Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Architect for the IBM Storage product line at the
IBM Systems Client Experience Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor
to IBM's developerWorks. In 2016, Tony celebrates his 30th year anniversary with IBM Storage. 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.
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The keynote was led by Phil Tasker, IBM Business Unit Executive (BUE) for STG Education Programs in Growth Markets, then Joe Screnci, head of IBM Storage Sales for Australia. IBM is in the Top 10 Training Hall of Fame, and conducts over 40,000 classes worldwide, resulting in over 1.3 million student days of instructions. IBM Systems Lab and Training technical hosts over three dozen conferences like this one every year.
Next was Clod Barrera, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Strategist for the IBM System Storage product line. He covered future trends in storage as they relate to IBM's Smarter COmputing initiative.
Storage for the Clouds
Clod Barrera presented this break-out session on Cloud Storage. He covered why clouds matter, the various types and purposes of cloud, technology and architectures, and where IBM is headed to support this trend.
Storage for Cloud computing was $1 Billion USD business in 2010, and is expected to grow 32 percent CAGR through, compared to 3.8 percent for non-cloud storage. Clod estimates that 10 to 15 percent of all storage will be in cloud deployments by 2015. Of this storage, analysts expect 50 percent in private clouds, and the other 50 percent in public clouds. For private clouds, clients are looking to "Cloudify" their existing IT infrastructures. For public clouds, the projects are mostly green field.
IBM is also looking to the "arms dealer" of choice for Telcos and other companies looking to launch their own Cloud Services. IBM has a Cloud Services Provider Platform (CSP2) specifically to provide all the tools and technologies needed to make this possible.
Last month, IBM launched several new solutions for Cloud. The IBM Starter Kit for Cloud will help existing IT environments adopt cloud technologies. The IBM Service Agility Accelerator for Cloud is available for more advanced deployments. IBM Service Delivery Manager (ISDM) integrates a collection of software to provide complete integrated service management. IBM CloudBurst provides an integrated hardware-and-software stack for both x86 and POWER chipsets.
Multi-tenancy is also a big issue, and this varies depending on deployment model: IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. Multi-tenancy is needed to help divide up management tasks, and to ensure that shared resources are paid for and meet SLA requirements accordingly.
Clod feels there are good reasons to use high performance, transactional SAN storage for VMware environments, versus NAS which many people consider simpler to deploy. IBM is also active in open standards, including SNIA's Cloud Data Management Interface [CDMI].
Journey to the Private Cloud
Gary Luke from Brocade provided this session on IBM's SAN384B-2 and SAN768B-2 SAN directors. Brocade is one of IBM's suppliers for SAN switches, and thanks to TRILL being adopted last August by IETF, supports multi-hop FCoE configurations! However, Gary did not talk about FCoE, but rather native FCP and FICON support in these new directors.
According to VMware, only 30 percent of x86 workloads are virtualized by any hypervisor. Gary feels that server virtualization and the use of Solid-State Drives (SSD) in disk arrays are driving existing 8 Gbps SAN to upgrade to 16 Gbps. Gary feels that Fibre-Channel based SANs are best positioned to handle unpredictable peaks in a 24-by-7 world.
The SAN384B-2 can house up to 256 ports (8 Gbps) or 192 ports (16 Gbps) in four slots, 9U chassis. The SAN768B-2 can handle twice these, in a 12U chassis. The nice thing about the 16Gbps ports is that they can auto-negotiate down to 10, 8, 4 and 2 Gbps. This is far better than typical N-2 support, often referred to as the speeds supported, such as 4/2/1 and 8/4/2. An upcoming FOS release will allow people with previous generation SAN384B-1/SAN768B-1 directors to move their 8Gbps blades over to the new SAN384B-2/SAN768B-2 generation models.
Since most CWDM and DWDM only support maximum 10 Gbps FC and 10GbE, Brocade's 16Gbps can automatically drop down to 10 Gbps for direct attachment to CWDM/DWDM, rather than having a step-down box normally required.
A major advancement is the change from copper to optical "Inter-Chassis Links" (ICL). Unlike Inter-switch links (ISL) that use up SAN ports on each box, the ICL is faster, more efficient and does not consume ports. Normally, clients would connect two directors together, but now you can connect up to six chassis together! For example, you can have four SAN368B-2 connected to your host servers, ICL attached to two SAN768B-2, that are then connected to your disk and tape storage devices. The fiber optic ICL allow for up to 50 meters distance. Combining six chassis together would allow the complex to support over 3,000 ports (8 Gbps) or 2,300 ports (16 Gbps).
The SAN384B-2 and SAN768B-2 supports "virtual SAN" logical switches, traffic isoliation (TI) zones, fabric-assigned WWNNs, and fabric-based QoS.
Lastly, Brocade offers a free utility called [SANhealth] that will gather data from your b-type, m-type and even Cisco MDS-based SAN. The data can then be sent to Brocade for analysis, and Brocade will then email back some nice Visio graphs, spreadsheets and other analysis results on the health of your SAN.
Here are upcoming conferences I will be presenting at for November 2011.
Next week, I will be in Auckland, New Zealand for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium], similar to the one I attended in Orlando, Florida last July. Here are the sessions I will present:
xST03 - Introduction to IBM Storwize V7000
An exciting new addition to the IBM storage line, the Storwize V7000 is a very versatile and solid choice as a midrange storage device. This session will cover a technical overview of the controller as well as its positioning within the overall IBM storage line.
xST04 - XIV Implementation, Migration and Optimization
Attend this session to learn how to integrate the IBM XIV Storage System in your IT environment. After this session, you should understand where the IBM XIV Storage system fits, and understand how to take full advantage of the performance capabilities of XIV Storage by using the massive parallelism of its grid architecture. You will learn how to migrate data onto the XIV and hear about real world client experiences.
xST05 - IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era
Want to understand IBM's storage strategy better? This session will cover the three key themes of IBM's Smarter Computing initiative: Big Data, Optimized Systems, and Cloud. IBM System Storage strategy has been aligned to meet the storage efficiency, data protection and retention required to meet these challenges.
IBM offers encryption in a variety of ways. Data can be encrypted on the server, in the SAN switch, or on the disk or tape drive. This session will explain how encryption works, and explain the pros and cons with each encryption option.
sAC01 - IBM Information Archive for email, Files and eDiscovery
IBM has focused on data protection and retention, and the IBM Information Archive is the ideal product to achieve it. Come to this session to discuss archive solutions, compliance regulations, and support for full-text indexing and eDiscovery to support litigation.
sGE04 - IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era
Want to understand IBM's storage strategy better? This session will cover the three key themes of IBM's Smarter Computing initiative: Big Data, Optimized Systems, and Cloud. IBM System Storage strategy has been aligned to meet the storage efficiency, data protection and retention required to meet these challenges.
sSM03 - IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center – Overview and Update
IBM's latest release of IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is v4.2.2, a storage resource management tool that manages both IBM and non-IBM storage devices, including disk systems, tape libraries, and SAN switches. This session will give an overview of the various components of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center and provide an update on what's new in this product.
sSN06 - SONAS and the Smart Business Storage Cloud (SBSC)
Confused over IBM's Cloud strategy? Trying to figure out how IBM Storage plays in private, hybrid or public cloud offerings? This session will cover both the SONAS integrated appliance and the Smart Business Storage Cloud customized solution, and will review available storage services on the IBM Cloud.
sTA01 - Tape Storage Reinvented: What's New and Exciting in the Tape World?
This very informative session will keep you up to date with the latest tape developments. These include the TS3500 tape library connector Model SC1 (Shuttle). The shuttle enables extreme scalability of over 300,000 tape cartridges in a single library image by interconnecting multiple tape libraries with a unique, high speed transport system. The world's fastest tape drive, the TS1140 3592-E07, will also be presented. The performance and functionality of the new TS1140 as well as the new 4TB tape media will be discussed. Also, the IBM System Storage Linear Tape File System (LTFS), including the Library Edition, will be presented. LTFS allows a disk-like, drag-and-drop interface for tape. This is a not-to-be-missed session for all you tape lovers out there!
In December, I will be going to Gartner's Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, but the agenda has not been finalized, so I will save that for another post.
IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v4.2.2 Overview and Update
This was an updated version of the presentation I gave last July in Orlando, Florida (see my post [IBM Storage University - Day 1]). Since it might have been awhile since the Australian audience had heard about the latest and greatest for Tivoli Storage Productivity Center, I decided to cover the enhancements of 4.2.0, 4.2.1 and 4.2.1 combined.
IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is an important part of IBM's "Storage Hypervisor" solution, combining a single pane of glass for management with non-disruptive storage virtualization with SVC and Storwize V7000.
IBM Storwize V7000 and SVC integration with VMware
Alexi Giral from IBM Sydney presented this session on how Storwize V7000 and SVC serve as the "Storage Hypervisor" for VMware server virtualization environments. The focus was on the FCP and iSCSI block-only access modes of these devices, although one could use IBM Storwize V7000 Unified to provide NFS file-level access to VMware. Alexi covered both VMware Vsphere v4 and v5, as there are a few differences.
IBM Storwize V7000 and SVC supports thin provisioning, VMware's VAAI interface, VMware's Site Recovery Manager, and provides a storage management plug-in to Vmware's vCenter. The SVC has extended the distance for split-cluster configurations that support VMware's vMotion live partition mobility and High Availiability (HA) up to 300km using active DWDM.
Tape Storage Reinvented: What's New and Exciting in the Tape World?
Special thanks to Jim Fisher and Jim Karp for providing me this presentation, videos and supporting materials for me to present this session. I gave this as the first break-out session on Tuesday, and then repeated as the last break-out session on Thursday. Several of the attendees in the audience mocked my title, with taunts like "What could be NEW or EXCITING about tape?" I covered four key areas:
The new TS1140 tape drive, including the corresponding model-JC tape that holds 4TB native (12 TB compressed!).
The enhanced TS3500 with the Tape Library Connector Shuttle. I had a video that shows how tapes can be sent from one TS3500 tape library string to another.
The new Linear Tape File System (LTFS), both the single drive edition and the library edition
The new 3592-C07 FICON controller for our mainframe clients
By the end of the session, the folks that taunted me were honestly impressed that they learned a few things, and had not realized so much has been developed recently in the world of tape.
Continuing my coverage of the [IBM Storage Innovation Executive Summit], that occurred May 9 in New York City, this is my third in a series of blog posts on this event.
During lunch, people were able to take a look at our solutions. Here are Dan Thompson and Brett Cooper striking a pose.
Hyper-Efficient Backup and Recovery
The afternoon was kicked off by Dr. Daniel Sabbah, IBM General Manager of Tivoli software. He started with some shocking statistics: 42 percent of small companies have experienced data loss, 32 percent have lost data forever. IBM has a solution that offers "Unified Recovery Management". This involves a combination of periodic backups, frequent snapshots, and remote mirroring.
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) was introduced in 1993, and was the first backup software solution to support backup to disk storage pools. Today, TSM is now also part of Cloud Computing services, including IBM Information Protection Services. IBM announced today a new bundle called IBM Storwize Rapid Application Backup, which combines IBM Storwize V7000 midrange disk system, Tivoli FlashCopy Manager, implementation services, with a full three-year hardware and software warranty. This could be used, for example, to protect a Microsoft Exchange email system with 9000 mailboxes.
IBM also announced that its TS7600 ProtecTIER data deduplication solutions have been enhanced to support many-to-many bi-direction remote mirroring. Last year, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) reported that they were average 24x data deduplication factor in their environment using IBM ProtecTIER.
"You are out of your mind if you think you can live without tape!"
-- Dick Crosby, Director of System Administration, Estes
The new IBM TS1140 enterprise class tape drive process 2.3 TB per hour, and provides a density of 1.2 PB per square foot. The new 3599 tape media can hold 4TB of data uncompressed, which could hold up to 10TB at a 2.5x compression ratio.
The United States Golfers Association [USGA] uses IBM's backup cloud, which manages over 100PB of data from 750 locations across five continents.
Customer Testimonial - Graybar
Randy Miller, Manager of Technical System Administration at Graybar, provided the next client testimonial. Graybar is an employee-owned company focused on supply-chain management, serving as a distributor for electical, lighting, security, power and cooling equipment.
Their problem was that they had 240 different locations, and expecting local staff to handle tape backups was not working out well. They centralized their backups to their main data center. In the event that a system fails in one of their many remote locations, they can rebuild a new machine at their main data center across high-speed LAN, and then ship overnight to the remote location. The result, the remote location has a system up and running by 10:30am, faster than they would have had from local staff trying to figure out how to recover from tape. In effect, Graybar had implemented a "private cloud" for backup in the 1990s, long before the concept was "cool" or "popular".
In 2001, they had an 18TB SAP ERP application data repository. To back this up, they took it down for 1 minute per day, six days a week, and 15 minutes down on Sundays. The result was less than 99.8 percent availability. To fix this, they switched to XIV, and use Snapshots that are non-disruptive and do not impact application performance.
Over 85 percent of the servers at Graybar are virtualized.
Their next challenge is Disaster Recovery. Currently, they have two datacenters, one in St. Louis and the other in Kansas City. However, in the aftermath of Japan's earthquakes, they realize there is a nuclear power plan between their two locations, so a single incident could impact both data centers. They are working with IBM, their trusted advisors, to investigate a three-site solution.
This week, May 15-22, I am in Auckland, New Zealand teaching IBM Storage Top Gun sales class. Next week, I will be in Sydney, Australia.
Since Clod Barrera introduced IBM's Smarter Computing initiative during yesterday's keynote session, I took it to the next lower level, with a presentation on how IBM's Storage Strategy aligns with the Smarter Computing approach.
Deduplication -- It's Not Magic, It's Math!
Local IBMer Paul Rizio presented this high-level session on the concepts of data deduplication, and how it is implemented in IBM's N series, TSM and ProtecTIER virtual tape libraries. I first met Paul earlier this year when we were both instructors at Top Gun classes we held in Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia.
IBM Information Archive for files, email and eDiscovery
This was a reprise of my presentation that I gave last July in Orlando, Florida (see my blog post [IBM Storage University - Day 1]). I explained the differences between backup and archive, the differences between Tivoli Storage Manager and System Storage Archive Manager, and the Information Archive (IA) The Information Archive for files, email and eDiscovery bundle combines IA hardware with content collectors for files and email, eDiscovery analyzer and eDiscovery manager software.
What are Industry Consultants saying about IBM Storage?
Vic Peltz, from our IBM Almaden Research Center, presented this lively presentation on how IT industry analysts gather their information and structure their findings into various models. For many in the audience, this would be their first exposure to concepts like a "Magic Quadrant", "MarketScope" and the various stages of the "Hype Cycle".
IBM SONAS and the Smart Business Storage Cloud
The title of this session just rolls off my tongue, similar to "James and the Giant Peach" or "Harold and the Purple Crayon". I had presented this back in July (see my blog post [IBM Storage University - Cloud Storage]). This time, I had updated the materials to reflect the new SONAS R1.3 release, and the new IBM SmartCloud offerings announced last month.
Of course the big news is that U.S. President Barack Obama is here in Australia, with a stop in Canberra (not far from Melbourne), followed by a stop in Darwin on the north side of this country. This is his first official visit to Australia as president.
Wrapping up my seven-city romp through Australia and New Zealand, the final city was Canberra, which is the capital of Australia. As with Wellington, this meant many of the clients in the audience work in government agencies.
I had not taken any photos of Anna Wells, IBM Storage Sales Leader for ANZ, but I was able to find this caricature of her on a poster from an award she won within IBM.
I also did not have a picture of Robert, my videographer for this trip, who was always behind the camera himself.
The event went smoothly, just like the rest of them. Anna presented IBM's storage strategy and highlighted specific IBM storage solutions.
I had several emails asking if this event was called "Storage Optimisation Breakfast" because it was held in the mornings, or did we actually serve food at these events. The answer is we actually served food, a variation of the [Full English Breakfast], and most of the attendees gobbled it down while Anna spoke.
The fare was quite similar across all seven locations: scrambled or poached eggs, on toast or english muffin, ham/bacon/sausages, potatoes or mushrooms, and half of a baked tomato with bits of something toasted on top.
One morning, for a change, I decided instead to have a bowl of Weet-Bix cereal. Tasted like cardboard. I learned my lesson.
Next, we had Will Quodling, Manager of Infrastructure Operations, at Australia's Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research consists of 3200 staff that strive to encourage the sustainable growth of Australian industries. The Department is committed to developing policies and delivering programs to provide lasting economic benefits ensuring Australia's competitive future, undertakes analysis, and provides services and advice to the business, science and research community. American President, Barack Obama, visited Australia and was interested in adopting a similar concept for the United States.
The department was looking to replace their existing IBM System Storage DS4800 disk systems with something more energy efficient. They selected IBM XIV storage system, with an expected savings of 10kW per year. They are able to run 800 VMware images and 150 VDI workstations using storage on one XIV, replicate the data to a second XIV at a remote location, and have a third XIV for their Web serving environment. They tested out both single drive and full module failures, and experienced better-than-expected rebuild times, with no impact to users, and no impact to performance.
After 17 days without a functioning government, Australia finally selected a prime minister. Her name is Julia Gillard, shown here. She won in part by promising to build a National Broadband Network (NBN) for the entire country, including the rural areas.
[Canberra] is an interesting town, a fully planned community designed in 1913 by Chicago's husband-and-wife architect team of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. The location was selected as being half-way compromise between Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.
I would like to thank all the wonderful people in both Australia and New Zealand for making this a successful trip!
I am pleased with the turn-out we had attending last week for my Infoboom Webinar on [The Future of Storage]. The 55-minute replay is available on Infoboom, and the slide deck can be downloaded from the [IBM Expert Network].
I mentioned that I was going to Indianapolis and Boston next week to give lectures on this topic. Here are the details:
Indianapolis - September 7, 2011
The Future of Storage with Tony Pearson Luncheon Briefing
Harry & Izzy's
153 South Illinois Street
Indianapolis, IN 46225
Time: 11am to 1:30pm
[Registration Page]
Boston - September 8, 2011
The Future of Storage with Tony Pearson Briefing and Networking Reception
The Capital Grille
10 Wayside Road
Burlington, MA 01803
Time: 4:30pm to 6:30pm
[Registration Page]
I will also be in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 2-6), Auckland New Zealand (Nov 9-11), and Melbourne Australia (Nov 15-17).
This week and next, I am down under in Australia and New Zealand for a seven-city Storage Optimisation Breakfast series of presentations to clients and prospects. My first city for this seven-city tour was Sydney, Australia.
Here is the view from my room at the [Shangri-La hotel], including the famous [Sydney Opera House] and Circular Quay, from which to take a water taxi or ride the Manly Ferry. [Sydney harbour] is the deepest harbour in the Southern Hemisphere, allowing boats of all sizes to enter. This section of the city is known as "The Rocks".
Sydney is a very modern metropolis. The last time I was in Sydney was in May 2007 to teach an IBM Top Gun class. My post back then on [Dealing with Jet Lag] is as relevant now as it was back then. In addition to being 9 hours off-shifted from last week in Dallas, Texas, I also have to deal with the colder climate, about 40 degrees F cooler down here. The weather is crisp and clear, it is Winter going into Spring down here as the seasons are flipped below the equator.
Many of the buildings are recognizable from the movie ["The Matrix"] which was filmed here. We joked that this seven-city trip was also similar to [The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert], in that both journeys started in Sydney. If you haven't seen the latter, I highly recommend it to get to learn more about Australia as a country.
(Completely useless trivia: Actor Hugo Weaving appeared in both movies. While most people associate him with Australia, where he has lived since 1976, he actually was born in Nigeria, and traveled extensively because his father worked in the computer industry.)
Here I am standing next to our banner.
The line-up for each event is simple. After all the attendees sit down for breakfast, we have the following three sessions:
First, Anna Wells, local IBM Executive for Storage Sales in Australia and New Zealand presents IBM's strategy for storage, and how IBM plans to address Storage Efficiency, Data Protection and Service Delivery. She then highlights various products that are currently available to help meet customer needs, including XIV and the SAN Volume Controller (SVC).
Second, we have a client or two share their success story. We will have different speakers at the different locations.
Third, I present on future trends that will impact the storage marketplace. With only 40 minutes for my section, I decided to focus on just three specific trends, with a mix of some colorful analogies to help emphasize my key points.
We had a great turn-out for our first event in Sydney, lots of clients and prospects came out for this. There is a lot of enthusiasm for IBM's vision, thought leadership, and broad portfolio of storage solutions.
Mark your calednars! If you live or work anywhere near Australia or New Zealand, I will be presenting in a 7-city series in both countries. Here is my schedule:
I am just one of the speakers. We will have at each location the local IBM team and IBM clients giving testimonials. All the speakers will be available afterward for Q&A. It's shaping up to be an exciting series of events!
Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Architect for the IBM Storage product line at the
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