Once again it's Tuesday, which means IBM announcement day!

Today IBM announced [two new DS3400 SAN Express Models]. These two new models will replace the IBM System Storage DS3400 SAN Express Kit model 41U and 42U to be withdrawn from marketing today. The DS3000 series of scalable, flexible, and affordable storage solutions support IBM System x, System p, and BladeCenter servers.

Two new IBM System Storage DS3400 SAN Express Kits are being introduced that provide the parts needed to setup and configure a SAN with the exception of a SAN switch that can be ordered separately. The IBM System Storage DS3400 SAN Express Kits contain Emulex EZPilot software that enables automated installation and configuration of the SAN components. IBM System Storage DS3400 SAN Express Kits models 41S and 42S and Emulex EZPilot software work in conjunction with the IBM TotalStorage SAN16B-2 Express Model Switch which comes with eight ports and eight 4 Gbps SFPs. The EZPilot software can support configurations with either one or two SAN16B-2 switches.

The 41S is a single-controller model DS3400 with two HBA cards and four cables. The 42S is the dual-controller model with two HBA cards and eight cables.

technorati tags: IBM, DS3400, SAN, Express, models, System x, System p, BladeCenter, disk, storage, systems, single-controller, dual-controller, 41S, 42S, Emulex, EZPilot

[Read More]

Tags:  networking disk

Having survived my two weeks in Asia, I am now taking a vacation, to attend the[Comic-Con 2008] convention in San Diego, California.

technorati tags: Comic-Con

[Read More]

"The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums." --- Peter De Vries The quote above applies to blogs as well. Those about competitive products of which the blogger has little to no hands-on experience tend to be terribly misleading or technically inaccurate. We saw this last month as Sun Microsystems' Jeff Savit tried to discuss the IBM System z10 EC mainframe. This time, it comes from EMC bloggers discussing NetApp equipment, and by association, IBM System Storage N series gear.I was going to comment on the ridiculous posts by fellow bloggers from EMC about SnapLock compliance feature on the NetApp, but my buddies at NetApp had already done this for me, saving me the trouble.

From EMC:

• [NetApp's Compliance Isn't Compliant], by Scott Waterhouse
• [NetApp SnapLock badly Broken, by Mark Twomey (StorageZilla)
• [Got Rabies?], by Mark Twomey (StorageZilla)

From NetApp:

• [Responsibility vs. Hysteria], by Val Borcovici
• [NetApp SnapLock Continues Working], by Kostadis Roussos

The hysterical nature of writing from EMC, and the calm responses from NetApp, speak volumes about the culturesof both companies.

The key point is that none of the "Non-erasable, Non-Rewriteable" (NENR) storage out there are certified as compliant by any government agency on the planet. Governments just aren't in the business of certifying such things. The best you can get is a third-party consultant, such as [Cohasset Associates], to help make decisions that are best for each particular situation.

In addition to SnapLock on N series, IBM offers the [IBM System Storage DR550], WORM tape and optical systems, all of which have been deemed compliant to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC 17a-4] federal regulations by Cohasset Associates. For medical patient records and images like X-rays, IBM offers the Grid Medical Archive Solution [GMAS]designed to meet the requirements of the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act[HIPAA].For other government or industry regulations, consult with your legal counsel.

technorati tags: IBM, EMC, NetApp, N series, SnapLock, compliance, compliant, NENR, WORM, DR550, SEC, 17a-4, GMAS, HIPAA, tape, optical, disk, systems, Cohasset Associates, z10, EC, mainframe, Sun

[Read More]

Tags:  disk lifecycle

I had the afternoon free, so I went to see a "Bollywood" movie filmed here on location in Mumbai, India titled"Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na" which I was told roughly translatesto "I know you, but I really don't know you." Here is [the official Web site], [picture galleries], [film reviews], and a[plot synopsis (spoiler alert, gives away all the surprises and the totally predictable ending)]. I was warned that this musical would be nearly three hours long, that the singing and dialogue would be in Hindi language, and there would be no English subtitles. I don't speak Hindi, and would not be able to understand a single word the actors said. How bad could it be? Despite the fact that there were nearly 20 members in the cast, the story jumps back and forth in both place and time, with some dream sequences thrown in for cinematic effect, I was able to understand quite a bit. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie! Perhaps its a sign of a good movie that you can understand most of it purely from the visual aspects.

The same can be said for presentations that you give in foreign countries. Both in Japan and India, I had plenty of visuals to complement the text on the page, and the words that I spoke. Shawn over at [Anecdote] blog points to this greatpresentation by Garr Reynolds, author of [Presentation Zen]. The slide deck below has some key takeaways and quotes from Dr. John Medina's latest book "Brain Rules" that apply to presentations.

As the world becomes more globally integrated, communicating visually will be an important skill to develop.

technorati tags: IBM, Mumbai, India, Bollywood, Hindi, Japan, Garr Reynolds, John Medina, Brain Rules

[Read More]

Tags:  marketing

Network Products Guide has two of my favorite IBM products up for "Best Product of 2008" awards.

IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller is up for:

• "Best Storage"
• "Best Virtualization"

IBM System z10 Enterprise Class mainframe server is up for:

• "Best Cryptography"
• "Best Data Center Management"
• "Best Server Solution"
• "Best Virtualization"

If you'd like to put in your vote, go to their virtual[Voting Booth].

technorati tags: IBM, SVC, z10, Network Products Guide, voting booth, best, storage, virtualization, cryptography, data center, management, server, solution

[Read More]

Tags:  disk

Well, it's Tuesday, and so it is "announcement day" again! Actually, for me it is Wednesday morning herein Mumbai, India, but since I was "press embargoed" until 4pm EDT in talking about these enhancements, I had to wait until Wednesday morning here to talk about them.

World's Fastest 1TB tape drive

IBM announced its new enterprise [TS1130 tape drive]and corresponding [TS3500 tape library support]. This one has a funny back-story. Last week while we were preparing the Press Release, we debated on whether we should compare the 1TB per cartridge capacity as double that of Sun's Enterprise T10000 (500GB), or LTO-4 (800GB). The problem changed when Sun announced on Monday they too had a 1TB tape drive, so now instead ofsaying that we had the "World's First 1TB tape drive", we quickly changed this to the "World's Fastest 1TB tape drive" instead. At 160MB/sec top speed, IBM's TS1130 is 33 percent faster than Sun's latest announcement. Sun was rather vague when they will actually ship their new units, so IBM may still end up being first to deliver as well.

Here is an IBM podcast to hear more about it:

	Listen to IBM's Charlie Andrews describe the new IBM TS1130 1 TB tape drive (right click to save as or use player below)
	Please enable Javascript to view this page.

While EMC and other disk-only vendors have stopped claiming that "tape is dead", these recent announcements from IBM and Sun indicate that indeed tape is alive and well. IBM is able to borrow technologies from disk, such as the Giant Magneto Resistive (GMR) head over to its tape offerings, which means much of the R&D for disk applies to tape, keeping both forms ofstorage well invested. Tape continues to be the "greenest" storage option, more energy efficient than disk, optical, film, microfiche and even paper.

Improved Reporting

On the LTO front, IBM enhanced the reporting capabilities of its[TS3310] midrange tape library. This includes identifying the resource utilization of the drives, reporting on media integrity, and improved diagnostics to support library-managed encryption.

IBM System Storage DR550

As a blended disk-and-tape solution, the [IBM System Storage DR550] easily replaces the EMC Centera to meet compliance storagerequirements. IBM announced that we have greatly expanded its scalability, being able to support both 1TBdisk drives, as well as being able to attach to either IBM or Sun's 1TB tape drives.

Massive Array of Idle Disks (MAID)

IBM now offers a "Sleep Mode" in the firmware of the [IBM System Storage DCS9550], which is often called "Massive Array of Idle Disks" (MAID) or spin-down capability. This can reduce the amount of power consumed during idle times.

That's a lot of exciting stuff. I'm off to breakfast now.

technorati tags: IBM, TS1130, TS3500, tape, systems, 1TB, drive, library, LTO, LTO-4, TS3310, Charlie Andrews, DR550, MAID, DCS9550, Sleep Mode, Sun, EMC

[Read More]

Tags:  announcements tape green disk

We have successfully arrived to Mumbai, India. Since this is my first time in India, I decidedto check out the town by going to the local McDonald's® restaurant. As a former software engineer of McDonald's, I love the food, and try to visit a McDonald's in every country I visit. Wikipedia calls our transportation an [Auto Rickshaw], but the locals called it a "tuk-tuk". This is not my first time in one, they have them in Thailand and Mexico as well. We had the hotel identify the address of the closest McDonald's to our hotel. From past experienceI know that tuk-tuk drivers will suggest alternatives, in an effort to earn a larger fare, or to redirectto a preferred location where the driver might get special kick-backs. Our driver was no different.

The traffic was treacherous, the roadswere in roughshod condition, and sad looking stray dogs digging through piles of rubbish were everywhere. The local "Daily News and Analysis" newspaper this week estimates that there are over 70,000 stray dogs in Mumbai alone.What to do with all of these strays is a matter of controversy. In preparation for the Olympic games, China hasasked its restaurants to [take"dog" off their menus].Having lived in one of the poorest countries, and one of the richest, nothing surprises me anymore.

My IBM colleague, Curtis Neal, decided to join me for this adventure. Finally, after about 20 minutes, our driver parks the tuk-tuk. He told us the restaurant is only aboutthree blocks away by foot, he would allow us to treat him to lunch, and then he will take us back to the hotel.While we appreciated his fantastic imagination, we told him we just wanted to be taken one-way to the restaurant, to drop us off at the front door, and we would find another tuk-tuk for the return. After a bit of argument, we settled on being left only one block away, and we would walk the rest.While we could not see exactly where the restaurant was when we got out, he at least pointed us in the right direction.

The problem was that we approached the restaurant from behind, and came up to its equivalent of a "drive thru" window,ordered our food, and then went to the second window to pick up our order. We were eating on the street. It was not until I decided to take this photo of the restaurant, that we discovered there was an entire seating area upstairs, and around the cornerthe main entrance! There were plenty of tuk-tuks picking up and dropping people off, so we have no idea why ourprevious driver was unwilling to take us the entire distance.

Cows are sacred here in India, so thereare no beef-based hamburgers to choose from. My choices for sandwiches were: [McChicken]® Fish Filet Veggie burger, made from brown rice Salad burger, basically a [BLT] without the bacon Since my nutritionist asked me to avoid carbs and fried foods, I chose the McChicken with cheese combo meal with fries and a Coke.

Getting back was also a challenge. While we had no problem haling a tuk-tuk, we had no idea the address of ourhotel, and our driver had no idea where it was. We ended up driving around the city until we found a differenthotel, asked them if they knew where it was, and then eventually getting to our hotel. This is something I shouldhave planned for in advance, getting a card with the hotel details on it before leaving.

While it might seem like a simple trip, Curtis and I probably learned more about India this way than spending a week inside the comforts of our hotel.

technorati tags: IBM, Mumbai, India, McDonald's, China, stray dogs, restaurant, menu, Olympics, McChicken, Coke, tuk-tuk, auto rickshaw

[Read More]

Tags:  marketing

Thirteen months ago, fellow IBM blogger Bob Sutor suggested the potential for avatars to [move from one virtual world to another].I thought this was far, far in the future myself, but this week, IBM and Linden Labs, the makersof Second Life, successfully teleported an avatar from SecondLife over to OpenSim. Here is the[Press Release].

Linden Labs has this [FAQ] for the interoperability announcement. The [Wall Street Journal] and [Financial Times] discuss the significance and importance of this major development.

If you are thinking there is no business value here, consider that Cisco has this incredible [11-minute demonstration video] that haspresenters in one city on the stage at another city.

Well, my job is done here in Tokyo, and my team is off next to Mumbai, India. This of course will takethe bulk of tomorrow in airplanes and airports, and not be as easy as teleporting in the metaverse!

technorati tags: IBM, Bob Sutor, Linden Labs, Second Life, secondlife, OpenSim, Cisco, Tokyo, Japan, Mumbai, India, metaverse, teleport, avatar

[Read More]

Tags:  secondlife

"At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl. "This porridge is too hot!" she exclaimed. So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl. "This porridge is too cold," she said So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge. "Ahhh, this porridge is just right," she said happily and she ate it all up. -- [Goldilocks and the Three Bears] illustration by Arthur Rackham from [English Fairy Tales, by Flora Annie Steel]

Continuing my week in Tokyo, Japan, I was going to title this post "Chunks, Extents and Grains", but decidedinstead to use the fairy tale above.

Fellow blogger BarryB from EMC, on his The Storage Anarchist blog, once again shows off his [PhotoShop talents], in his post [the laurel and hardy of thin provisioning]. This time, BarryB depicts fellow blogger and IBM master inventor, Barry Whyte, as Stan Laurel and fellow blogger Hu Yoshida from HDS as Oliver Hardy.

At stake is the comparison in various implementations of thin provisioning among the major storage vendors.On the "thick end", Hu presents his case for 42MB chunks on his post [When is Thin Provisioning Too Thin]. On the "thin end", IBMer BarryW presents the "fine-grained" details of Space-efficient Volumes (SEV), made available with the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) v4.3, in his series of posts:

• [SVC 4.3.0 - Space-Efficient (thin provisioning), Mirroring and much more]
• [SVC 4.3.0 - SEV and SEFC in detail]
• [Morcombe and Wise]

BarryB paints both implementations as "extremes" in inefficiency. Some excerpts from his post:

"... Hitachi's "chubby" provisioning is probably more performance efficient with external storage than is the SVC's "thin" approach. But it is still horribly inefficient in context of capacity utilization.

... the "thin extent" size used by Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning is both larger than the largest that SVC uses, and (significantly) smaller than what Hitachi uses."

"free" may be the most expensive solution you can buy...

Before you rush off to put a bunch of SVCs running (free) SEV in front of your storage arrays, you might want to consider the performance implications of that choice. Likewise, for Hitachi's DP, you probably want to understand the impact on capacity utilization that DP will have. DP isn't free, and it isn't very space efficient, either."

BarryB would like you to think that since EMC has chosen an "extent" size between 257KB and 41MB it must therefore be the optimal setting, not too hot, and not too cold. As I mentioned last January in my post[DoesSize Really Matter for Performance?], EMC engineers had not yet decided what that extent size should be, andBarryB is noticeably vague on the current value.According to this [VMware whitepaper],the thin extent size is currently 768 KBin size. Future versions of the EMC Enginuity operating environment may change the thin extent size. (I am sure theEMC engineers are smarter and more decisive than BarryB would lead us to believe!)

BarryB is correct that any thin provisioning implementation is not "free", even though IBM's implementation is offeredat no additional charge. Some writes may be slowed downwaiting for additional storage to be allocated to satisfy the request, and some amount of storage must be set asideto hold the metadata directory to point to all these chunks, extents or grains. For the convenience of not havingto dynamically expand LUNs manually as more space is needed, you will pay both a performance and capacity "price".

However, as they say, the [proof of the pudding is in the eating], or perhaps I should say porridge in this case.Given that the DMX4 is slower than both HDS USP-V and IBM SVC, you won't see EMC publishing industry-standard[SPC benchmarks] using their"thin extent" implementation anytime soon. IBM allows a choice of grain size, from 32KB to 256KB, in an elegantdesign that keeps the metadata directory less than 0.1 to 0.5 percent overhead. I would be surprised if EMC canmake a case to be more efficient than that! The performance tests are stillbeing run, but what I have seen so far, people will be very pleased with the minimal impact from IBM SEV, an acceptable trade-off for improved utilization and reduced out-of-space conditions.

So if you are a client waiting for your EMC equipment to be fully depreciated so you can replace it for faster equipment from IBM or HDS, you can at least improveits performance and capacity utilization today by virtualizing it with IBM SAN Volume Controller.

technorati tags: Goldilocks, Three Bears, IBM, Tokyo, Japan, EMC, BarryB, PhotoShop, Barry Whyte, HDS, Hu Yoshida, USP-V, SVC, SEV, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Symmetrix, DMX4, metadata, directory, SPC, benchmarks

[Read More]

Tags:  disk