Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means! IBM Announcements!

Today, IBM announced its latest IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM) 2.0 version. Here's a quick recap:

Centralized Key Management

Centralized and simplified encryption key management through Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager's lifecycle of creation, storage, rotation, and protection of encryption keys and key serving through industry standards. TKLM is available to manage the encryption keys for LTO-4, LTO-5, TS1120 and TS1130 tape drives enabled for encryption, as well as DS8000 and DS5000 disk systems using Full Disk Encryption (FDE) disk drives.

Partitioning of Access Control for Multitenancy

Access control and partitioning of the key serving functions, including end-to-end authentication of encryption clients and security of exchange of encryption keys, such that groups of devices have different sets of encryption keys with different administrators. This enables [multitenancy] or multilayer security of a shared infrastructure using encryption as an enforcement mechanism for access control. As Information Technology shifts from on-premises to the cloud, multitenancy will become growingly more important.

Support for KMIP 1.0 Standard

Support for the new key management standard, Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP), released through the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards [OASIS]. This new standard enables encryption key management for a wide variety of devices and endpoints. See the [22-page KMIP whitepaper] for more information.

As much as I like to poke fun at Oracle, with hundreds of their Sun/StorageTek clients switching over to IBM tape solutions every quarter, I have to give them kudos for working cooperatively with IBM to come up with this KMIP standard that we can both support.

Support for non-IBM devices from Emulex, Brocade and LSI

Support for IBM self-encrypting storage offerings as well as suppliers of IT components which support KMIP, including a number of supported non-IBM devices announced by business partners such as Emulex, Brocade, and LSI. KMIP support permits you to deploy Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager without having to worry about being locked into a proprietary key management solution. If you are a client with multiple "Encryption Key Management" software packages, now is a good time to consolidate onto IBM TKLM.

Role-based Authorization

Role-based access control for administrators that allows multiple administrators with different roles and permissions to be defined, helping increase the security of sensitive key management operations and better separation of duties. For example, that new-hire college kid might get a read-only authorization level, so that he can generate reports, and pack the right tapes into cardboard boxes. Meanwhile, for that storage admin who has been running the tape operations for the past ten years, she might get full access. The advantage of role-based authorization is that for large organizations, you can assign people to their appropriate roles, and you can designate primary and secondary roles in case one has to provide backup while the other is out of town, for example.

For more details, see the IBM [Announcement Letter].

This week, I'll be in Dallas, Texas. If you are an avid reader located in or near the Dallas area, and want to connect, you know how to reach me.

technorati tags: IBM, TKLM, KMIP, OASIS, encryption, FDE, Multitenancy, EKM, LTO, LTO-4, LTO-5, TS1120, TS1130, DS8000, DS5000, role-based, authorization, Emulex, Brocade, LSI

Tags:  ts1120 ekm kmip tklm ds8000 multitenance ds5000 encryption oasis emulex lto brocade authorization ibm lsi lto-4 lto-5 fde ts1130 role-based

Continuing my coverage of the annual [2010 System Storage Technical University], I participated in the storage free-for-all, which is a long-time tradition, started at SHARE User Group conference, and carried forward to other IT conferences. The free-for-all is a Q&A Panel of experts to allow anyone to ask any question. These are sometimes called "Birds of a Feather" (BOF). Last year, they were called "Meet the Experts", one for mainframe storage, and the other for storage attached to distributed systems. This year, we had two: one focused on Tivoli Storage software, and the second to cover storage hardware. This post provides a recap of the Storage Hardware free-for-all.

The emcee for the event was Scott Drummond. The other experts on the panel included Dan Thompson, Carlos Pratt, Jack Arnold, Jim Blue, Scott Schroder, Ed Baker, Mike Wood, Steve Branch, Randy Arseneau, Tony Abete, Jim Fisher, Scott Wein, Rob Wilson, Jason Auvenshine, Dave Canan, Al Watson, and myself, yours truly, Tony Pearson.

What can I do to improve performance on my DS8100 disk system? It is running a mix of sequential batch processing and my medical application (EPIC). I have 16GB of cache and everything is formatted as RAID-5.

We are familiar with EPIC. It does not "play well with others", so IBM recommends you consider dedicating resources for just the EPIC data. Also consider RAID-10 instead for the EPIC data.

How do I evaluate IBM storage solutions in regards to [PCI-DSS] requirements.

Well, we are not lawyers, and some aspects of the PCI-DSS requirements are outside the storage realm. In March 2010, IBM was named ["Best Security Company"] by SC Magazine, and we have secure storage solutions for both disk and tape systems.  IBM DS8000 and DS5000 series offer Full Disk Encryption (FDE) disk drives.  IBM LTO-4/LTO-5 and TS1120/TS1130 tape drives meet FIPS requirements for encryption.  We will provide you contact information on an encryption expert to address the other parts of your PCI-DSS specific concerns.

My telco will only offer FCIP routing for long-distance disk replication, but my CIO wants to use Fibre Channel routing over CWDM, what do I do?

IBM XIV, DS8000 and DS5000 all support FC-based long distance replication across CWDM. However, if you don't have dark fiber, and your telco won't provide this option, you may need to re-negotiate your options.

My DS4800 sometimes reboots repeatedly, what should I do.

This was a known problem with microcode level 760.28, it was detecting a failed drive. You need to replace the drive, and upgrade to the latest microcode.

Should I use VMware snapshots or DS5000 FlashCopy?

VMware snapshots are not free, you need to upgrade to the appropriate level of VMware to get this function, and it would be limited to your VMware data only. The advantage of DS5000 FlashCopy is that it applies to all of your operating systems and hypervisors in use, and eliminates the consumption of VMware overhead. It provides crash-consistent copies of your data. If your DS5000 disk system is dedicated to VMware, then you may want to compare costs versus trade-offs.

Any truth to the rumor that Fibre Channel protocol will be replaced by SAS?

SAS has some definite cost advantages, but is limited to 8 meters in length. Therefore, you will see more and more usage of SAS within storage devices, but outside the box, there will continue to be Fibre Channel, including FCP, FICON and FCoE. The Fibre Channel Industry Alliance [FCIA] has a healthy roadmap for 16 Gbps support and 20 Gbps interswitch link (ISL) connections.

What about Fibre Channel drives, are these going away?

We need to differentiate the connector from the drive itself. Manufacturers are able to produce 10K and 15K RPM drives with SAS instead of FC connectors. While many have suggested that a "Flash-and-Stash" approach of SSD+SATA would eliminate the need for high-speed drives, IBM predicts that there just won't be enough SSD produced to meet the performance needs of our clients over the next five years, so 15K RPM drives, more likely with SAS instead of FC connectors, will continue to be deployed for the next five years.  

We'd like more advanced hands-on labs, and to have the certification exams be more product-specific rather than exams for midrange disk or enterprise disk that are too wide-ranging.

Ok, we will take that feedback to the conference organizers.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is focused on disaster recovery from tape, how do I incorporate remote disk replication.

This is IBM's Unified Recovery Management, based on the seven tiers of disaster recovery established in 1983 at GUIDE conference.  You can combine local recovery with FastBack, data center server recovery with TSM and FlashCopy manager, and combine that with IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Replication (TPC-R), GDOC and GDPS to manage disk replication across business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) locations.

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Replication only manages the LUNs, what about server failover and mapping the new servers to the replicated LUNs?

There are seven tiers of disaster recovery. The sixth tier is to manage the storage replication only, as TPC-R does. The seventh tier adds full server and network failover. For that you need something like IBM GDPS or GDOC that adds this capability.

All of my other vendor kit has bold advertising, prominent lettering, neon lights, bright colors, but our IBM kit is just black, often not even identifying the specific make or model, just "IBM" or "IBM System Storage".

IBM has opted for simplified packaging and our sleek, signature "raven black" color, and pass these savings on to you.

Bring back the SHARK fins!

We will bring that feedback to our development team. ("Shark" was the codename for IBM's ESS 800 disk model.  Fiberglass "fins" were made as promotional items and placed on top of ESS 800 disk systems to help "identify them" on the data center floor.  Unfortunately, professional golfer [<a href="http://www.shark.com/">Greg Norman</a>] complained, so IBM discontinued the use of the codename back in 2005.)

Where is Infiniband?

Like SAS, Infiniband had limited distance, about 10 to 15 meters, which proved unusable for server-to-storage network connections across data center floorspace. However, there are now 150 meter optical cables available, and you will find Infiniband used in server-to-server communications and inside storage systems.  IBM SONAS uses Infiniband today internally.  IBM DCS9900 offers Infiniband host-attachment for HPC customers.

We need midrange storage for our mainframe please?

In addition to the IBM System Storage DS8000 series, the IBM SAN Volume Controller and IBM XIV are able to connect to Linux on System z mainframes.

We need "Do's and Don'ts" on which software to run with which hardware.

IBM [Redbooks] are a good source for that, and we prioritize our efforts based on all those cards and letters you send the IBM Redbooks team.

The new TPC v4 reporting tool requires a bit of a learning curve.

The new reporting tool, based on Eclipse's Business Intelligence Reporting Tool [BIRT], is now standardized across the most of the Tivoli portfolio. Check out the [Tivoli Common Reporting] community page for assistance.

An unfortunate side-effect of using server virtualization like VMware is that it worsens management and backup issues. We now have many guests on each blade server.

IBM is the leading reseller of VMware, and understands that VMware adds an added layer of complexity. Thankfully, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager backups uses a lightweight agent. IBM [System Director VMcontrol] can help you manage a variety of hypervisor environments.

This was a great interactive session. I am glad everyone stayed late Thursday evening to participate in this discussion.

technorati tags: IBM, Technical University, DS8100, EPIC, PCI-DSS, FDE, Encryption, XIV, CWDM, DS5000, SAS, InfiniBand, FCIA, FCoE, FICON, GUIDE, Tivoli, Productivity Center, TPC-R, GDPS, SONAS, SVC, BIRT, Systems Director, VMcontrol

Tags:  svc sas infiniband pci-dss birt tpc-r ds8100 ficon fcoe sonas vmcontrol gdps fde ibm ds5000 productivity+center #ibmtechu tivoli systems+director encryption epic fcia xiv guide #ibmstorage cwdm #storage technical+university

Well, it's Tuesday, and you all know what that means... IBM announcements!

This week, IBM announced the IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Disk Midrange Edition, affectionately referred to as "MRE". This is basically TPC for Disk but with two key differences:

• A special license that covers only DS3000, DS4000, DS5000 series, whether natively attached or virtualized behind SAN Volume Controller.
• A new pricing model based on the number on controllers and drawers, rather than by TB managed. For example, if you have a DS5300 and two expansion drawers, then you pay for three units of MRE. As you upgrade from smaller capacity disks to larger capacity disks, your license costs won't increase. This eliminates the quarterly hassle to "true up" your software licenses to match actual capacity that is required on TB-based licensing.

This includes the [new DS3500 model] that was announced last month. This was part of the set of solutions to [help midsized businesses].

A fresh new blogger on the scene, Anthony Vandewerdt (IBM), covers [10 things I like about the IBM DS3500], saving me the trouble.

For more information on Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Disk Midrange Edition, see the IBM [Announcement Letter].

technorati tags: IBM, Tivoli, Productivity Center, Midrange+Edition, MRE, TPC, DS3000, DS3500, DS4000, DS5000, Anthony Vandewerdt

Tags:  ds4000 mre ds3000 productivity+center tpc midrange+edition tivoli ds3500 anthony+vandewerdt ds5000

Continuing my drawn out coverage of IBM's big storage launch of February 9, today I'll cover the IBM System Storage TS7680 ProtecTIER data deduplication gateway for System z.

On the host side, TS7680 connects to mainframe systems running z/OS or z/VM over FICON attachment, emulating an automated tape library with 3592-J1A devices. The TS7680 includes two controllers that emulate the 3592 C06 model, with 4 FICON ports each. Each controller emulates up to 128 virtual 3592 tape drives, for a total of 256 virtual drives per TS7680 system. The mainframe sees up to 1 million virtual tape cartridges, up to 100GB raw capacity each, before compression. For z/OS, the automated library has full SMS Tape and Integrated Library Management capability that you would expect.

Inside, the two control units are both connected to a redundant pair cluster of ProtecTIER engines running the HyperFactor deduplication algorithm that is able to process the deduplication inline, as data is ingested, rather than post-process that other deduplication solutions use. These engines are similar to the TS7650 gateway machines for distributed systems.

On the back end, these ProtecTIER deduplication engines are then connected to external disk, up to 1PB. If you get 25x data deduplication ratio on your data, that would be 25PB of mainframe data stored on only 1PB of physical disk. The disk can be any disk supported by ProtecTIER over FCP protocol, not just the IBM System Storage DS8000, but also the IBM DS4000, DS5000 or IBM XIV storage system, various models of EMC and HDS, and of course the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) with all of its supported disk systems.

Here is the [Announcement Letter]

technorati tags: ts7680, z/OS, z/VM, FICON, 3592-J1A, SMS Tape, TS7650, ProtecTIER, mainframe, FCP, DS8000, DS5000, DS4000, XIV, SVC

Tags:  ds5000 protectier ds4000 ts7650 sms+tape z/vm z/os ds8000 3592-j1a xiv ts7680 ficon svc mainframe fcp

From Timothy Morgan of [The Register]:

"With Cisco Systems, EMC, and VMware teaming up to sell integrated IT stacks, Oracle buying Sun Microsystems to create its own integrated stacks, and IBM having sold integrated legacy system stacks and rolling in profits from them for decades, it was only a matter of time before other big IT players paired off."

Once again we are reminded that IBM, as an IT "supermarket", is able to deliver integrated software/server/storage solutions, and our competitors are scrambling to form their own alliances to be "more like IBM." This week, IBM announced new ordering options for storage software with System x servers, including BladeCenter blade servers and IntelliStation workstations. Here's a quick recap:

FastBack v6.1

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack v6.1 supports both Windows and Linux! FastBack is a data protection solution for ROBO (Remote Office, Branch Office) locations. It can protect Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, DB2, Oracle applications. FastBack can provide full volume-level recovery, as well as individual file recovery, and in some cases Bare Machine Recovery. FastBack v6.1 can be run stand-alone, or integrated with a full IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) unified recovery management solution.

FlashCopy Manager v2.1

FlashCopy Manager uses point-in-time copy capabilities, such as SnapShot or FlashCopy, to protect application data using an application-aware approach for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL server, DB2, Oracle, and SAP. It can be used with IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), DS8000 series, DS5000 series, DS4000 series, DS3000 series, and XIV storage systems. When applicable, FlashCopy manager coordinates its work with Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) interface. FlashCopy Manager can provide data protection using just point-in-time disk-resident copies, or can be integrated with a full IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) unified recovery management solution to move backup images to external storage pools, such as low-cost, energy-efficient tape cartridges.

General Parallel File System (GPFS) v3.3 Multiplatform

GPFS can support AIX, Linux, and Windows! Version 3.3 adds support for Windows 2008 Server on 64-bit chipset architectures from AMD and Intel. Now you can have a common GPFS cluster with AIX, Linux and Windows servers all sharing and accessing the same files. A GPFS cluster can have up to 256 file systems. Each of these file systems can be up to 1 billion files, up to 1PB of data, and can have up to 256 snapshots. GPFS can be used stand-alone, or integrated with a full IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) unified recovery management solution with parallel backup streams.

For full details on these new ordering options, see the IBM [Press Release].

technorati tags: System x, BladeCenter, IntelliStation, Cisco, EMC, VMware, VCE, Oracle, Sun, HP, Microsoft, FastBack, FlashCopy, GPFS, Windows, Linux, SAP, SVC, VSS, DS8000, DS5000, DS4000, DS3000, SQL, Lotus, Domino

Tags:  ds4000 windows ds8000 gpfs bladecenter emc intellistation hp system+x microsoft flashcopy lotus domino oracle ds3000 vss svc ds5000 sap linux vmware sun fastback cisco sql vce

Well, it's Tuesday again, but this time, today we had our third big storage launch of 2009! A lot got announced today as part of IBM's big "Dynamic Infrastructure" marketing campaign. I will just focus on the disk-related announcements today:

IBM System Storage DS8700

IBM adds a new model to its DS8000 series with the [IBM System Storage DS8700]. Earlier this month, fellow blogger and arch-nemesis Barry Burke from EMC posted [R.I.P DS8300] on this mistaken assumption that the new DS8700 meant that DS8300 was going away, or that anyone who bought a DS8300 recently would be out of luck.  Obviously, I could not respond until today's announcement, as the last thing I want to do is lose my job disclosing confidential information.  BarryB is wrong on both counts:

• IBM will continue to sell the DS8100 and DS8300, in addition to the new DS8700.
• Clients can upgrade their existing DS8100 or DS8300 systems to DS8700.

BarryB's latest post [What's In a Name - DS8700] is fair game, given all the fun and ridicule everyone had at his expense over EMC's "V-Max" name.

So the DS8700 is new hardware with only 4 percent new software. On the hardware side, it uses faster POWER6 processors instead of POWER5+, has faster PCI-e buses instead of the RIO-G loops, and faster four-port device adapters (DAs) for added bandwidth between cache and drives. The DS8700 can be ordered as a single-frame dual 2-way that supports up to 128 drives and 128GB of cache, or as a dual 4-way, consisting of one primary frame, and up to four expansion frames, with up to 384GB of cache and 1024 drives.

Not mentioned explicitly in the announcements were the things the DS8700 does not support:

• ESCON attachment - Now that FICON is well-established for the mainframe market, there is no need to support the slower, bulkier ESCON options. This greatly reduced testing effort. The 2-way DS8700 can support up to 16 four-port FICON/FCP host adapters, and the 4-way can support up to 32 host adapters, for a maximum of 128 ports. The FICON/FCP host adapter ports can auto-negotiate between 4Gbps, 2Gbps and 1Gbps as needed.


• LPAR mode - When IBM and HDS introduced LPAR mode back in 2004, it sounded like a great idea the engineers came up with. Most other major vendors followed our lead to offer similar "partitioning". However, it turned out to be what we call in the storage biz a "selling apple" not a "buying apple". In other words, something the salesman can offer as a differentiating feature, but that few clients actually use. It turned out that supporting both LPAR and non-LPAR modes merely doubled the testing effort, so IBM got rid of it for the DS8700.

Update: I have been reminded that both IBM and HDS delivered LPAR mode within a month of each other back in 2004, so it was wrong for me to imply that HDS followed IBM's lead when obviously development happened in both companies for the most part concurrently prior to that. EMC was late to the "partition" party, but who's keeping track?

Initial performance tests show up to 50 percent improvement for random workloads, and up to 150 percent improvement for sequential workloads, and up to 60 percent improvement in background data movement for FlashCopy functions. The results varied slightly between Fixed Block (FB) LUNs and Count-Key-Data (CKD) volumes, and I hope to see some SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmark numbers published soon.

The DS8700 is compatible for Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, and Metro/Global Mirror with the rest of the DS8000 series, as well as the ESS model 750, ESS model 800 and DS6000 series.

New 600GB FC and FDE drives

IBM now offers [600GB drives] for the DS4700 and DS5020 disk systems, as well as the EXP520 and EXP810 expansion drawers. In each case, we are able to pack up to 16 drives into a 3U enclosure.

Personally, I think the DS5020 should have been given a DS4xxx designation, as it resembles the DS4700 more than the other models of the DS5000 series. Back in 2006-2007, I was the marketing strategist for IBM System Storage product line, and part of my job involved all of the meetings to name or rename products. Mostly I gave reasons why products should NOT be renamed, and why it was important to name the products correctly at the beginning.

IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller hardware and software

Fellow IBM master inventory Barry Whyte has been covering the latest on the [SVC 2145-CF8 hardware]. IBM put out a press release last week on this, and today is the formal announcement with prices and details. Barry's latest post [SVC CF8 hardware and SSD in depth] covers just part of the entire announcement.

The other part of the announcement was the [SVC 5.1 software] which can be loaded on earlier SVC models 8F2, 8F4, and 8G4 to gain better performance and functionality.

To avoid confusion on what is hardware machine type/model (2145-CF8 or 2145-8A4) and what is software program (5639-VC5 or 5639-VW2), IBM has introduced two new [Solution Offering Identifiers]:

• 5465-028 Standard SAN Volume Controller
• 5465-029 Entry Edition SAN Volume Controller

The latter is designed for smaller deployments, supports only a single SVC node-pair managing up to 150 disk drives, available in Raven Black or Flamingo Pink.

EXN3000 and EXP5060 Expansion Drawers

IBM offers the [EXN3000 for the IBM N series]. These expansion drawers can pack 24 drives in a 4U enclosure. The drives can either be all-SAS, or all-SATA, supporting 300GB, 450GB, 500GB and 1TB size capacity drives.

The [EXP5060 for the IBM DS5000 series] is a high-density expansion drawer that can pack up to 60 drives into a 4U enclosure. A DS5100 or DS5300 can handle up to eight of these expansion drawers, for a total of 480 drives.

IBM System Storage Productivity Center v1.4

The latest [System Storage Productivity Center (SSPC) v1.4] can manage all of your DS3000, DS4000, DS5000, DS6000, DS8000 series disk, and SAN Volume Controller. You can get the SSPC built in two modes:

• Pre-installed with Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Basic Edition. Basic Edition can be upgraded with license keys to support Data, Disk and Standard Edition to extend support and functionality to report and manage XIV, N series, and non-IBM disk systems.
• Pre-installed with Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM). This can be used to manage the Full Disk Encryption (FDE) encryption-capable disk drives in the DS8000 and DS5000, as well as LTO and TS1100 series tape drives.

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager v2.1

The [IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager V2.1] replaces two products in one. IBM used to offer IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services (TSM for CS) that protected Windows application data, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Advanced Copy Services (TSM for ACS) that protected AIX application data.

The new product has some excellent advantages. FlashCopy Manager offers application-aware backup of LUNs containing SAP, Oracle, DB2, SQL server and Microsoft Exchange data. It can support IBM DS8000, SVC and XIV point-in-time copy functions, as well as the Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) interfaces of the IBM DS5000, DS4000 and DS3000 series disk systems. It is priced by the amount of TB you copy, not on the speed or number of CPU processors inside the server.

Don't let the name fool you. IBM FlashCopy Manager does not require that you use Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) as your backup product. You can run IBM FlashCopy Manager on its own, and it will manage your FlashCopy target versions on disk, and these can be backed up to tape or another disk using any backup product. However, if you are lucky enough to also be using TSM, then there is optional integration that allows TSM to manage the target copies, move them to tape, inventory them in its DB2 database, and provide complete reporting.

Yup, that's a lot to announce in one day. And this was just the disk-related portion of the launch!

technorati tags: ds8000, disk, ds8700, exn3, svc, cf8, 2145-c58, DS5000, DS4000, DS3000, DS5020, DS4700, DS5100, DS5300, SSPC, TKLM, FlashCopy+Manager, Tivoli, Storage+Manager, TSM, DB2, Oracle, SAP, SQL, Microsoft+Exchange, VSS, Windows, AIX, N+series, XIV

Tags:  oracle sspc 2145-c58 ds8700 disk storage+manager sql ds5020 aix ds5300 microsoft+exchange ds4700 tivoli exn3 flashcopy+manager ds5100 ds4000 db2 n+series xiv ds8000 svc tklm sap ds5000 cf8 vss windows tsm ds3000