual last minute rush to get the last few code changes benchmarked on my performance stand. Luckily the set of scripts and tools I inherited, and have modified over the years, allow 24x7 benchmarking,... [Continue Reading]
I've been head down for the last few weeks, getting a chance to enhance a chunk of code in the middle of the SVC code stack for the next release, the cache. SVC caching is based on an LRU (Least Recently Used) cache model with partitioning added to make things cope with differing capabilities of the... [Continue Reading]
I must admit that one of the things I have looked forward to this year has been the Saturday qualifying and Sunday race days in the Formula 1 calendar. It's been a great F1 season so far, not just because I'm a Brit (well Scotsman abroad - Coulhtard was always British when he won... ) Nobody, least... [Continue Reading]
I guess I didn't really get the message across in my previous post, well certainly not in the way I inteded from the emails and comments here. The main point I was making was with respect to using a "vanilla" Windows install as the base operating system for a storage product, in particular one in... [Continue Reading]
I was a little out of my normal loop the last week or two. This week is full with customer and potential customer visits. Today we had an SVC stalwart customer visit, to not only provide some great feedback on how SVC has over the last 5 years helped them to reclaim their lives (storage admins can... [Continue Reading]
It seems hard to believe that its been a year since my first post on this blog. As it seems with all things as we get older, in some ways it seems only yesterday, but in other ways its feels like I've always been here... Anyway, just a quickie post to say thanks to all my readers, comment-ers, and... [Continue Reading]
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