Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Specialist for the IBM System Storage product line at the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor to IBM's developerWorks. In 2011, Tony celebrated his 25th year anniversary with IBM Storage on the same day as the IBM's Centennial. He is author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services. You can also follow him on Twitter @az990tony.
(Short URL for this blog: ibm.co/Pearson )

IBM Tivoli Advanced Backup and Recovery for z/OS V2.1

TonyPearson Tags: disk linux bc 2,925 Visits

Well, it's Tuesday again, which means IBM announcement day. With our [big launches] we had this year, there might be some confusion on IBM terminology on how announcements are handled.Basically, there are three levels:

Technology Demonstration: Technology demonstrations show IBM's leadership, innovation and investment direction, without having to detail a specificproduct offering.Last month's[Project Quicksilver], for example, demonstrated the ability to handle over 1 million IOPS with Solid State Disk.IBM is committed to develop solid state storage to create real-world uses across a broad range of applications, middleware, and systems offerings.
Preview Announcement: A preview announcement does entail a specific product offering, but may not necessarily include pricing, packagingor specific availability dates.
Announcement: An announcement also entails a specific product offering, and does include pricing, packaging and specific availability dates.

With our September 8 launch of the IBM Information Infrastructure strategic initiative, there were a mix of all three of these. Many of the preview announcements will be followed up with full announcements later this year. Today, the IBM Tivoli Advanced Backup andRecovery for z/OS v2.1 was announced.

Note: If you don't use z/OS on a System z mainframe, you can stop reading now.

As many of my loyal readers know, I was lead architect for DFSMS until 2001, and so functions related to DFSMS and z/OS are very near and dear to my heart. For Business Continuity, IBM created Aggregate Backup andRecovery Support (ABARS) as part of the DFSMShsm component. This feature created a self-contained backupimage from data that could be either on disk or tape, including migrated data. In the event of a disaster,an ABARS backup image can be used to bring back just the exact programs and data needed for a specific application, speeding up the recovery process, and allowing BC/DR plans to prioritize what is most important.

To help manage ABARS, IBM has partnered with [Mainstar Software Corporation]to offer a product that helps before, during and after the ABARS processing.

Before: ABARS requires the storage admin to have a "selection list" of data sets to process as an aggregate.IBM Tivoli Advanced Backup and Recovery for z/OS includes Mainstar® ASAP™ to help identify the appropriatedata sets for specific applications, using information from job schedulers, JCL, and SMF records.
During: ABARS has two simple commands: ABACKUP to produce the backup image, and ARECOVER to recover it. However, ifyou have hundreds of aggregates, and each aggregate has several backups, you may need some help identifyingwhich image to recover from.IBM Tivoli Advanced Backup and Recovery for z/OS includes Mainstar® ABARS Manager™ to present a list ofinformation, making it easy to choose from. To help prep the ICF Catalogs, there is a CATSCRUB feature for either"empty" or "full" catalog recovery at the recovery site.
After: The fact that storage admins may not be intimately familiar with the applications they are backing up is a commonsource of human error. IBM Tivoli Advanced Backup and Recovery for z/OS includes Mainstar® All/Star™ to help validate that the data setsprocessed by ABACKUP are complete, to support any regulatory audit or application team verification.This critical data tracking/inventory reporting not only identifies what isn't backed up, so you can ensure that you are not missing critical data, but also can identify which data sets are being backed up multiple times by more than one utility, so you can reduce the occurrence of redundant backups.

With v2.1 of Tivoli Advanced Backup and Recovery for z/OS, IBM has integrated Tivoli Enterprise Portal (TEP)support. This allows you to access these functions through IBM Tivoli Monitor v6 GUI on a Linux, UNIX or Windowsworkstation. IBM Tivoli Monitor has full support to integrate Web 2.0, multi-media and frames. This meansthat any other product that can be rendered in a browser can be embedded and supported with launch-in-contextcapability.

(If you have not separately purchased a license to IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.2, don't worry, you can obtainthe TEP-based function by acquiring a no-charge, limited use license to IBM Tivoli MonitoringServices on z/OS, V6.2.)

In addition to supporting IBM's many DFSMS backup methods, from ABARS to IDCAMS to IEBGENER, IBM Tivoli Advanced Backup and Recovery v2.1 can also support third-party products from Innovation Data Processing and Computer Associates.

As many people re-discover the mainframe as the cost-effective platform that it has always been, migratingapplications back to the mainframe to reduce costs, they need solutions that work across both mainframe anddistributed systems during this transition. IBM Tivoli Advanced Backup and Recovery for z/OS can help.

technorati tags: IBM, Tivoli, ABARS, Advanced, Backup, Recovery, z/OS, DFSMS, DFSMShsm, Project Quicksilver, SSD, IOPS, launch, Information Infrastructure, Mainstar, GUI, Linux, UNIX, Windows, TEP

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Many Eyes and the Visualization of Data

TonyPearson Tags: lifecycle infrastructure 2,259 Visits

Wrapping up my week on successful uses of information, I thought I would discuss the visualization of data.Not just bar charts and pie charts, but how effective visual information can be on multi-variable plots.

IBM's [Many Eyes] recognizes that 70 percentof our sensory input neurons in our brain our focused on visual inputs, and so we might recognize patternsif only data was presented in more interesting and visual representations.

In addition to X/Y axis, variables can be presented by size of circle and color. Here's an example plot of the past US bailouts, with variables representing amount, year, company andindustry. This plot does not include the current 700 Billion US Dollar bailout currently under discussion.

This is part of IBM's Collaborative User Experience (CUE) research lab. The software is available Web2.0style at no charge, just upload your data set, and choose one of 16 different presentation styles.

These plots get even more interesting when you animate them over time. In 2006, Hans Rosling presenteddata he gathered from the United Nations and other publicly funded sources and presented his findings atthe TED conference. Here is the 20-minute video of that presentation (click on play at right), titled ["Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen"], in which he debunks the myth that all countries fall into two distinct categories: Industrialized and Developing.

In 2007, Hans returned with another 19-minute presentation at TED, titled[New insights on poverty and life around the world].

Amazingly, the data--as well as the software to analyze it--is available at[GapMinder.org] Web site.

For more information on how you can deploy an information infrastructure that allows you to search, visualize and leverage the most value from your information, contact your local IBM representative or IBM Business Partner.

technorati tags: IBM, Many Eyes, multi-variable plot, US bailout, CUE, TED, Hans Rosling, debunk, myths, poverty, global, health

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IBM helps Healthcare firms large and small

TonyPearson Tags: disk lifecycle bc tape 2,419 Visits

Continuing this week's theme on customer references of IBM solutions, IBM helps companies large and small in the Healthcare and Life Sciences industry. I have two examples today.

First, we have [Northwest Radiology Network], a small firm with 180 employees, having to deal with ten thousand medical images per month. Here is an excerpt from the [IBM Press Release]:

"IBM announced that Northwest Radiology Network has gone live with a new virtualized enterprise of IBM servers and storage to support its growing medical imaging needs, giving its four locations an enterprise-class infrastructure which enables its doctors to recover medical image reports faster for analysis and enables remote 24x7 access to its medical image report system.
Founded in 1967, Northwest Radiology (NWR) is ranked as one of the largest physician groups in the Indianapolis, Indiana area. With 180 employees who offer the Central Indiana community comprehensive inpatient and outpatient imaging services such as mammography, ultrasonography, CT scans, PET-CT scans, bone density scans and MRIs – the Network had a dramatic need to develop a centralized infrastructure where large amounts of data could be stored and shared. A new data center would benefit the company’s clientele; which includes area hospitals and doctor’s offices serving thousands of patients each year.
Storing more than ten thousand medical imaging reports and radiographic images each month for doctors to analyze, the Network realized it had single points of failure and at one point a critical report server failed. Northwest Radiology turned to IBM and IBM Business Partner Software Information Systems (SIS) for a more efficient solution to prevent any possible downtime in the future.
SIS recommended and installed a virtualized infrastructure with IBM servers and storage as the heart of Northwest Radiology’s Indianapolis data center. By April 2007, Northwest Radiology replaced eight servers and direct attached storage with just two IBM System x3650 servers connected to an IBM System Storage DS3400. Today, the new servers run 15 virtual servers to ensure the availability of their services 24x7. When the business needs it, a new server can be provisioned in just minutes. With a Fibre Channel on the SAN Disk, the DS3400 not only increased performance but also met NWR’s requirement to not have one single point of failure. With three TB of storage capacity, they can meet the demands of increased business well into the future. The systems are also now easily managed from a remote site."
“Uptime is paramount in our business. We selected IBM based on the reliability and flexibility of IBM System x servers and the IBM System Storage DS3400,” said Marty Buening, IT Director, Northwest Radiology Network. “The virtualized infrastructure and the SAN storage array that SIS and IBM brought to the table is improving our service and giving our doctors and staff piece of mind knowing each patient’s medical imaging reports are always available.”

Second, we have [Iowa Health System], a large enterprise with over 19,000 employees, managing four million patients and hundreds of TBs of data.

Here is a 4-minute video on IBM TV from the good folks at Iowa Health System discussing theIBM Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) as part of their information infrastructure for theirPicture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) application.

For more details about Iowa Health System's deployment of GMAS, see Paul Shread's GridComputing article [Putting Medical Data on the Grid].

For more about GMAS, one of IBM's many blended disk-and-tape storage solutions, see the[IBM GMAS solution brief] andthis 22-slide [GMAS presentation].

In both cases, IBM technology was able to provide remote access to medical information, making images and patient records available to more doctors, specialists and radiologists. Last January, in my post[Five in Five], IBM had predicted that remote access to healthcare would have an impact over the next five years.

Whether you are a small company or a large one, IBM probably has the right solution for you.

technorati tags: IBM, Northwest Radiology Network, NWR, SIS, Iowa Health System, IHS, GMAS, PACS, remote, access, healthcare, life sciences, disk-and-tape

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Days of Caring 2008

TonyPearson Tags: marketing 1,991 Visits

No post today. I will be joining the majority of IBMers in Tucson for "Days of Caring" held annually bythe [United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona].IBM has been doing this for years, and we are joined by volunteers from other local businesses, including HealthNet, Wells Fargo bank, Texas Instruments, KVOA local NBC affiliate, 94.9 MixFM radio, and others.

The "days" involve a kick-off last week (Sep 19) and two days of helping local charities (Sep 24 and 27).We are split into teams and are assigned out to help fix up old buildings, clean out gutters, re-paintwalls. My team will be sorting canned goods at the local[Community Food Bank], and assembling boxes of items to begiven out to needy families.

technorati tags: IBM, Days of Caring, United Way, HealthNet, Wells Fargo, Texas Instruments, KVOA, MixFM, Community Food Bank

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SoFS at Kantana Animation Studios

TonyPearson Tags: tape disk lifecycle 2,881 Visits

Continuing this week's theme on customer references of IBM's solutions, today I will discussthe success at Kantana Animation Studios.

Here is a 3-minute video from the good folks at Kantana Animation Studios,part of the [Kantana Group].They produced the animated movie [Khan Kluay]using IBM Scale-out File Services (SoFS), a product IBM announced last November 2007.

Of course, I have blogged about Scale-Out File Services [SoFS] before, in my post[More details about IBM clustered scalable NAS]. SoFS is one of the many blended disk-and-tape storage solutionsthat IBM offers. In the case of Kantana, they used [IBM System Storage DS4800 disk] and [IBM System Storage TS3310 tape libraries].

As a film-maker myself (see this sample [Highlights clip])and active member of the Tucson Film Society,I am pleased to see IBM so greatly involved in the film industry. I've had the pleasure to visit some of theseanimation studios myself and meet with other film-makers at various conferences.

For more details on Kantana's implementation, see the [Case Study]

technorati tags: IBM, SoFS, DS4800, TS3310, Kantana Animation Studios, Tucson Film Society, Khan Kluay, computer animation

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