Well, it's Wednesday, and you know what that means... IBM Announcements!
(Actually most IBM announcements are on Tuesdays, but IBM gave me extra time to recover from my trip to Europe!)
Today, IBM announced [IBM PureSystems], a new family of expert-integrated systems that combine storage, servers, networking, and software, based on IBM's decades of experience in the IT industry. You can register for the [Launch Event] today (April 11) at 2pm EDT, and download the companion "Integrated Expertise" event app for Apple, Android or Blackberry smartphones.
(If you are thinking, "Hey, wait a minute, hasn't this been done before?" you are not alone. Yes, IBM introduced the System/360 back in 1964, and the AS/400 back in 1988, so today's announcement is on scheduled for this 24-year cycle. Based on IBM's past success in this area, others have followed, most recently, Oracle, HP and Cisco.)
Initially, there are two offerings:
- IBM PureFlex™ System
IBM PureFlex is like IaaS-in-a-box, allowing you to manage the system as a pool of virtual resources. It can be used for private cloud deployments, hybrid cloud deployments, or by service providers to offer public cloud solutions. IBM drinks its own champagne, and will have no problem integrating these into its [IBM SmartCloud] offerings.
To simplify ordering, the IBM PureFlex comes in three tee-shirt sizes: Express, Standard and Enterprise.
IBM PureFlex is based on a 10U-high, 19-inch wide, standard rack-mountable chassis that holds 14 bays, organized in a 7 by 2 matrix. Unlike BladeCenter where blades are inserted vertically, the IBM PureFlex nodes are horizontal. Some of the nodes take up a single bay (half-wide), but a few are full-wide, take up two bays, the full 19-inch width of the chassis. Compute and storage snap in the front, while power supplies, fans, and networking snap in the back. You can fit up to four chassis in a standard 42U rack.
Unlike competitive offerings, IBM does not limit you to x86 architectures. Both x86 and POWER-based compute nodes can be mixed into a single chassis. Out of the box, the IBM PureFlex supports four operating systems (AIX, IBM i, Linux and Windows), four server hypervisors (Hyper-V, Linux KVM, PowerVM, and VMware), and two storage hypervisors (SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000).
There are a variety of storage options for this. IBM will offer SSD and HDD inside the compute nodes themselves, direct-attached storage nodes, and an integrated version of the Storwize V7000 disk system. Of course, every IBM System Storage product is supported as external storage. Since Storwize V7000 and SAN Volume Controller support external virtualization, many non-IBM devices will be supported automatically as well.
Networking is also optimized, with options for 10Gb and 40Gb Ethernet/FCoE, 40Gb and 56Gb Infiniband, 8Gbps and 16Gbps Fibre Channel. Much of the networking traffic can be handled within the chassis, to minimize traffic on external switches and directors.
For management, IBM offers the Flex System Manager, that allows you to manage all the resources from a single pane of glass. The goal is to greatly simplify the IT lifecycle experience of procurement, installation, deployment and maintenance.
- IBM PureApplication™ System
IBM PureApplication is like PaaS-in-a-box. Based on the IBM PureFlex infrastructure, the IBM PureApplication adds additional software layers focused on transactional web, business logic, and database workloads. Initially, it will offer two platforms: Linux platform based on x86 processors, Linux KVM and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL); and a UNIX platform based on POWER7 processors, PowerVM and AIX operating system. It will be offered in four tee-shirt sizes (small, medium, large and extra large).
In addition to having IBM's middleware like DB2 and WebSphere optimized for this platform, over 600 companies will announce this week that they will support and participate in the IBM PureSystems ecosystem as well. Already, there are 150 "Patterns of Expertise" ready to deploy from IBM PureSystem Centre, a kind of a "data center app store", borrowing an idea used today with smartphones.
By packaging applications in this manner, workloads can easily shift between private, hybrid and public clouds.
If you are unhappy with the inflexibility of your VCE Vblock, HP Integrity, or Oracle ExaLogic, talk to your local IBM Business Partner or Sales Representative. We might be able to buy your boat anchor off your hands, as part of an IBM PureSystems sale, with an attractive IBM Global Financing plan.
To learn more, check out the [IBM PureSystems] landing page, follow the twitter handle [@IBMPureSystems] or hashtag #ExpertIntSys, watch the videos on the [YouTube channel], or read the [Expert Integrated Systems] blog.
technorati tags: IBM, PureSystems, PureFlex, PureApplication, Flex System Manager, Storwize V7000, Storage Hypervisor, SVC, Pattern of Expertise, DB2, WebSphere, VMware, KVM, Hyper-V, PowerVM, AIX, IBM i, Linux, Windows, HP, Integrity, Oracle, Exalogic, Cisco, UCS, VCE, Vblock
Etiquetas: 
storwize+v7000
pureflex
aix
puresystems
powervm
exalogic
websphere
flex+system+manager
storage+hypervisor
vmware
pattern+expertise
ibm
vce
hyper-v
hp
ibm+i
ucs
kvm
pureapplication
linux
svc
oracle
cisco
integrity
vblock
db2
windows
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Continuing my coverage of the 30th annual [Data Center Conference]. here is a recap of Wednesday morning sessions.
- A Data Center Perspective on MegaVendors
The morning started with a keynote session. The analyst felt that the eight most strategic or disruptive companies in the past few decades were: IBM, HP, Cisco, SAP, Oracle, Apple and Google. Of these, he focused on the first three, which he termed the "Megavendors", presented in alphabetical order.
- Cisco enjoys high-margins and a loyal customer base with Ethernet switch gear. Their new strategy to sell UP and ACROSS the stack moves them into lower-margin business like servers. Their strong agenda with NetApp is not in sync with their partnership with EMC. They recently had senior management turn-over.
- HP enjoys a large customer base and is recognized for good design and manufacturing capabilities. Their challenges are mostly organizational, distracted by changes at the top and an untested and ever-changing vision, shifting gears and messages too often. Concerns over the Itanium have not helped them lately.
- IBM defies simple description. One can easily recognize Cisco as an "Ethernet Switch" company, HP as a "Printer Company", Oracle as a "Database Company', but you can't say that IBM is an "XYZ" company, as it has re-invented itself successfully over its past 100 years, with a strong focus on client relationships. IBM enjoys high margins, sustainable cost structure, huge resources, a proficient sales team, and is recognized for its innovation with a strong IBM Research division. Their "Smarter Planet" vision has been effective in supporting their individual brands and unlock new opportuties. IBM's focus on growth markets takes advantage of their global reach.
His final advice was to look for "good enough" solutions that are "built for change" rather than "built to last".
- Cloud Computing – What's Real vs. Virtual
Chris Molloy, IBM Distinguished Engineer and fellow published author, presented this session on Cloud Computing. His book [IT Virtualization Best Practices: A Lean, Green Virtualized Data Center Approach] is available on Amazon.
Chris works in the Data Center Management and Optimization Services team. IBM owns and/or manages over 425 data centers, representing over 8 million square feet of floorspace. This includes managing 13 million desktops, and 325,000 x86 and UNIX server images, and 1,235 mainframes. IBM is able to pool resources and segment the complexity for flexible resource balancing.
Chris gave an example of a company that selected a Cloud Compute service provided on the East coast a Cloud Storage provider on the West coast, both for offering low rates, but was disappointed in the latency between the two.
Chris asked "How did 5 percent utilization on x86 servers ever become acceptable?" When IBM is brought in to manage a data center, it takes a "No Server Left Behind" approach to reduce risk and allow for a strong focus on end-user transition. Each server is evaluated for its current utilization:
Utilization | Action Taken |
0 percent | Amazingly, many servers are unused. These are recycled properly. |
1 to 19 percent | Workload is virtualized and moved to a new server. |
20 to 39 percent | Use IBM's Active Energy Manager to monitor the server. |
40 to 59 percent | Add more VMs to this virtualized server. |
over 60 percent | Manage the workload balance on this server. |
This approach allows IBM to achieve a 60 to 70 percent utilization average on x86 machines, with an ROI payback period of 6 to 18 months, and 2x-3x increase of servers-managed-per-FTE.
Storage is classified using Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) best practices, using automation with pre-defined data placement and movement policies. This allows only 5 percent of data to be on Tier-1, 15 percent on Tier-2, 15 percent on Tier-3, and 65 percent on Tier-4 storage.
Chris recommends adopting IT Service Management, and to shift away from one-off builds, stand-alone apps, and siloed cost management structures, and over to standardization and shared resources.
You may have heard of "Follow-the-sun" but have you heard of "Follow-the-moon"? Global companies often establish "follow-the-sun" for customer service, re-directing phone calls to be handled by people in countries during their respective daytime hours. In the same manner, server and storage virtualization allows workloads to be moved to data centers during night-time hours, following the moon, to take advantage of "free cooling" using outside air instead of computer room air conditioning (CRAC).
Since 2007, IBM has been able to double computer processing capability without increasing energy consumption or carbon gas emissions.
It's Wednesday, Day 3, and I can tell already that the attendees are suffering from "information overload'.
technorati tags: IBM, HP, Cisco, Megavendors, Oracle, SAP, Apple, Google, Chris+Molloy, Cloud Computing, x86, virtualization, IT Service Management, Follow-the-sun, Follow-the-moon, CRAC, Free Cooling
Etiquetas: 
oracle
x86
hp
follow-the-sun
cisco
chris+molloy
apple
megavendors
follow-the-moon
free+cooling
it+service+management
virtualization
cloud+computing
crac
ibm
google
sap
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This post concludes my series of posts on Oracle OpenWorld 2011 conference. Here are some pictures from Wednesday and Thursday.
- IBM as the yardstick by which everyone measures against
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Our friends at Violin Memory systems mentioned our joint-venture success results with IBM GPFS, scanning 10 billion files in less than an hour. (Their booth must have been slow, because members of their team spent a lot of time in our IBM booth!)
In fact, it seemed every company compared themselves to IBM in one fashion or another. Larry said that "IBM is a great company" and mentioned the IBM systems several times in comparisons to Oracle's newly announced hardware offerings.
- Larry's Sailing Vessel
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When things slowed down, I took a walk to see the other parts of the exhibition area. In the Moscone West building was Larry's catamaran that won [last year's America's Cup].
I used to sail myself, and have been part of crews in sailing races in both Japan and Australia. A few years ago, I watched the America's Cup time trials in New Zealand.
- On the Streets of San Francisco
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On the streets, IBM had advertised some of its products in a manner that thousands of attendees would see every day. Here we have some factoids related to IBM Netezza and DB2 database on POWER servers. We were very careful not to mention either product in the IBM Booth itself, as we all understand that IBM is a guest in Oracle's house this week. We certainly don't want to do anything to upset Larry in any way to make him treat IBM like he treated HP last year, or Salesforce.com this year.
- Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
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On Wednesday evening at Oracle OpenWorld, we were tearing down the booth when we heard that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had passed away. This is truly a loss for the entire IT industry. I never met Steve in person, nor have I been to any Apple conferences like MacWorld that he spoke at.
At various keynote sessions, Larry Ellison compared his Oracle products to those of Apple, Inc., suggesting that Oracle is the "Apple for the Enterprise".
On our way back to the Hilton hotel on O'Farrell, there was a candle vigil at the Apple Store near Union Square. People left sticky notes on the glass window.
There were a lot of tributes to Steve Jobs, but I liked this 15-minute video of his 2005 Commencement Speech at Stanford University titled [How to Live before you Die.
This will be one of those moments where years later, many people will remember exactly where they were, and what they were doing, when they heard the news. For many, that news came as tweets or text messages on the very iPhones and iPads he helped design.
- Rock Concert - Wednesday night
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On Wednesday evening, I joined thousands of other attendees on Treasure Island to hear and watch Sting, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the English Beat in concert. It was cold and dark, but we all had a good time. Needless to say, I didn't make it to Marc Benioff's 8:00am Thursday morning session!
A word of advice: If you go to an evening rock concert at Treasure Island, dress warmly!
Despite the sad news about Steve Jobs, I had a great time at this conference. I learned a lot about what other IT vendors are doing, talked to dozens of IBM clients at the booth, and got to make some new friends that work in other parts of IBM.
(FTC Disclosure: I work for IBM. IBM and Apple are technology partners. I proudly own an Apple iPod, several Mac Mini computers and shares of stock in both IBM and Apple, Inc.)
technorati tags: IBM, Violin+Memory, GPFS, Americas+Cup, Netezza, DB2, POWER, HP, Salesforce.com, Steve Jobs, Hilton, Union Square, Standford University, , Treasure Island, Sting, Tom Petty, English Beat
Etiquetas: 
english+beat
power
gpfs
americas+cup
standford+university
ibm
tom+petty
db2
netezza
violin+memory
steve+jobs
sting
salesforce.com
hilton
union+square
hp
treasure+island
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My series last week on IBM Watson (which you can read [here], [here], [here], and [here]) brought attention to IBM's Scale-Out Network Attached Storage [SONAS]. IBM Watson used a customized version of SONAS technology for its internal storage, and like most of the components of IBM Watson, IBM SONAS is commercially available as a stand-alone product.
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Like many IBM products, SONAS has gone through various name changes. First introduced by Linda Sanford at an IBM SHARE conference in 2000 under the IBM Research codename Storage Tank, it was then delivered as a software-only offering SAN File System, then as a services offering Scale-out File Services (SoFS), and now as an integrated system appliance, SONAS, in IBM's Cloud Services and Systems portfolio.
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If you are not familiar with SONAS, here are a few of my previous posts that go into more detail:
This week, IBM announces that SONAS has set a world record benchmark for performance, [a whopping 403,326 IOPS for a single file system]. The results are based on comparisons of publicly available information from Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation [SPEC], a prominent performance standardization organization with more than 60 member companies. SPEC publishes hundreds of different performance results each quarter covering a wide range of system performance disciplines (CPU, memory, power, and many more). SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3 is the industry-standard benchmark for NAS systems using the NFS protocol.
(Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary. As with any performance benchmark, the SPECsfs benchmark does not replicate any single workload or particular application. Rather, it encapsulates scores of typical activities on a NAS storage system. SPECsfs is based on a compilation of workload data submitted to the SPEC organization, aggregated from tens of thousands of fileservers, using a wide variety of environments and applications. As a result, it is comprised of typical workloads and with typical proportions of data and metadata use as seen in real production environments.)
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The configuration tested involves SONAS Release 1.2 on 10 Interface Nodes and 8 Storage Pods, resulting a single file system over 900TB usable capacity.
- 10 Interface Nodes; each with:
- Maximum 144 GB of memory
- One active 10GbE port
- 8 Storage Pods; each with:
- 2 Storage nodes and 240 drives
- Drive type: 15K RPM SAS hard drives
- Data Protection using RAID-5 (8+P) ranks
- Six spare drives per Storage Pod
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IBM wanted a realistic "no compromises" configuration to be tested, by choosing:
- Regular 15K RPM SAS drives, rather than a silly configuration full of super-expensive Solid State Drives (SSD) to plump up the results.
- Moderate size, typical of what clients are asking for today. The Goldilocks rule applies. This SONAS is not a small configuration under 100TB, and nowhere close to the maximum supported configuration of 7,200 disks across 30 Interface Nodes and 30 Storage Pods.
- Single file system, often referred to as a global name space, rather than using an aggregate of smaller file systems added together that would be more complicated to manage. Having multiple file systems often requires changes to applications to take advantage of the aggregate peformance. It is also more difficult to load-balance your performance and capacity across multiple file systems. Of course, SONAS can support up to 256 separate file systems if you have a business need for this complexity.
The results are stunning. IBM SONAS handled three times more workload for a single file system than the next leading contender. All of the major players are there as well, including NetApp, EMC and HP.
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Congratulations to the SONAS development and test teams! Scale-Out NAS is a competitive space. SONAS can handle not only large streaming files but also small random I/O workloads extraordinarily well. Just in the last two years, to compete against IBM's leadership in this realm, [HP acquired Ibrix], [EMC acquired Isilon] and [Dell has acquired what's left of Exanet's assets], THey have a lot of catching up to do!
technorati tags: IBM, SONAS, Watson, Storage Tank, SFS, SoFS, SBSC, SSD, SAS, , IOPS, SPEC, SPECsfs, SPECsfs2008, SPECsfs2008_nfs.v3, EMC, Isilon, HP, Ibrix, Dell, Exanet, Global Name Space, scale-out,, Watson, IBM Watson, benchmark, performance, record performance, world record, filesystem, file+system, nfs, EMC, NetApp, VNX, Isilon, storage, storage+system, NAS
Etiquetas: 
sas
watson
ibm
specsfs2008
sbsc
sonas
ssd
spec
isilon
emc
ibrix
sfs
storage+tank
iops
hp
global+name+space
exanet
specsfs
sofs
dell
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Continuing my post-week coverage of the [Data Center 2010 conference], Thursday morning had some interesting sessions for those that did not leave town last night.
- Interactive Session Results
In addition to the [Profile of Data Center 2010] that identifies the demographics of this year's registrants, the morning started with highlights of the interactive polls during the week.
- External or Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization
The analyst presented his views on the overall External/Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization marketplace. He started with the key selling points.
- Avoid vendor lock-in. Unlike the IBM SAN Volume Controller, many of the other storage virtualization products result in vendor lock-in.
- Leverage existing back-end capacity. Limited to what back-end storage devices are supported.
- Simplify and unify management of storage. Yes, mostly.
- Lower storage costs. Unlike the IBM SAN Volume Controller, many using other storage virtualization discover an increase in total storage costs.
- Migration tools. Yes, as advertised.
- Consolidation/Transition. Yes, over time.
- Better functionality. Potentially.
Shortly after several vendors started selling external/heterogeneous storage virtualization solutions, either as software or pre-installed appliances, major storage vendors that were caught with their pants down immediately started calling everything internally as also "storage virtualization" to buy some time and increase confusion.
While the analyst agreed that storage virtualization simplifies the view of storage from the host server side, it can complicate the management of storage on the storage end. This often comes up at the Tucson Briefing Center. I explain this as the difference between manual and automatic transmission cars. My father was a car mechanic, and since he is the sole driver and sole mechanic, he prefers manual transmission cars, easier to work on. However, rental car companies, such as Hertz or Avis, prefer automatic transmission cars. This might require more skills on behalf of their mechanics, but greatly simplifies the experience for those driving.
The analyst offered his views on specific use cases:
- Data Migration. The analyst feels that external virtualization serves as one of the best tools for data migration. But what about tech refresh of the storage virtualization devices themselves? Unlike IBM SAN Volume Controller, which allows non-disruptive upgrades of the nodes themselves, some of the other solutions might make such upgrades difficult.
- Consolidation/Transition. External virtualization can also be helpful, depending on how aggressive the schedule for consolidation/transition is performed.
- Improved Functionality/Usability. IBM SAN Volume Controller is a good example, an unexpected benefit. Features like thin provisioning, automated storage tiering, and so on, can be added to existing storage equipment.
The analyst mentioned that there were different types of solutions. The first category were those that support both internal storage and external storage virtualization, like the HDS USP-V or IBM Storwize V7000. He indicated that roughly 40 percent of HDS USP-V are licensed for virtualization. The second category were those that support external virtualization only, such as IBM SAN Volume Controller, HP Lefthand and SVSP, and so on. The third category were software-only Virtual Guest images that could provide storage virtualization capabilities.
The analyst mentioned EMC's failed product Invista, which sold less than 500 units over the past five years. The low penetration for external virtualization, estimated between 2-5 percent, could be explained from the bad taste that left in everyone considering their options. However, the analyst predicts that by 2015, external virtualization will reach double digit marketshare.
Having a feel for the demographics of the registrants, and specific interactive polling in each meeting, provides a great view on who is interested in what topic, and some insight into their fears and motivations.
technorati tags: IBM, ITIL, storage growth, unstructured data, external, storage virtualization, SVC, Storwize V7000, HDS, USP-V, EMC, Invista, HP, Lefthand, SVSP
Etiquetas: 
storage+growth
usp-v
external
svsp
emc
itil
unstructured+data
ibm
invista
hp
storage+virtualization
svc
lefthand
hds
storwize+v7000
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