Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

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

Last week, IBM had a big storage launch of various products, with the June 4 announcements at the IBM Edge 2012 conference. I provided highlights in my post [IBM Edge Announcements]. As promised, here are the rest of the announcements.

SONAS v1.3.2

SONAS v1.3.2 adds support for management by the newly announced IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v5.1 release. Also, IBM now officially supports "Gateway configurations" that have the storage nodes connected to XIV or Storwize v7000 disk systems. These gateway configurations offer new flexible choices and options for our ever-expanding set of clients.

ProtecTIER appliances and gateways

IBM ProtecTIER line of data deduplication appliances and gateways add CIFS file system support. Rather than using OST or a VTL interface, you now have CIFS as a new option for host attach. Also, IBM introduces the new TS7620 Express model, with options for 5.4TB and 11TB in capacity, replacing the previous TS7610 entry level.

LTFS Storage Manager

The Linear Tape File System (LTFS) allows files to be stored on tape cartridges in a manner that allows them to be mounted as file systems, much like a USB memory stick. The new LTFS Storage Manager software allows you to manage a collection of files across a set of cartridges, moving files from one cartridge to another, consolidating valid data onto fewer cartridges, and removing files no longer needed. This is sometimes referred to as "lifecycle management".

Tape System Library Manager

When IBM first introduced the "shuttle" that allowed up to fifteen TS3500 tape libraries to be connected together into a single system, only HPSS customers could take advantage of this. Software was required to coordinate the movement of cartridges from one library to another. The new IBM Tape System Library Manager now offers an alternative to HPSS for coordinating this activity.

DS8000 v6.3 microcode

IBM now offers 400GB solid-state drives. IBM's market leading support for Full Disk Encryption (FDE) is now extended to cover all drive speeds, from the slowest 7200RPM NL-SAS drives up to the fastest solid-state. IBM Easy Tier extends its super-easy implementation to work across all three of these tiers including encryption.

Implementation Services

IBM now offers implementation services for IBM XIV Gen3 storage system, and the N series models 3220 and 3240.

This week I am on the road visiting various clients. Next week, Moscow Russia for the "Edge Comes to You" event!

technorati tags: IBM, SONAS, TPC, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, ProtecTIER, TS7650, TS7620, CIFS, OST, VTL, LTFS, Storage Manager, Tape System Library Manager, DS8000, DS8800, XIV Gen3, N3220, N3240, Edge, ECTY

This week I am in Orlando, Florida for the IBM Edge conference. Thursday evening after all the other sessions, we had a Free-for-All, a Q&A panel across all storage topics, moderated by Scott Drummond. The conference officially ends at noon tomorrow, but for many, this is the last session, as people fly out Friday morning. Here are the questions and the panel responses during the session.

When will IBM unify their storage management between Mainframe z/OS and the distributed systems platforms?

IBM offers a Change and Configuration Management Data Base (CCMDB) for this purpose with appropriate collectors from z/OS and distributed systems, but hasn't sold well.

When will IBM devices have RESTful interfaces?

Both IBM Systems Director and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC) offer RESTful APIs. IBM Systems Director can manage z/VM and Linux on System z, as well as Power Systems and x86 based distributed systems. Since October 2008, IBM's Project Zero introduced RESTful interfaces to PHP and Groovy software running on WebSphere sMash environments. We have not heard much about this since 2008.

Will IBM TPC support NPIV on Power Systems?

TPC 5.1 has toleration support for this, showing the first port connection discovered, but not all connections, and we expect to retrofit this toleration to TPC 4.2.2 Fixpack 2. Hopefully, we will have full support in a future release.

We would like TPC for Replication to run on Linux for System z. We do not run z/OS at the disaster recovery site location.

Submit an IBM Request for Enhancement [RFE] for this. We have TPC for Replication on z/OS, as well as the distributed systems version that runs on Windows, Linux and AIX.

We have enhancements we would like to see for XIV and SONAS also, can we use the RFE process for this also?

Yes, submit the requirements for our review.

We heard the Statement of Direction that there would be storage integrated into the PureSystems. What exactly does that mean?

The PureSystems family of expert-integrated systems is based on a new chassis that has a front part, a midplane, and a back-part. All IBM System Storage products that support x86 and Power Systems can work with PureSystems. However, IBM does not yet offer storage that fits in the front part of the PureFlex chassis, but the Statement of Direction indicates that we intend to offer that option. Until then, the IBM Storwize V7000 is the storage of choice that can be put into the PureSystems rack, but outside the individual chasses.

We see some features like Real-Time Compression being put into the SAN Volume Controller (SVC), and other features put into the back-end devices. How are we supposed to make sense of this?

IBM's new pilot program, the SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center, to bring these all together. In general, we have design teams of system architects that determine which features go in which products, and prioritize accordingly.

We heard the IBM Executives during the opening session indicate that IBM's strategy involves supporting Big Data, but I haven't seen any storage that supports native Hadoop interfaces. Did I miss something?

First, I want to emphasize that Big Data is more than just MapReduce workloads. IBM offers Streams and BigInsights software to handle text, as well as Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse solutions for structured data. IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) has a Shared-Nothing-Cluster (SNC) mode with Hadoop interfaces that runs twice as fast as Hadoop's native HDFS file system. The storage products we recommend for Big Data are the SONAS and the DCS3700 disk systems, as both are optimized for the sequential workloads Big Data represents.

Everytime we upgrade our SVC, we review the list for SDDPCM multi-pathing and see that we need to upgrade our back-end DS8000 microcode up to recommended levels. Can we get a list of combinations that work from other customers?

The advantage of storage hypervisors like SVC is that we can separate the multi-pathing driver from the back-end managed disk systems. You only need the SDDPCM to support the SVC, not the back-end devices. For the most part, SVC has not dropped support for any level of previously supported OS or multi-pathing software.

On SVC, when we migrate volumes (vDisks) from one storage pool to another, we would like to throttle this process during FlashCopy.

Yes, we had several requests like this, which is why we now recommend using Volume Mirorring to perform migrations. In fact the GUI wizard uses Volume Mirroring by default when migrations are performed. As for throttling, IBM has implemented "I/O Priority Manager" that offers Quality of Service classes for DS8000 and XIV Gen3, and might consider porting this to other products in our portfolio.

Sizing systems is an art. I just need to know if the DS8000 is running hot. Can we have the equivalent of "red lines" for our disk systems similar to automobile engines?

Storage Optimizer was added to TPC 4.2 to help in this area, identifying heat-maps for IBM DS8000, DS6000, DS5000, DS4000, SVC and Storwize V7000. We recommend you look at the performance violation reports.

How can we evaluate the characteristics of our workloads?

Yes, TPC can do this.

When we are replacing non-IBM storage with IBM, we don't have good tools to evaluate the non-IBM equipment. What is IBM doing for this?

IBM's Disk Magic modeling tool can take inputs from a variety of sources, including iostat from the servers themselves. You can also install a 90-day trial of TPC to help with this.

We really like EMC's "Grab" program, does IBM have one also?

Yes, IBM has one also. See the [SSIC Discovery Utility].

Updating the Host Attachment Kit (HAK) for AIX is quite painful for the SVC. We prefer the method employed for the XIV.

Thanks for the feedback.

For SVC, we need to correlate disk with VMware and VIOS. Can we get vSCSI information on VIOS?

TPC 5.1 has this support, and we believe it has been retrofitted to TPC 4.2.2 Fixpack 2, coming out this month.

Currently, with SVC, when volumes are part of a Global Mirror (GM) session, we need to cancel GM, expand the source volume, expand the target volume, then restart GM. We would like this to be fully automated and non-disruptive.

Sounds like a great requirement to submit for the RFE process.

Can we get an RSS Feed for the RFE community.

Yes, you can subscribe to it. You can also set up "Watch Lists".

Thanks to all of the IBM experts on the panel for their participation at this event!

technorati tags: IBM, Edge2012, Free-for-All, CCMDB, Project Zero, RESTful, TPC, SVC, RFE, Storwize V7000, PureSystems, PureFlex, SmartCloud, Virtual Storage Center, Big+Data, SONAS, XIV, DS8000, Global Mirror

Well it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means... IBM announcements! Yesterday, at the IBM Edge conference here in Orlando, Florida, IBM announced its new apporach to storage, and a whole bunch of storage products, enhancements, and services. I will focus on some key ones here, and save the rest for next week.

IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) v6.4

The SVC is IBM's enterprise-class storage hypervisor. The latest software release, v6.4, can be installed on any SVC hardware, from the 2145-8F2 introduced back in 2005, to newer models like the 2145-CG8. Here are the key features:

• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) -- This is complete end-to-end support. For SVC units with 10GbE ports, these ports can be now be used for FCoE. This allows hosts to attach to SVC via FCoE, allows SVC node-to-node communication for clustering, and allows SVC to communicate to back-end devices via FCoE.
  
  
• Real-Time Compression -- IBM ported over the patent Random Access Compression Engine (RACE) from the Real-Time Compression Appliances to SVC v6.4. This allows primary data, accessed via block-based protocols, to be compressed up to 80 percent. This feature is an extra priced feature by TB.
  
  
• Non-Disruptive Volume move between I/O Groups -- If you don't already have SVC, you don't need to worry about this. For existing SVC customers, this allows volumes to be associated with two or more I/O groups, and that you can add or remove I/O groups non-disruptively. For example, if you want to move a volume from IOG1 to IOG2, then you add IOG2 to the list of I/O groups for the volume, let the multi-pathing software discover the additional paths, the remove IOG1, which then marks the previous IOG1 paths inactive. All this can be done while applications read and write data.
  
  
• Dedicate FCP ports for Replication -- If you activate the two 10GbE Ethernet ports for FCoE, you can free up two FCP ports that you can dedicate for long-distance Metro Mirror or Global Mirror.

If you have SVC today, but are running an old release like v4.3 or v5.1, I recommennd you upgrade up to at least v6.2.05 release now. This release has been out for a year and is very stable, and serves as a great platform for a later upgrade to SVC v6.4.

IBM Storwize V7000 v6.4

The Storwize V7000 is IBM's midrange storage hypervisor. The latest software release, v6.4, can be installed on existing block-only Storwize V7000 units in the field. The Storwize V7000 v6.4 gets all the features listed above, as well as the following:

• Four-way clustering -- Previously, you could cluster two Storwize V7000 controller enclosures together (4 canisters total). To cluster three or four controllers required an RPQ. Now, IBM supports up to four Storwize V7000 controller enclosures (8 canisters) without an RPQ.
  
  
• Direct Fibre Channel attach -- A lot of people are using Storwize V7000 inside single-rack configurations, so it makes sense not to require a SAN switch for just a few Windows, Linux or VMware servers. An RPQ is now available to allow this to happen.

 

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC) v5.1

TPC is already ranked one of the best Storage Infrastructure Management software in the market, and this release will just solidify its lead. Key features include:

• Upward integration to higher level management systems
• A new, intuitive, easy-to-use web-based GUI inspired by the XIV GUI
• Integration of COGNOS to be able to generate and customize reports
• Support for SONAS systems

There are several presentations on TPC this week that will go into more detail. Check out the [TPC Facebook page].

My latest book Inside System Storage: Volume IV is now available!

Yes, can you believe it? I have published my fourth volume in my "Inside System Storage" series! It is available in three formats:

• Hardcover with dust jacket
• Paperback
• eBook (Adobe Acrobat PDF)

You can order this, and all my other books, in all formats, directly from my [Author Spotlight] page. The paperback will also be available soon from other online booksellers, search for ISBN 978-1-105-72213-4.

IBM DS3500 Express

The DS3500 is our entry-level block-based device, designed specifically for random I/O workloads. This includes databases, email repositories, traditional business applications, and on-line transactional workloads. Here are the new features:

• Dynamic Disk Pooling, similar to what XIV does to reduce disk rebuild times, but using a RAID-6 like approach per chunk of data.
• Thin Provisioning using Dynamic Disk Pooling
• Asynchronous Logical Unit Access (ALUA) failover
• Enhanced FlashCopy, improved scalability, consistency groups and rollback support
• VMware API for Array Integration (VAAI) support. This includes Write Same, Extended Copy, and Atomic Test & Set.

The DS3500 replaces the previous models of DS3200, DS3300 and DS3400 models.

IBM DCS3700

The DCS3700 is our entry-level/midrange block-based device, replacing the DCS9900 model, designed specifically for sequential I/O workloads. This includes Big Data analytics, Hadoop, High Performance Computing (HPC), video surveillance, and television broadcasting. It holds 60 drives in a 4U controller enclosure.

For more on any of these announcements, see the [June 4th Announcement Page], or follow the Twitter tag #transformITnow.

technorati tags: IBM, SVC, Storwize V7000, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, DS3500, DCS37000

The first day had various breakout sessions in the afternoon.

Understanding Your Options for Storing Archive Data to Meet Compliance Challenges

Storing Archive Data to meet Compliance Challenges

View more presentations from Tony Pearson on the IBM Expert Network.

I presented IBM's Smart Archive strategy and the storage products IBM offers to archive data and meet compliance regulations:

• The differences between backup and archive, including a few of my own personal horror stories helping companies who had foolishly thought that keeping backup copies for years would adequately serve as their archive strategy
• The differences between Write-Once Read-Many (WORM) media, and Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable (NENR) storage options.
• How disk-only archive solutions become "space heaters" for your data center.
• An overview of the various storage hardware options from IBM.
• How LTFS can be incorporated into an archive solution, such as [Crossroads Systems' StrongBox® solution].
• An explanation of the different IBM software offerings to help complement the storage hardware choices.

 

IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center (TPC): New Features and Functions

Mike Griese, IBM program manager for TPC, presented the latest in TPC 5.1 version announced this week. His session was organized into four key sections:

• Insights - TPC 5.1 integrates COGNOS reporting, which allows custonmization of reports and ad-hoc exploration and analysis. Since the reports are not binary-compiled into the product, IBM can ship new COGNOS reports as templates outside the normal TPC release schedule. Also, TPC 5.1 got smarter on reporting on server virtualization hypervisor environments to avoid double-counting.
  
  
• Recommendations - TPC 5.1 can analyze your usage patterns across the entire data center and make recommendations to move data from one storage tier to another. You can then act on these recommendations by moving data from one tier to another, either "up-tier" to faster storage, or "down-tier" to less expensive storage, using a storage hypervisor like IBM SAN Volume Controller. This is complementary to features like Easy Tier which optimize within a single disk system.
  
  
• Performance - TPC 5.1 uses a new web-based GUI, based on AJAX, HTML5 and Dojo widgets, inspired by the IBM XIV GUI, and similar to the web-based GUI of SAN Volume Controller, Storwize V7000 and SONAS.
  
  
• Optimization - TPC 5.1 allows you to optimize for Cloud by introducing a new RESTful API for storage provisioning and support for SONAS environments. This will allow upward-integration to products like [IBM Service Delivery Manager] and [Tivoli Storage Automation Manager].

Mike also explained the new TPC 5.1 packaging. Instead of having a variety of components like "TPC for Disk", "TPC for Data", and "TPC for Replication", the new packaging simplifies this down to two levels of functionality. The basic level supports block-level devices, including disk performance, replication and SAN fabric management. The advanced level adds support for files and databases, including support for Cloud management such as SONAS environments.

Dan Zehnpfennig, Solution Architect, talked about his experiences installing TPC 5.1 and how this was much improved over previous TPC versions.

IBM Watson: How it Works and What it Means for Society Beyond Winning Jeopardy!

IBM Watson: How it Works, and What it means for Society beyond winning Jeopardy!

View more presentations from Tony Pearson on the IBM Expert Network.

I presented how IBM Watson works, how it played the Jeopardy! game show last year, and how IBM has helped clients use the technology to solve real-world problems.

• Understanding the IBM Grand Challenge, how it compares to the IBM Deep Blue chess playing computer
• How IBM Watson works, the hardware, the software, and the algorithms involved
• How to build your own "Watson Jr." in your own basement, based on my [popular instructions I published last year].
• Examples of how the technology is being used in Healthcare and Financial Services

If you missed it, I will be repeating this session on IBM Watson on Thursday.

Tonight we have the grand opening reception of the Solution Center and a concert featuring Grace Potter & the Nocturnals!

technorati tags: IBM, Archive, Compliance, WORM, NENR, Mike Griese, , Dan Zehnpfennig, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, Watson, Healthcare, Financial Services, Wellpoint, Seton, CitiGroup

There is still time to enroll for [IBM Edge], a conference focused on storage, to be held June 4-8 in Orlando, Florida. There is an early-bird discount until May 6!

I will be there all week! Here are the seven sessions I will be presenting at the Technical Edge side of the event:

Understanding Your Options for Storing Archive Data to Meet Compliance Challenges

This session will cover the IBM software and hardware solutions that your organization can use to store archive data, including features like immutability, Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) technology and Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable (NENR) enforcement. The discussion will include high-level concepts like chronological and event-based retention, litigation hold and release, as well as an overview of the products and solutions from IBM that you can deploy today.

IBM Watson: How it Works and What it Means for Society Beyond Winning Jeopardy!

In 2011, the IBM Watson computer was able to beat the top-earning human winners on the trivia game-show “Jeopardy!” As I was the author of [How to Build Your Own Watson Junior in Your Basement], I have been asked to explain how the IBM Watson system was put together, how it works, and what examples of text mining and big data analytics means for society as we apply technology to meet tomorrow's challenges.

Using Social Media for IBM System Storage - Birds of a Feather

I will be moderating this Birds of a Feather, or BOF, session that will bring together a Q&A panel of experts on how social media can be leveraged to help you do your job, get the information you need to solve problems, and share your knowledge with others.

Data Footprint Reduction: Understanding IBM Storage Efficiency Options

Data Footprint Reduction is the catch-all term for a variety of technologies designed to help reduce storage costs. In this session, I will cover thin provisioning, space-efficient copies, deduplication and compression technologies, and describe the IBM storage products that provide these capabilities.

IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era

Confused about IBM's new initiatives for Big Data analytics, Workload Optimized Systems, and Cloud Computing? This session will explain it all, and how IBM's strategy for its various storage products and solutions fit into these overall themes.

IBM SONAS and the IBM Cloud Storage Taxonomy

Confused over the different types of cloud storage? IBM's scale-out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) can be used in a variety of use cases. This session will provide an overview of IBM's SONAS solution, provide an update on the latest features and functions recently announced, and explain how it can be deployed in various private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Overview and Update

IBM has enhanced its premier storage infrastructure management tool: IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center. This session will provide both an overview of the product, and explain the latest features and functions recently announced.

I hope to see you all there!

technorati tags: IBM, Edge, Archive, Social Media, BOF, Data Footprint Reduction, Strategy, Smarter Planet, Smarter Computing, SONAS, Cloud, Taxonomy, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, IBM Watson

This week, I am in Melbourne, Australia for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium]. Here is a recap of Day 1:

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.

Want best practices for configuring SVC or Storwize V7000 with VMware? IBM has published the [VMware Proof of Practice and Performance Guidelines on the SAN Volume Controller] redbook, and the [VMware Multipathing with the SAN Volume Controller] redpaper.

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.

This week is also hosting [The Presidents Cup] golf tournament at the [Royal Melbourne Golf Club] featuring 24 of the top golfers, including Tiger Woods, as well as [celebrities like Michael Jordan].

technorati tags: IBM, Storage, Symposium, Melbourne, Australia, TPC, Storage Hypervisor, Storwize V7000, SVC, VAAI, vMotion, DWDM, TS1140, 3592-E07, TS3500, LTFS, Emmy, 3592-C07, FICON, The Presidents Cup, Royal Melbourne Golf Club, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan

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.

xST06 - Understanding IBM's Storage Encryption Options

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.

The week after that, I will be in Melbourne, Australia for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium]. Here are the sessions I will present:

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.

technorati tags: IBM, Storage Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia, Storwize V7000, XIV, Storage Strategy, Smarter Computing, Encryption, Information Archive, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, SONAS, SBSC, TS3500, LTFS

IBM had over a dozen storage-related announcements this week. This is my third and final part in my series to provide a quick overview of the announcements.

IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager v6.3

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager is market-leading software that provides not just backup, but also HSM and archive capabilities across a wide variety of operating systems. Originally developed in the IBM Almaden Research Center, it then moved about 15 years ago to Tucson to become a commercial product.

The new TSM v6.3 introduces site-to-site hot-standby disaster recovery feature that replicates the TSM meta data and data for fast recovery. The maximum number of objects supported has doubled to four billion. Reporting has been enhanced using technologies borrowed from IBM Cognos. Lastly, a feature on Tivoli Storage Productivity Center has been carried forward to deploy and update agents on the various clients.

For more details, see fellow IBM blogger Richard Vining's post on [TSM v6.3 Announcements]

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy® Manager v3.1

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager coordinates application-aware backups through the use of point-in-time copy services such as FlashCopy or Snapshot on various IBM and non-IBM disk systems. The versions can remain on disk, or optionally processed by Tivoli Storage Manager to move them to external storage such as tape for added protection.

There will always be a spot in my heart for this product, as the method to use FlashCopy for application-aware backups on the mainframe was my 19th patent, and subsequently delivered as a series of enhancements to DFSMS over the past decade on the z/OS operating system. It is good to see this innovation has "jumped over" to distributed systems.

The new FlashCopy Manager v3.1 adds support for HP-UX and VMware, expands support for IBM DB2 and Oraqcle databases, and introduces an interface for custom business applications.

For more details, see fellow IBM blogger Del Hoobler's post on [TSM FlashCopy Manager v3.1 Announcements].

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments v6.3

TSM for VE is a new addition to the TSM family, focused on being able to coordinate hypervisor-aware data protection. Initially it supports VMware, but IBM has plans to support a variety of other server virtualization hypervisors as well, as over 40 percent of companies run two or more hypervisors in their data center.

The new TSM for VE v6.3 adds a VMware vCenter plug-in, and support for hardware-based disk snapshots.

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v4.2.2

A long time ago, I was the chief architect IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v1, now we are already up to v4.2.2 release!

IBM has added enhanced reporting based on IBM Cognos technology, including storage tiering analysis reports (STAR). Few companies keep all of their storage tiers in a single disk system. Rather, they have different boxes, and often from different vendors. IBM's Productivity Center can report on both IBM and non-IBM disk systems. New this release is support for the internal disks of the Storwize V7000 midrange disk system.

Productivity Center's "SAN Planner" has been enhanced to consider XIV replication criteria. This SAN Planner helps clients decide where to carve LUNs, and to make sure they pick the right place given all of the criteria such as remote copy replications.

Last year, we introduced Productivity Center for Disk Midrange Edition (MRE) which to offer lower price when you are only managing midrange disk systems DS5000, DS3000, Storwize V7000 and SVC managing these. This was so successful, that we now have TPC Select, which is basically Productivity Center Standard Edition (SE) for these midrange disk systems.

Whew! I have already heard from some of my readers to slow down, that this is too much information to deal with all at once. IBM has tried everything from having just a few announcements nearly every Tuesday, to having huge launches every two to three years, and settled in the middle with announcements about four to five times per year.

technorati tags: IBM, Tivoli, Storage, TSM, backup, HSM, archive, FlashCopy, FlashCopy hManager, , VE, VMware, vCenter, Cognos, TPC, MRE, TPC Select

Over on the Tivoli Storage Blog, there is an exchange over the concept of a "Storage Hypervisor". This started with fellow IBMer Ron Riffe's blog post [Enabling Private IT for Storage Cloud -- Part I], with a promise to provide parts 2 and 3 in the next few weeks. Here's an excerpt:

"Storage resources are virtualized. Do you remember back when applications ran on machines that really were physical servers (all that “physical” stuff that kept everything in one place and slowed all your processes down)? Most folks are rapidly putting those days behind them.

In August, Gartner published a paper [Use Heterogeneous Storage Virtualization as a Bridge to the Cloud] that observed “Heterogeneous storage virtualization devices can consolidate a diverse storage infrastructure around a common access, management and provisioning point, and offer a bridge from traditional storage infrastructures to a private cloud storage environment” (there’s that “cloud” language). So, if I’m going to use a storage hypervisor as a first step toward cloud enabling my private storage environment, what differences should I expect? (good question, we get that one all the time!)

The basic idea behind hypervisors (server or storage) is that they allow you to gather up physical resources into a pool, and then consume virtual slices of that pool until it’s all gone (this is how you get the really high utilization). The kicker comes from being able to non-disruptively move those slices around. In the case of a storage hypervisor, you can move a slice (or virtual volume) from tier to tier, from vendor to vendor, and now, from site to site all while the applications are online and accessing the data. This opens up all kinds of use cases that have been described as “cloud”. One of the coolest is inter-site application migration.

A good storage hypervisor helps you be smart.

Application owners come to you for storage capacity because you’re responsible for the storage at your company. In the old days, if they requested 500GB of capacity, you allocated 500GB off of some tier-1 physical array – and there it sat. But then you discovered storage hypervisors! Now you tell that application owner he has 500GB of capacity… What he really has is a 500GB virtual volume that is thin provisioned, compressed, and backed by lower-tier disks. When he has a few data blocks that get really hot, the storage hypervisor dynamically moves just those blocks to higher tier storage like SSD’s. His virtual disk can be accessed anywhere across vendors, tiers and even datacenters. And in the background you have changed the vendor storage he is actually sitting on twice because you found a better supplier. But he doesn’t know any of this because he only sees the 500GB virtual volume you gave him. It’s 'in the cloud'."

"Let’s start with a quick walk down memory lane. Do you remember what your data protection environment looked like before virtualization? There was a server with an operating system and an application… and that thing had a backup agent on it to capture backup copies and send them someplace (most likely over an IP network) for safe keeping. It worked, but it took a lot of time to deploy and maintain all the agents, a lot of bandwidth to transmit the data, and a lot of disk or tapes to store it all. The topic of data protection has modernized quite a bit since then.

Fast forward to today. Modernization has come from three different sources – the server hypervisor, the storage hypervisor and the unified recovery manager. The end result is a data protection environment that captures all the data it needs in one coordinated snapshot action, efficiently stores those snapshots, and provides for recovery of just about any slice of data you could want. It’s quite the beautiful thing."

At this point, you might scratch your head and ask "Does this Storage Hypervisor exist, or is this just a theoretical exercise?" The answer of course is "Yes, it does exist!" Just like VMware offers vSphere and vCenter, IBM offers block-level disk virtualization through the SAN Volume Controller(SVC) and Storwize V7000 products, with a full management support from Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Standard Edition.

SVC has supported every release of VMware since the 2.5 version. IBM is the leading reseller of VMware, so it makes sense for IBM and VMware development to collaborate and make sure all the products run smoothly together. SVC presents volumes that can be formatted for VMFS file system to hold your VMDK files, accessible via FCP protocol. IBM and VMware have some key synergies:

• Management integration with Tivoli Storage Productivity Center and VMware vCenter plug-in
• VAAI support: Hardware-assisted locking, hardware-assisted zeroing, and hardware-assisted copying. Some of the competitors, like EMC VPLEX, don't have this!
• Space-efficient FlashCopy. Let's say you need 250 VM images, all running a particular level of Windows. A boot volume of 20GB each would consume 5000GB (5 TB) of capacity. Instead, create a Golden Master volume. Then, take 249 copies with space-efficient FlashCopy, which only consumes space for the modified portions of the new volumes. For each copy, make the necessary changes like unique hostname and IP address, changing only a few blocks of data each. The end result? 250 unique VM boot volumes in less than 25GB of space, a 200:1 reduction!
• Support for VMware's Site Recovery Manager using SVC's Metro Mirror or Global Mirror features for remote-distance replication.
• Data center federation. SVC allows you to seamlessly do vMotion from one datacenter to another using its "stretched cluster" capability. Basically, SVC makes a single image of the volume available to both locations, and stores two physical copies, one in each location. You can lose either datacenter and still have uninterrupted access to your data. VMware's HA or Fault Tolerance features can kick in, same as usual.

But unlike tools that work only with VMware, IBM's storage hypervisor works with a variety of server virtualization technologies, including Microsoft Hyper-V, Xen, OracleVM, Linux KVM, PowerVM, z/VM and PR/SM. This is important, as a recent poll on the Hot Aisle blog indicates that [44 percent run 2 or more server hypervisors]!

For a set of best practices combining VMware with SVC, check out this IBM Redpaper titled [VMware Proof of Practice and Performance Guidelines on the SAN Volume Controller].

Join the conversation! The virtual dialogue on this topic will continue in a [live group chat] this Friday, September 23, 2011 from 12 noon to 1pm EDT. Join me and about 20 other top storage bloggers, key industry analysts and IBM Storage subject matter experts to discuss storage hypervisors and get questions answered about improving your private storage environment.

technorati tags: IBM, Ron Riffe, Richard Vining, Storage Hypervisor, Cloud, Heterogeneous, Virtualization, SVC, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, VMware, vSphere, vCenter, ESX, Unified Recovery, Data Protection, EMC, VPLEX