I am always amused in the manner the IT industry tries to solve problems. Take, for example, theprocess of backups. The simplest approach is to backup everything, and keep "n" versions of that.Simple enough for a small customer who has only a handful of machines, but does not scale well. Inmy post [Times a Million],I coined the phrase "laptop mentality", referring to people's inability to think through solutions in large scale.

Apparently, I am not alone.Steve Duplessie (ESG) wrote in his post[Random Thoughts]:

"I may even get to stop yelling at people to stop doing full backups every week on non-changing data (which is 80 %+) just because that's how they used to do it. They won't have a choice. You can't back up 5X your current data the way you do (or don't) today."

Hu Yoshida (HDS) does a great job explaining that thereare three ways to perform deduplication for backups:

1. Pre-processing. Have the backup software not backup unchanged data.
2. Inline processing. Have an index to filter the output of the backup as it sends data to storage.
3. Post-processing. Have the receiving storage detect duplicates and handle them accordingly.

Here's an excerpt from his post[Deduplication Ratios]:

"A full backup of 1TB data base tablespace is taken on day one. The next day another full backup is taken and only 2GB of that backup has any changes.

Using traditional full backup approaches after 2 nights, the backup capacity required is 2 x 1TB = 2TB

One method of calculating de-duplication ratios could yield a low ratio:

• Total de-duplicated backup capacity used = 1TB + 2GB = 1.002TB
• If the de-duplication ratio compares the amount of total physical storage used to the total amount that would have been used by traditional backup methods, the ratio = 2TB / 1.002TB = approximately 2:1

Another method of calculating de-duplication ratios could yield a high ratio:

• Total de-duplicated backup capacity used still = 1.002TB
• If the de-duplication ratio compares the amount of data stored in the most recent (second) backup to the amount that would have been used by traditional backup methods, the ratio 1TB / 2GB = 1000GB / 2GB = 500:1"

While IBM also offers deduplication in the IBM System Storage N series disk systems, I find that for backup, itis often more effective to apply best practices via IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). Let's take a look at some:

Exclude Operating System files

Why take full backups of your operating system every day? Yes, deduplication will find a lot to reduce fromthis, but best practices would exclude these. TSM has an include/exclude list, and the default version excludesall the operating system files that would be recovered from "bare machine recovery" or "new system install"procedures. Often, if the replacement machine has different gear inside, your OS backups aren't what you need,and a fresh OS install may determine this and install different drivers or different settings.

Exclude Application programs

Again, yes if there are several machines running the same application, you probably have opportunity for deduplication. However, unless you match these up with the appropriate registry or settings buried down in theoperating system, recovering just application program files may render an unusable system. Applications are bestinstalled from a common source that are either "pushed" through software distribution, or "pulled" from an application installation space.

Databases

If you have TB-sized databases, and are only doing full backups daily to protect it, have I got a solution for you.IBM and others have software that are "application-aware" and "database-aware" enough to determine what haschanged since the last backup and copy only that delta. Taking advantage of the TSM Application ProgrammingInterface (API) allows for both IBM and third party tools to take these delta backups correctly.

User Files

Which leaves us with user files, which are often unique enough on their own from the files of other users,that would not benefit from file-level deduplication. Backing up changed data only, as TSM does with its patented ["progressive incremental backup"] method, generally gets most of the benefits described by deduplication, without having to purchase storage hardware features.

Of course, if two or more users have identical files, the question might be why these are not stored on acommon file share. NAS file share repositories can greatly reduce each user keeping their own set of duplicates.It is interesting that some block-oriented deduplication,such as that found in the IBM System Storage N series, can get some benefit because some user files are oftenderivatives of other files, and there might be some 4 KB blocks of data in common.

Last November, I visited a customer in Canada. All of their problems were a direct result of taking full backupsevery weekend. It put a strain on their network; it used up too many disk and tape resources; and it took too long tocomplete. They asked about virtual tape libraries, deduplication, and anything else that could help them. The answer was simple: switch to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and apply best practices.

technorati tags: Steve Duplessie, ESG, Hu Yoshida, HDS, deduplication, N series, application-aware, database-aware, database, tablespace, best practice, Tivoli, Storage Manager, TSM, progressive, incremental, backup

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Tags:  bc disk

On Tuesday, I covered much of the Feb 26 announcements, but left the IBM System Storage DS8000 for today so that it can haveits own special focus.

Many of the enhancements relate to z/OS Global Mirror, which we formerly called eXtended Remote Copy or "XRC", not to be confused with our "regular" Global Mirror that applies to all data. For those not familiar with z/OS Global Mirror, here is how it works. The production mainframe writes updates to the DS8000, and the DS8000 keeps track of these in cache until a "reader" can pull them over to the secondary location.The "reader" is called System Data Mover (SDM) which runs in its own address space under z/OS operating system. Thanks to some work my team did several years ago, z/OS Global Mirror was able to extend beyond z/OS volumes and include Linux on System z data. Linux on System z can use a "Compatible Disk Layout" (CDL) format (now the default) that meetsall the requirements to be included in the copy session.

IBM has over 300 deployments of z/OS Global Mirror, mostly banks, brokerages and insurance companies. The feature can keep tens of thousands of volumes in one big "consistency group" and asynchronously mirror them to any distance on the planet, with the secondary copy recovery point objective (RPO) only a few seconds behind the primary.

Extended Distance FICON

Extended Distance FICON is an enhancement to the industry-standard FICON architecture (FC-SB-3) that can help avoid degradation of performance at extended distances by implementing a new protocol for "persistent" Information Unit (IU) pacing. This deals with the number of packets in flight between servers and storage separated by long distances, andcan keep a link fully utilized at 4Gpbs FICON up to 50 kilometers. This is particularly important for z/OS GlobalMirror "reader" System Data Mover (SDM). By having many "reads" in flight, this enhancementcan help reduce the need for spoofing or channel-extender equipment, or allow you to choose lower-costchannel extenders based on "frame-forwarding" technology. All of this helps reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO)for a complete end-to-end solution.

This feature will be available in March as a no-charge update to the DS8000 microcode.For more details, see the [IBM Press Release]

z/OS Global Mirror process offload to zIIP processors

To understand this one, you need to understand the different "specialty engines" available on the System z.

On distributed systems where you run a single application on a single piece of server hardware, you mightpay "per server", "per processor" or lately "per core" for dual-core and quad-core processors. Software vendors were looking for a way to charge smaller companies less, and larger companies more. However, you might end up paying the same whether you use 1GHz Intelor 4GHz Intel processor, even though the latter can do four times more work per unit time.

The mainframe has a few processors for hundreds or thousands of business applications.In the beginning, all engines on a mainframe were general-purpose "Central Processor" or CP engines. Based on theircycle rate, IBM was able to publish the number of Million Instructions per Second (MIPS) that a machine witha given number of CP engines can do. With the introduction of side co-processors, this was changed to "Millionsof Service Units" or MSU. Software licensing can charge per MSU, and this allows applications running in aslittle as one percent of a processor to get appropriately charged.

One of the first specialty engines was the IFL, the "Integrated Facility for Linux". This was a CP designatedto only run z/VM and Linux on the mainframe. You could "buy" an IFL on your mainframe much cheaper than a CP,and none of your z/OS application software would count it in the MSU calculations because z/OS can't run on theIFL. This made it very practical to run new Linux workloads.

In 2004, IBM introduced "z Application Assist Processor" (zAAP) engines to run Java, and in 2006, the "z Integrated Information Processor" (zIIP) engines to run database and background data movement activities.By not having these counted in the MSU number for business applications, it greatly reduced the cost for mainframe software.

Tuesday's announcement is that the SDM "reader" will now run in a zIIP engine, reducing the costs for applicationsthat run on that machine. Note that the CP, IFL, zAAP and zIIP engines are all identical cores. The z10 EC hasup to 64 of these (16 quad-core) and you can designate any core as any of these engine types.

Faster z/OS Global Mirror Incremental Resync

One way to set up a 3-site disaster recovery protection is to have your production synchronously mirrored to a second site nearby, and at the same time asynchronously mirrored to a remote location. On the System z,you can have site "A" using synchronous IBM System Storage Metro Mirror over to nearby site "B", and alsohave site "A" sending data over to size "C" using z/OS Global Mirror. This is called "Metro z/OS Global Mirror"or "MzGM" for short.

In the past, if the disk in site A failed, you would switch over to site B, and then send all the data all over again. This is because site B was not tracking what the SDM reader had or had not yet processed.With Tuesday's announcement, IBM has developed an "incremental resync" where site B figures out what theincremental delta is to connect to the z/OS Global Mirror at site "C", and this is 95% faster than sendingall the data over.

IBM Basic HyperSwap for z/OS

What if you are sending all of your data from one location to another, and one disk system fails? Do you declare a disaster and switch over entirely? With HyperSwap, you only switch over the disk systems, but leave therest of the servers alone. In the past, this involved hiring IBM Global Technology Services to implementa Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS) with software that monitors the situation and updates thez/OS operating system when a HyperSwap had occurred. All application I/O that were writing to the primary locationare automatically re-routed to the disks at the secondary location. HyperSwap can do this for all the disk systems involved,allowing applications at the primary location to continue running uninterrupted.

HyperSwap is a very popular feature, but not everyone has implemented the advanced GDPS capabilities.To address this, IBM now offers "Basic HyperSwap", which is actually going to be shipped as IBMTotalStorage Productivity Center for Replication Basic Edition for System z. This will run in a z/OSaddress space, and use either the DB2 RDBMS you already have, or provide you Apache Derby database for thosefew out there who don't have DB2 on their mainframe already.

Update: There has been some confusion on this last point, so let me explain the keydifferences between the different levels of service:

• Basic HyperSwap: single-site high availability for the disk systems only
• GDPS/PPRC HyperSwap Manager: single- or multi-site high availability for the disk systems, plus some entry-level disaster recovery capability
• GDPS/PPRC: highly automated end-to-end disaster recovery solution for servers, storage and networks

I apologize to all my colleagues who thought I implied that Basic HyperSwap was a full replacement for the morefull-function GDPS service offerings.

Extended Address Volumes (EAV)

Up until now, the largest volume you could have was only 54 GB in size, and many customers still are using 3 GB and 9 GB volume sizes. Now, IBM will introduce 223 GB volumes. You can have any kind of data set on these volumes,but only VSAM data sets can reside on cylinders beyond the first 65,280. That is because many applications still thinkthat 65,280 is the largest cylinder number you can have.

This is important because a mainframe, or a set of mainframes clustered together, can only have about 60,000disk volumes total. The 60,000 is actually the Unit Control Block (UCB) limit, and besides disk volumes, youcan have "virtual" PAVs that serve as an alias to existing volumes to provide concurrent access.

Aside from the first item, the Extended Distance FICON, the other enhancements are "preview announcements" which means that IBM has not yet worked out the final details of price, packaging or delivery date. In many cases, the work is done, has been tested in our labs, or running beta in select client locations, but for completeness I am required to make the following disclaimer:

All statements regarding IBM's plans, directions, and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice. Availability, prices, ordering information, and terms and conditions will be provided when the product is announced for general availability.

technorati tags: IBM, z10 EC, DS8000, z/OS Global Mirror, XRC, SDM, CDL, RPO, FICON, dual-core, quad-core, Intel, MIPS, MSU, zAAP, IFL, zIIP, Hyperswap, DB2, Apache, Derby, UCB, VSAM, EAV

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Tags:  bc announcements disk

Yesterday, I asked if you were prepared for the future? The future is now. Today, IBM announced its["New Enterprise Data Center"] vision and strategy which spans software, hardware and services in dealing withthe latest challenges that our clients are faced with today, or will face sooner or later this century.

Here's an excerpt:

Align IT with business goals
These changes demand that IT improve cost and service delivery, manage escalating complexity, and better secure the enterprise. And aligning IT more closely with the business becomes a primary goal. The new enterprise data center is an evolutionary new model for efficient IT delivery that helps provide the freedom to drive business innovation. Through a service oriented model, IT will be able to better manage costs, improve operational performance and resiliency, and more quickly respond to business needs. This approach will deliver dynamic and seamless access to IT services and resources, improving both productivity and satisfaction.

IBM's Vision for the New Enterprise Data Center
The new enterprise data center can improve the integration of people, process, and technology in your business to help you improve efficiency and effectiveness. As you implement a new enterprise data center strategy, your infrastructure becomes open, efficient, and easy to manage. And your IT staff can move from a focus on fixing IT problems to solving business challenges. Ultimately your processes become standardized and efficient, focused on business needs rather than technology.

A lot was announced today, so I will give a quick recap now, and cover specific areas over the rest of the week.

IBM System z10 Enteprise Class

IBM introduces its most powerful mainframe. Before you think "Wait, that's a mainframe, that doesn't apply to me"stop to consider all that IBM has done to make the mainframe an "open system" without sacrificing security oravailability:

• Open standard connectivity, including TCP/IP and now 6Gbps Infiniband and 10GbE Ethernet.
• Unix System Services. Yes, z/OS is certified to provide UNIX interfaces for today's applications.
• HFS and zFS file systems that can be mounted, shared, and used by traditional z/OS applications and JCL.
• Linux and Java. Many of today's largest websites are run on mainframes behind the scenes.
• Extreme bandwidth. The z10 EC handles up to 336 FICON channels (4Gbps) for large data processing workloads

The z10 EC is as powerful as 1,500 x86 (such as Intel or AMD) servers, but consumes 85 percent less floorspace and85 percent less energy. (They should put a "green" stripe down the front of this box just to remind everyone how energy efficient this server really is!) For more on the z10 EC, see the[Press Release].

Enhanced IBM System Storage DS8000

With the XIV acquisition taking the role as the best place to put unstructured files for Web 2.0 applications,the IBM DS8000 can focus on its core strength, managing databases and online transactions for the mainframe.There's enough here to justify its own post, so I will cover this later.

IT Service Management Center for z (ITSMCz)

Trust me, I don't make up these acronyms. IT Service Management are the policies and procedures for managingan IT environment, such as following the best practices documented in the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL).In the past, IBM tools have focused on Linux, UNIX and Windows on distributed servers, but today ITSMCz bringsall of that to the mainframe! (or perhaps more correct to say "brings the mainframe to all that"!)

IT Transformation & Optimization - Infrastructure Strategy and Planning services

I don't make up the names of our service offerings either. However, one thing is clear, it is time for peopleto re-evaluate their current data center, and come up with a new plan. The average data center is 15 years old.According to Gartner Group, more than 70 percent of the world's "Global 1000" organizations will have to make significant modifications to their data centers in the next five years. IBM can help, and is rolling outa new set of services specifically to help clients make this transition, to better align their IT to their business strategies.

Economic Stimulus Package

IBM borrowed this idea from the U.S. government. IBM Global Financing is offering special terms and ratesfor new equipment installed by December 31 this year.

Want to learn more? Read this 15-page[IBM's Vision]white paper.

technorati tags: IBM, New Enterprise Data Center, vision, strategy, z10 EC, mainframe, Enterprise Class, Jim Stallings, Linux, UNIX, Windows, z/OS, ITSMCz, Gartner, DS8000, infrastructure, services, economic stimulus package

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Tags:  infrastructure disk announcements san green

Last week's post [I nearly fell out of my chair] stirred up a lot of comments. Here is an excerpt from a reader who goes by "AO"

...Try to say more with less words. The rear view mirror is great for safety but does not help taking you forward. I would much rather read about your view of the future of IT infrastructure...

In just a few sentences, the comment stirs up two controversial issues:"How long should posts be? and "What is the future of IT?

The blogs I follow seem to fall into three categories:

Several small posts per day

[Life Hacker] and [Boing Boing] are two that I have quit following because of the number of posts was overwhelming. Twitter limits its updates to 140 total characters per post. [Seth Godin] often posts just a few sentences. And lately, I haveseen this craze for six-word stories and memoirs that inspired this [contest for a six-word motto for the United States].

one post per day, perhaps three to five per week

IBM Developerworks that host this blog suggest posting once per day. General blogging guidelines I have found suggest 300 to 500 words per post. Most magazine and newspaper articles range around 700 words.In my book, [Inside System Storage: Volume I], I had 165 posts covering twelve months, with an average of 636 words per post.

longer posts, perhaps once a week or less

I've seen several executives adopt this approach. When they have something to say, out comes a long speech,in written form, when the occasion deems it necessary. Some of the more technical blogs adopt this approachalso, going into great detail on product specifications and supporting material to make their case.

Either way, it comes out to perhaps 2000 words per week, that can be 20 posts of 100 words each, four posts that are 500 words each, or one long post for the week. Currently, I post about 2-5 times per week, with posts 500-700 words long. I can try to mix short posts with long ones, to give you readers some variety. Post a comment below on whether you prefer that I do more/shorter or fewer/longer.

As for the future of IT...

In a recent post by fellow blogger (and author) Nick Carr titled [Alan Turing, cloud computing and IT's future], he mentions he has a free download of a 7-page PDF called "IT in 2018: from Turing's machine to the computing cloud." It's a quick read, covering many of thepoints in his most recent book, The Big Switch. Here's an excerpt:

As for computer professionals, the coming of the WorldWide Computer means a realignment of the IT workforce,with some jobs disappearing, some shifting fromusers to suppliers, and others becoming more prominent.On the supplier side, we’ll likely see booming demand for the skills required to design and run reliable,large-scale computing plants. Expertise in parallelprocessing, virtualization, artificial intelligence, energymanagement and cooling, encryption, high-speed networking,and related fields will be coveted and rewarded.Much software will also need to be written orrewritten to run efficiently on the new infrastructure. Ina clear sign of the new labor requirements, Google andIBM have teamed up to spearhead a major educationinitiative aimed at training university students to writeprograms for massively parallel systems.

Some interesting insights from Google can be read in New York Times'Freakonomics blog, where Steve Dubner interviews Google's chief economist: [Hal Varian Answers Your Questions]Hal comes up with some clever answers to some rather tough questions. It's worth a read.

It is good to have futurists like this. However, as we caution in IBM, those who seek a life througha crystal ball... must often settle for a diet of broken glass.I will close with one of my favorite quotes.

"As I've said many times, the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed."
--- William Gibson (science-fiction author)

So, yes, I may sometimes look at the rear-view mirror. However, there is a common theme from Nick Carr to Steve Dubnerto William Gibson. They also look back to the past to give insights on how things might unfold in the future.

My view is that for some the future is already here. IBM already offers the product, service or solutionthat might be just what you need, but you just haven't gotten it yet. Future for you, but past for us.For others, the future is repeating a pattern we have already seen in the past. Understanding what happened back then helps us be better prepared to understand what is happening now, in the directions and trends we forecast moving forward.

The future of IT is coming, are you prepared?

technorati tags: rear view mirror, LifeHacker, BoingBoing, Twitter, Seth Godin, IBM, blook, Developerworks, Nick Carr, Alan Turing, future of IT, The Big Switch, blook, computing cloud, Google, Hal Varin, Steve Dubner, Freakonomics, William Gibson

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Tags:  marketing

I nearly fell out of my chair when I read EMC's press release[EMC a Leader in Virtual Tape Libraries Writes Top Independent Research Firm], as pointed to by fellow EMC blogger Chuck Hollis in his post[How The EMC Disk Library Came To Be]. The EMC Disk Library(EDL) was formerly known as the EMC CLARiiON Disk Library, but was renamed somewhere along the way to drop the CLARiiON brand. Given CLARiiON's poor reputation in the marketplace, this was probablya smart move.

First, an excerpt from the EMC Press Release:

EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) today announced it has been positioned as a leader in the Forrester Wave™: Enterprise Open Systems Virtual Tape Library (VTL), Q1 2008 by Forrester Research, Inc. (January 31, 2008), an independent market and technology research firm. EMC achieved a position as a leader in the Forrester Wave report on virtual tape libraries based on the largest installed base of the EMC® Disk Library family of systems, its broad ecosystem interoperability. Virtual tape libraries emulate tape drives and work in conjunction with existing backup software applications, enabling fast backup and restoration of data by using high-capacity, low-cost disk drives.

EMC was the first major vendor in the open systems virtual tape library market as it introduced the EMC Disk Library in April 2004 and today is a leading provider of open systems virtual tape solutions, with systems that are designed for businesses and organizations of all sizes.

While the press release implies that "EDL equals VTL", Chuck tries to explain they are in fact very different. Here is an excerpt from his blog post:

Virtual Tape Libraries vs. Disk Libraries

As many of you know, VTLs have been around for a while. They use disk as a cache -- they buffer the incoming backup streams, do some housekeeping and stacking, then turn around and write tape efficiently. When you go to restore, you're usually coming back off of tape, unless the backup image in question is sitting in the disk cache.

Now, there is nothing wrong with the VTL approach, but it was conceived in a time when disks were horribly expensive. It was also pretty clear to many of us that disks were going to be a whole lot cheaper in the near future, and this fundamental assumption wouldn't be valid for much longer.

I kept thinking in terms of disk as a direct target for a backup application. No modifications to the backup application. Native speed of sequential disks for both backup and restore. Tape positioned as a backup to the backup. Use the strengths of the underlying array (e.g. CLARiiON) for performance, availability, management, etc.

We ended up calling the concept a "disk library" to differentiate from the VTLs that had come before it. It was a different value proposition and offering, based on the emergence of lower-cost disk media.

... It's nice to see we're at 1,100+ customers, and still going strong.

For those new to the blogosphere, there is a difference between "Press Releases" as formalcorporate communications versus "Blog Posts" which are informal opinions of the individual blogger, whichmay or may not match exactly the views of their respective employer.As we've learned many times before, one should not treat termslike "first" or "leader" in corporate press releases literally! Let's explore each.

Was EDL the first "open systems" Virtual Tape Library?

This is implied by the Forrester report. Chuck mentions the "VTLs that had came before it" in his blog, and many people are aware that IBM and StorageTek had introduced mainframe-attached VTLs in the 1990s. But what about VTL for "open systems"?

(Hold aside for the moment that IBM System zmainframe is an open system itself, with z/OS certified as a bona fide UNIX operating system by the [the Open Group] standards body. Most analysts and research firms usually refer only to the non-mainframe versions of UNIX and Windows. Alternative definitions for "open systems" can be foundin [Web definitions or Wikipedia]. I will assume Forrester meantnon-mainframe servers.)

IBM announced AIX non-mainframe attachment via SCSI connectivity to the IBM 3494 Virtual Tape Server (VTS) on Feb 16, 1999, with general availability in May 28, 1999. That's nearly FIVE YEARS before the April 2004 introduction of EDL. IBM VTS support for Sun Solaris and Microsoft Windows came shortly thereafter in November 2000, and support for HP-UX a bit later in June 2001. One of my 17 patents is for the software inside the IBM 3494 VTS, so like Chuck, I can takesome pride in the success of a successful product.

(I don't remember if StorageTek, which was subsequently acquired by Sun, had ever supported non-mainframe operating systems with their Virtual Storage Manager[VSM] offering, but if they did, I am sure it was also before EMC.)

Last week, another EMC blogger, BarryB (aka [the Storage Anarchist]),took me to task in comments on my post [IBM now supports 1TB SATA drives]. He felt that IBM should not claim support, given that the software inside the IBM System Storage N series is developed by NetApp. He compared this to the situation of HP and Sun re-badging the HDS USP-V disk system. If someone else wrote the software, BarryB opines, IBM should not claim credit for it. I tried to explain how IBM provides added value and has full-time employees dedicated to N series development and support, butdoubt I have changed his mind.

Why do I bring that up? Because the EMC Disk Library runs OEM software from FalconStor. Basically EMC is assembling a hardware/software solution with components provided from OEM suppliers. Hmmm? Sound familiar? Who is calling the kettle black?

If there is a clear winner here, it is FalconStor itself.Perhaps one of the worst kept industry secrets is that FalconStor software is also used in VTL offerings from Sun, Copan, and IBM, the latter embodied as the [IBM TS7520 Virtualization Engine] offering. If you like the concept of an EDL,but prefer instead one-stop shopping from an "information infrastructure" vendor, IBM can offer the TS7520 along with servers, software and services for a complete end-to-end solution.

Can EMC claim to be "a leader" in Virtual Tape Libraries?

The timing of all this couldn't have been better. IDC analyst firm just came out with their latest 3Q07 "Tape Tracker" analysis report of the tape industry.Here's an excerpt from [Report: IBM Number One in Worldwide Branded Tape Revenue]:

• During the measured quarter, IBM shipped its 10 millionth LTO-4 tape drive cartridge to Getty Images, the world's leading creator and distributor of still imagery, footage and multi-media products, as well as a recognized provider of other forms of premium digital content, including music. Getty Images is using the LTO-4 drives as part of a tiered infrastructure of IBM disk and tape solutions that help support the backup needs of their digital imagery;
• IBM shipped more than 1,500 Petabytes of tape storage in Q3'07 alone;
• During Q3'07, IBM shipped the 10,000th IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library. The TS3500 is a highly scalable tape library with support from 1 to 192 tape drives and up to 6,400 cartridge slots for open system, mainframe and virtual tape system attachment.

Let's take a look at the numbers. IBM has sold over 5,400 virtual tape libraries. Sun/STK has sold over 4,000 virtual tape libraries. Both are drastically more than the 1,100 mentioned in Chuck's post. Does IDC recognize EMC in third place? No, EMC chooses instead to declare EDL as disk arrays (probably toprop up their IDC "Disk Tracker" numbers), so they don't even earn an honorable mention under the virtual tape librarycategory. This of course includes the number of mainframe-attached models from IBM and Sun/STK. So, if EMC did call these tape systems instead, they might showup in third place, and as such EMC could claim to be "a leader" in much the same way an athlete can claim to be an "Olympic medalist" winning the bronze for third place. (If you limit thecount to just the FalconStor-based models from IBM, EMC, Sun and Copan, then EMC moves up to first or second, but then press release titles like "EMC a Leader in FalconStor-based non-mainframe Virtual Tape Libraries" can get too confusing.)

Chuck, if you are reading this, I feel you have every right to celebrate your involvement with the EDL. Despite having common software and hardware components, both IBM and EMC can rightfully declare their own unique value-add through their respective VTL offerings. Like the IBM N series, the EMC Disk Library is not diminished by the fact the software was written by someone else. BarryB might disagree.

technorati tags: EMC, VTL, Forrester, CLARiiON, disk library, EDL, mainframe, open systems, disk, cache, buffer, 3494, VTS, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, Microsoft, Windows, Sun, StorageTek, Chuck Hollis, HP, HDS, USP-V, FalconStor, Copan, OEM, LTO-4, Getty Images, patent

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Tags:  tape disk

Last year, in my post [Inaugural Brand Impact 2007 Awards], I mentioned how IBM beat out other major storage vendors for the best brand "IBM System Storage". I am proud of this, and highlighted it as one of my team's key accomplishments during my brief20-month career in marketing, which I recapped in my post[Switching Over from What and Why] when I switched over to consulting.

This year, IBM did it again. For a second consecutive year, IBM System Storage was recognized by [Liquid Agency]as the leading brand for enterprise storage. Here is an excerpt from the [IBM Press Release]:

"IBM System Storage is the most trusted storage portfolio in the world, providing our clients leading disk, tape and storage software solutions and services. This award reflects IBM's priority in delivering information infrastructure solutions to solve our client's most critical storage challenges," said Barry Rudolph, Vice President, IBM System Storage. "We are helping clients -- from large corporations to small businesses -- intelligently manage information as a strategic business asset. We are proud to be recognized as the clear market leader in delivering solutions that help our clients manage and extract value from their information."

Liquid Agency reviewed over 250 technology brands to make this assessment.

IBM also swept a variety of other awards. Here are a few excerpts from[Datamation Announces 2008 Product of the Year Winners]:

IBM Business Process Simulator: Innov8

The Business/IT Alignment category is critical for many companies; getting these two key divisions in sync provides a huge competitive advantage. This year’s winner – by a landslide – is IBM's [Innov8].

This Big Blue product has a touch of the sci-fi to it: it’s an interactive, 3-D business simulator intended to close the divide between IT staff and business executives. In other words, it’s…a video game. I guarantee you that in all the decades that Datamation has done its Product of the Year awards, never has a video game won. The times they are a-changin’.

(Here’s a [YouTube video of Innov8].)

IBM System p 570 enterprise server

Whether a server is the “best” server is, in truth, based on your company’s individual needs and budgets. In the server world, with its myriad options and add-ons, one size definitely does not fit all. That said, IBM p 570 Server must fit plenty of needs; the box easily won the Enterprise Server category. IBM claims this workhorse doubles the speed of its predecessor without requiring a larger energy footprint.

IBM Lotus Symphony

When it comes to total numbers of users, there’s no question that Microsoft Office is the 800-pound gorilla of this category. The deeply entrenched Office makes the corporate world go ‘round. Given Office’s status, it’s a major eyebrow raiser that this category was won by relative newcomer IBM Lotus Symphony. Perhaps it’s because Big Blue’s product is free (that always helps), or because IBM is itself such an established vendor. Whatever the case, consider this vote as a huge upset.

(Note: IBM Lotus Symphony is available for [free download] for Windows and Linux.When my friend purchased a new laptop that came pre-installed with Windows Vista, he was surprised to see that Microsoft Office was not included. I pointed him to Lotus Symphony, and he is running great with his existing Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents! I use Lotus Symphony on both Windows and Linux, and IBM plans to make a version available for Mac OS X-- when that happens, I have my Mac Mini G4 waiting to try it out.)

IBM Wireless Software for Business Intelligence (BI) on the go

For most of 2007, IBM Cognos 8 Go! Mobile software supported only Blackberry units. At the end of last year, Cognos upgraded its wireless business intelligence software – which delivers business reports to on-the-go staffers – to support handhelds that run Windows Mobile OS. Naturally, this expanded the company’s user base, and likely helped Cognos 8 Go! Mobile win the Wireless Software category.

(If you have a RIM Blackberry handheld device, you can try out this[actual demo].)

Wow! That's a lot of awards. Congratulations to all my IBM colleagues who made this happen!

technorati tags: IBM, System Storage, Liquid Agency, Barry Rudolph, Datamation, awards, Innov8, System p, p570, Lotus Symphony, Microsoft Office, IBM Cognos, RIM, Blackberry

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Tags:  marketing

A reader of my blog asked me what seemed like a simple enough question:

Whatever happened to Lotus Approach? I loved that personal db. (thoughit's been awhile...)

Of course, researching an answer, I encountered some interesting new information. Interestingly, everyone tries to "read between the lines" and tries to determine what solution is best.

From a colleague from Lotus:

You can still get [Lotus Approach] as part of Smartsuite.

However, I have to assume his real question is ... "what is the quick and easy way for me to build a lightweight database app like Microsoft Access that I can distribute as a standalone executable?"

To which I would say "Lotus has a program called Approach, which is part of Lotus SmartSuite, which some people still use. However, a lot of the focus in IBM now centers around the lightweight Cloudscape database which IBM acquired from Informix, which is now known as the [open source project called Derby]. Many IBM and Lotus products, such as Lotus Expeditor use the JDBC connection to Derby, which allows you to use Windows, Linux, Flash, etc. ... with no vendor lock in".

I am familiar with Cloudscape, and I evaluated it as a potential database for IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center, when I was the lead architect defining the version 1 release. It runs entirely on Java, which is both a plus and minus. Plus in that it runs anywhere Java runs, but a minus in that it is not optimized for high performance or large scalability. Because of this, we decided instead on using the full commercial DB2 database instead for Productivity Center.

Not to be undone, my colleagues over at DB2 offered a different alternative, [DB2 Express-C], which runs on a variety of Windows, Linux-x86, and Linux on POWER platforms. It is "free" as in beer, not free as in speech, which means you can download and use it today at no charge, and even ship products with it included, but you are not allowed to modify and distribute altered versions of it, as you can with "free as in speech" open source code, as in the case of Derby above (see [Apache License 2.0"] for details).

(If you have no idea what I am talking about in my distinction between "free speech" and "free beer", see Simon Phipps' article[Perspective: Free speech, free beer and free software] orthe definition from the [Free Software Foundation].)

As I see it, DB2 Express-C has two key advantages. First, if you like the free version, you can purchase a "support contract" for those that need extra hand-holding, or are using this as part of a commercial business venture. Second,for those who do prefer vendor lock-in, it is easyto upgrade Express-C to the full IBM DB2 database product, so if you are developing a product intended for use with DB2, you can develop it first with DB2 Express-C, and migrate up to full DB2 commercial version when you are ready.

This is perhaps more information than you probably expected for such a simple question. Meanwhile, I am stilltrying to figure out MySQL as part of my [OLPC volunteer project].

technorati tags: IBM, Lotus, Approach, SmartSuite, TotalStorage, Productivity Center, Cloudscape, Apache, Derby, free, speech, beer, DB2, Express-C, Windows, Linux, POWER, open source

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Tags:  linux infrastructure

Wrapping up my week on the Feb 12 announcements, I will finish off talking about thenew Half-High (HH) LTO4 drives available for our TS3100 and TS3200 tape libraries.

Small and medium sized business (SMB) clients are looking for small, affordable tapesystems. Tape is inherently green, using orders of magnitude less energy than disk,and is very scalable by simply purchasing more tape cartridges.

When IBM first announced them, the TS3100 supported one drive with 24 cartridges,and the TS3200 (see picture at left) supported two drives and 48 cartridges. Unlike disk, that mentions RAWcapacity and then lowers it to indicate usable capacity in RAID configurations, tapeis just the opposite. LTO4 cartridges have 800 GB raw capacity, but with an average of 2:1compression, can hold a usable 1.6 TB of data. LTO4 also supports WORM cartridges fornon-erasable, non-rewriteable (NENR) types of data, and encryption capability.

As a follow-on to our HH LTO3 drives, IBM is the first major storage vendor to offerthe new HH LTO4 drives in entry-level automation, which directly attach via 3Gbps SAS connections to your host servers. The HH models allows you to have two drives in the TS3100, and four drives in the TS3200.

You can mix and match, LTO3 and LTO4. Why would anyone do that? Well, the Linear Tape Open [LTO]consortium --made up of technology provider companies IBM, HP and Quantum--decided to support N-2 generation read, and N-1 generation read/write. So, anLTO3 can read LTO1 cartridges, and read/write LTO2 and LTO3 cartridges. TheLTO4 can read LTO2 cartridges, and read/write LTO3 and LTO4 cartridges. For SMBcustomers that still have some LTO1 cartridges they might want to read some day,mixing LTO3 and LTO4 is a viable combination.

Of course, IBM still offers full-high (FH) versions of LTO3 and LTO4, which offer a bit faster acceleration, back-hitch and rewind times than their HH counterparts, and also offer additional attachment choices of LVD Ultra160 SCSIand 4 Gbps Fibre Channel as well.

So, for SMB customers that are simply using their tape for backup and archive,and probably not driving maximum rated speeds, having twice as many slowerdrives might be just the right fit.

For more information on IBM's Feb. 12 announcement, see the[IBM Press Release].

technorati tags: IBM, HH, LTO3, LTO4, TS3100, TS3200, SMB, WORM, NENR, FH, LVD, Ultra160, SCSI

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Tags:  tape green announcements

Happy Valentines Day, everyone! Or, as Tim Ferris prefers to call it, [National Singles Awareness Day].

Today, I'll cover the announcements related to our IBM System Storage N series disk systems, which ties inwith Valentines Day theme nicely. The phrase we use for "unified storage" is that N series allows you to "share the closet, not necessarily the clothes". Couples recognize the value of a shared closet over having one closet for just the man's clothes, and a separate closet for just the woman's clothes. (For some couples, the man's closet would be terribly under utilized!). By analogy, the N series allows you to share one solution for LUNs that can be accessed via FCP or iSCSI protocols, and NAS file systems that can be accessed via NFS and CIFS protocols. In most data centers, Windows and UNIX applications are about as likely to share files as men and women are to wear each other's clothes, so the analogy is in tact.

Let's take a look at what got announced:

N7700 and N7900

There are actually [eight new high-end N series] models. the N7900 has 4 processors and 32GB of cache. The N7700 has 2 processors and 16GB cache. Each has two appliance models (A11 single node and A21 dual node) and two gateway models (G11 single node and G21 dual node).

The appliance models support both FC and SATA disk. The N7900 A models support a maximum of 1176 drives; the N7700 A models supports 840 drives. The gateway models provide FCP, iSCSI and NAS host access through external disk attachment. The N7900 gateway models support 1176 LUNs on external disk systems; the N7700 gateway models support 840 external LUNs.

N series now supports 1 TB SATA disk

The [EXN1000 expansion drawer] can now have up to fourteen 1TB SATA drives. This is in addition to previousannouncements supporting 500GB and 750GB drive capacities. These drawer support the entire N series line.

With 1 TB drives, the N7900 now supports up to 1176 TB of raw capacity, which is over 1PB of usabledata in 12+2P RAID-DP mode. This is greater than the internal disk capacity limits of current IBM DS8000, EMC DMX andHDS USP-V models.

At the low end, both the N3300 and N3600 now support 500GB, 750GB and 1TB SATA drives in addition to the SASdrives they supported.

SnapManager for Microsoft SharePoint

There is a new SnapManager in town. This one is for Microsoft SharePoint data. See the announcementfor the [N3300 and N3600] for details.

Distribution Channels

On Jan 24, IBM signed agreements with [Ingram Micro, Tech Data, and Synnex], to distribute the N Series products and work with IBM to recruit new solution providers to the line. These three are all well-respected world-class distribution providers, so weare glad to have increased our partnership with them on this.

For more on the Feb. 12 announcements, see the [IBM Press Release].

technorati tags: Singles+Awareness+Day, FCP, iSCSI, NAS, NFS, CIFS, N7700, N7900, A11, A21, G11, G21, appliance, gateway, SATA, FC, SAS, disk, storage, drives, N3300, N3600, IngramMicro, TechData, Synnex, RAID-DP, DS8000, EMC, DMX, HDS, USP-V

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Tags:  disk

Yesterday, I promised I would cover other products from the Feb 12 announcement. Today I will focus on the IBM SAN768B director. Some people are confused on the differences between switchesand directors. I find there are three key differences:

1. Directors are designed to be 24x7 operation, highly available with no single points of failure or repair. Generally, all components in directors are redundant and hot-swappable, including Control Processors. In switches, some components are redundant and hot-swappable, such as fans and power supplies), but not the “motherboard” or controller. Often you have to take down a switch to make firmware or major hardware changes or upgrades.
   
   
2. Directors are designed to take in "blades" with different features, port counts, or protocol capabilities. You can add or remove blades while the system is up and running. Switches have a fixed number of ports. (A Small Form-factor Pluggable optical transceiver [SFP] is the component that turns electric pulses into light pulses (and visa versa). You plug the SFP into the switch, and then the fiber optic cable is plugged into the SFP).
   
   With switches, you often start with a base number of active ports, and then can enable the rest of the ports as you need them.
   
   
3. Directors have hundreds of ports. Switches tend to have 64 ports or less.

Last year, Brocade acquired McDATA. Both were OEMs for IBM, and IBM distinguished that in the naming convention. The IBM SAN***B name was used to denote products manufactured for IBM by Brocade, and a SAN***M name was used to denote products manufactured by McDATA.

At that time, Brocade and McDATA equipment did not mix very well on the same fabric, so IBM retained the naming convention so that you as a customer knew what it worked with.

Brocade now has released with new levels of both operating systems--Brocade's FOS and McDATA's EOS--and their respective fabric managers--Brocade Fabric Manager (FM) and McDATA's Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Manager (EFCM)--so that they have full interoperability.

Brocade's goal is to enhance EFCM to be a common software management platform for all of their products going forward.

IBM used the maximum port count in the name to provide some clue as to the size of the switch or director. The SAN16B-2 or the SAN32B-3 are switches that have a maximum of 16 and 32 ports. The SAN256B supports a maximumeight blades of your choosing.Two different types were supported for FC ports, a 16-port blade and a 32-port blade.If all eight were 32-port blades then the maximum was 256 ports, hence the name. But then Brocade began offering 48-port blades. Should IBM change the name? No, it decided to leave itthe SAN256B even though it can now have a maximum of 384 ports.

Not to confuse anyone, the SAN768B also has a maximum of 384 ports, in the same 14U dimensions, but with a special twist. Normally to connect two directors together you use up ports from each, in what are called "inter-switch links" (ISL).These are ports you are taking away from availability from the servers and storage controllers. The SAN768Boffers a new alternative called "inter-chassis links". Each SAN768B has two processing blades, and each has two ICL ports, so with just four two-meter (2m) cables, you get the equivalent of 128 FC 8 Gbps ISL links without using 128 individual ports on each side. That is like giving you 256 ports back for use with servers and storage!

Since IBM directors require 240 volt power, IBM TotalStorage SAN Cabinet C36 include power distribution units (PDUs). PDUs are just glorified power strips, but a new intelligent PDU (iPDU) option introduces additional intelligence to monitor energy consumption for customers looking to measure, and perhaps charge back, energy consumption to the rest of the business. You can stack two SAN768B in one cabinet, one on top of the other, and connected via ICLs, it wouldlook like one huge 768-port backbone.

As a backbone for your data center, the SAN768B is positioned for two emerging technologies:

8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC)

The SAN768B is powerful enough to have 32-port blades run full speed on all ports off-blade without oversubscription. Oversubscription is an emotional topic.

Normally, blades (like switches) can handle all traffic at full speed without delays provided the in-bound and out-bound ports involved are all on the same blade. In a director, however, if you need to communicate from a port on one blade to a port on a different blade, it is possible that off-blade traffic might be constrained or delayed in its transit across the backplane.

On the SAN768B, both the 16-port and 32-port blades can run at full 8 Gbps speed, and the 48-port is exposed to oversubscription only if you have more than 32-ports running at full 8 Gbps transferring data off-blade concurrently.

The new 8 Gbps SFPs support auto-negotiation at N-1 and N-2 generation link speeds. This means that they will automatically slow down when communicating with 4Gpbs and 2 Gbps devices, but they cannot communicate with 1 Gbps devices. If you are still using 1 Gbps devices in your data center, you will need to use 4 Gbps SFPs (which also support 2 Gbps and 1 Gbps link speeds) to communicate with those older devices.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

Wikipedia has a good summary of [FCoE].

Basically, this new technology enables transport of Fibre Channel packets over 10 Gbps Ethernet links. This 10 Gbps Ethernet can also be used to carry traditional iSCSI and TCP/IP traffic. FCoE introduces new extensions to provide Fibre Channel characteristics, like being lossless, and offering consistent performance. The ANSI T11 team is driving FCoE as an open standard, and at the moment it is not fully baked. I suggest you don't buy any FCoE equipment prematurely, as pre-standard devices or host bus adapters could get you burned later when the standard is finalized.

The idea is that FCoE blades can be installed in a SAN768B along with traditional FC blades, allowing routing of traffic between traditional FC and new FCoE ports. Those who have invested in FCIP for long distance replication will be able to continue using either FC or FCoE inputs.

One of the big drivers of FCoE is IBM BladeCenter. Currently, most BladeCenter blades support both Ethernet and FC connectivity and are connected to both Ethernet and FC switches on the back of each BladeCenter chassis. With FCoE, we have the potential to run both FC and IP traffic across simpler all-Ethernet blades, connecting through all-Ethernet switches on the backs of each chassis.

For more information on the IBM SAN768B, see the [IBM Press Release]. For more detailson Brocade's strategy, here is an 8-page white paper on their[Data Center Fabric] vision.

technorati tags: IBM, SAN768B, SAN, switch, director, backbone, SFP, Brocade, McDATA, BOS, EOS, BFM, EFCM, blade, ISL, ICL, FC, FCP, FCIP, FCoE, BladeCenter, Ethernet, 8Gbps, 10GbE, Data Center Fabric

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Tags:  san announcements

It's Tuesday, and you know what that means-- IBM makes its announcements.

Today, IBM announced a variety of storage offerings, but I am going to just focus this poston just the new DR550 models. The DR550 is the leading disk-and-tape solution forstoring non-erasable, non-rewriteable (NENR) data. This type of data, often called fixed-contentor compliance data, was previously writtento Write-Once-Read-Only (WORM) optical media. However, Optical technology has not advanced as fastas magnetic recording, so disk and tape have taken over this role. While there are still a fewlaws on the books that mandate "optical media" as the storage solution, new laws like SEC 17a-4and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) allow for NENR solutions based on magnetic disk or tape instead.

As we had done for the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), the DR550 was based on "off the shelf"components. The File System Gateway (FSG) was based on System x server, the DR550 hardwarebased on System p server and DS4000 disk arrays, with "hardened" versions of the AIX,DS4000 Storage Manager and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) that we renamed the IBM SystemStorage Archive Manager (SSAM).

The DR550 is Ethernet-based, so it can be used with all IBM server platforms, from System xand BladeCenter, to System i, and System p, and even System z mainframe customers, as wellas non-IBM platforms from Sun, HP and others. There are two ways to get data stored ontothe DR550:

1. Sending archive objects via the SSAM archive API. This is an API based on the XBSA open standardthat many applications have coded to.
2. Writing files via standard CIFS and NFS protocols through the File System Gateway (FSG), an optional priced feature that you can have incorporated into the DR550.

Generally, business applications like SAP or Microsoft Exchange don't do this directly, but ratheryou have an "archive management application" that acts as the go-between broker. IBM offers IBM Content Manager, IBM CommonStore for eMail (Exchange and Lotus Domino), and IBM CommonStore for SAP.IBM also recently acquired FileNet and Princeton Softech that provide additional support. Third partyproducts like Zantaz and Symantec KVS Enterprise Vault have also passed System Storage Provencertification for the DR550. These go-between applications understand the underlying storagestructure of their respective applications, and can apply policies to extract database rows, individualemails, or other attachments, as appropriate, and either move or copy them into the DR550.

The DR550 has built in support to move data from disk to tape, through policy-based automation behind the scenes. This is the key differentiator fromdisk-only solutions. Rather than filling up an EMC Centera, and watching it sit there idle burning energyfor five to seven years, or however long you are required to keep the data, you can instead use the disk for the most recent months worth of data on a DR550. The DR550 attaches to tapedrives or libraries, not just IBM TS1120 or LTO based models, but hundreds of systems from other vendorsas well. You can combine this with either rewriteable or WORM tape cartridge media, depending on yourcircumstances. This can be directly cabled, or through a SAN fabric environment. Storing the bulk ofthis rarely-referenced data on tape makes the DR550 substantially more affordable and more green thandisk-only alternatives.

Let's take a look at the specific models:

IBM System Storage DR550 DR1 The DR1 machine-type-model replaces the "DR550 Express" for small and medium size business workloads. This is a singleSystem p server with anywhere from 1 to 36 TB of raw disk capacity in a nice lockable 25U cabinet (see picture at left). On the original DR550 Express, the 25U cabinet was optional, but so many people opted for it, that wemade it standard feature. You can add the File System Gateway, which is a System x running Linuxwith NFS and CIFS protocols converted to SSAM API calls. IBM System Storage DR550 DR2 The DR2 machine-type-model replaces the larger "DR550" for enterprise workloads. This can be either a single or dual node System p configuration, anywhere from 6 to 168 TB in raw disk capacity, in a lockable 36U cabinet. This also allows for an optional File System Gateway, and in the case of thedual node configuration, you can have two System p servers, and two System x servers with two Ethernetand two SAN switches for complete redundancy.

Common Information Model (CIM) and SMI-S interfaces have been added so that IBM Director can providea "single pane of glass" to manage all of the components of the DR550.

The system is based on high-capacity 750GB SATA drives, installed in half-drawer (eight drives, 6 TB)and full-drawer (16 drives, 12 TB) increments. Your choices will be 7+P RAID5 or 6+P+Q RAID6.Here is an Intel article that explains [RAID6 P+Q].In the future, as new disk technologies are introduced, the DR550 supports moving the disk datafrom old to new seamlessly, without disrupting the data retention policies enforcement.

For more information, here is a [6-page brochure] thathas specifications for both the DR1 and DR2 models.

Previous posts about the DR550: [DR550 File System Gateway |  What happened to CAS? | Optimizing Data Retention and Archiving | Blocks, Files and Content-Addressable Storage | Dilemma over future storage formats | Storage Predictions for 2007]

I'll cover some of the other announcements in later posts this week. If you can't wait, you can go read the[IBM Press Release].

technorati tags: IBM, DR550, Express, DR1, DR2, SSAM, TSM, FSG, NFS, CIFS, NENR, WORM, fixed-content, compliance, SEC, SOX, SVC, XBSA, API, SAP, CommonStore, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, FileNet, Princeton Softech, Zantaz, EnterpriseVault, EMC, Centera, AIX, Linux, cabinet, RAID5, SATA, RAID6, P+Q, CAS

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Tags:  disk green lifecycle tape announcements

Rich Bourdeau has written a nice article on InfoStor titled [Software as a Service (SaaS) meets Storage]. Last year, IBM acquired Arsenal Digital, and he mentions both in this article.It is interesting how this has evolved over the years.

Rent warehouse space for tapes

I remember when various companies offered remote storage for tapes. These would be temperature and humidity-controlledrooms, with access lists on who could bring tapes in, who could take tapes out, and so on. In the event of thedisaster, someone would collect the appropriate tapes and take them to a recovery site location.

Rent online/nearline storage from a Storage Service Provider (SSP)

SSPs rented storage space on disk, or provided automated tape libraries that could be written to. With tapes being ejected and stored in temperature/humidity-controlled vaults. Electronic vaulting eliminates a lot of theissues with cartridge handling and transportation, is more secure, and faster. Rented disk space, based on a Gigabytes-per-month rate, could be used for whatever the customer wanted. If these were for backups or archive,then the customer has to have their own software, to do their own processing at their own location, sending the data to the remote storage as appropriate, and manage their own administration.

Backup-as-a-Service and Archive-as-a-Service

We are now seeing the SaaS model applied to mundane and routine storage management tasks. New providers can offerthe software to send backups, the disk to write them to, and as needed the tape libraries and cartridges to rollover when the disk space is full. Disk capacity can be sized so that the most recent backups are on immediately accessible for fast recovery.

The same concept can be applied to archives. The key difference between a backup and an archive is that backups areversion-based. You might keep three versions of a backup, the most recent, and two older copies, in case something is wrong with the most recent copy, you can go back to older copies. This could be from undetected corruption of the data itself, or problems with the disk or tape media. An archive, on the other hand, is time-based. You want this data to be kept for a specific period of time, based on an event or fixed period of years.

Since BaaS and AaaS providers know what the data is, have some idea of the policies and usage patterns will be, can then optimize a storage solution that best meets service level agreements.

This has certainly come a long way!

technorati tags: SaaS, IBM, storage, Arsenal Digital, BaaS, AaaS, backup, archive, disk, tape, electronic vaulting

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Tags:  disk bc tape

Many people have asked me if there was any logic with the IBM naming convention of IBM Systems branded servers. Here's your quick and easy cheat sheet:

• System x -- "x" for cross-platform architecture. Technologies from our mainframe and UNIX servers were brought into chips that sit next to the Intel or AMD processors to provide a more reliable x86 server experience. For example, some models have a POWER processor-based Remote Supervisor Adapter (RSA).
• System p -- "p" for POWER architecture.
• System z -- "z" for Zero-downtime, zero-exposures. Our lawyers prefer "near-zero", but this is about as close as you get to ["six-nines" availability] in our industry, with the highest level of security and encryption, no other vendor comes close, so you get the idea.

But what about the "i" for System i? Officially, it stands for "Integrated" in that it could integrate different applications running on different operating systems onto a [COMMON] platform. Options were available to insert Intel-based processor cards that ran Windows, or attach special cables that allowed separate System x servers running Windows to attach to a System i. Both allowed Windows applications to share the internal LAN and SAN inside the System i machine. Later, IBM allowed [AIX on System i] and [Linux on Power] operating systems to run as well.

From a storage perspective, we often joked that the "i" stood for "island", as most System i machines used internal disk, or attached externally to only a fewselected models of disk from IBM and EMC that had special support for i5/OS using a special, non-standard 520-byte disk block size. This meant only our popular IBM System Storage DS6000 and DS8000 series disk systems were available. This block size requirement only applies to disk. For tape, i5/OS supports both IBM TS1120 and LTO tape systems. For the most part,System i machines stood separate from the mainframe, and the rest of the Linux, UNIX and Windows distributed serverson the data center floor.

Often, when I am talking to customers, they ask when will product xyz be supported on System z or System i?I explained that IBM's strategy is not to make all storage devices connect via ESCON/FICON or support non-standard block sizes, but rather to get the servers to use standard 512-byte block size, Fibre Channel and other standard protocols.(The old adage applies: If you can't get Mohamed to move to the mountain, get the mountain to move to Mohamed).

On the System z mainframe, we are 60 percent there, allowing three of the five operating systems (z/VM, z/VSE and Linux) to access FCP-based disk and tape devices. (Four out of six if you include [OpenSolaris for the mainframe])But what about System i? As the characters on the popular television show [LOST] would say: It's time to get off the island!

Last week, IBM announced the new [i5/OS V6R1 operating system] with features that will greatly improve the use of external storage on this platform. Check this out:

POWER6-based System i 570 model server

Our latest, most powerful POWER processor brought to the System i platform. The 570 model will be the first in the System i family of servers to make use of new processing technology, using up to 16 (sixteen!) POWER6 processors (running at 4.7GHZ) in each machine.The advantage of the new processors is the increased commercial processing workload (CPW) rating, 31 percent greater than the POWER5+ version and 72 percent greater than the POWER5 version. CPW is the "MIPS" or "TeraFlops" rating for comparing System i servers.Here is the[Announcement Letter].

Fibre Channel Adapter for System i hardware

That's right, these are [Smart IOAs], so an I/O Processor (IOP) is no longer required! You can even boot the Initial Program Load (IPL) direclty from SAN-attached tape.This brings System i to the 21st century for Business Continuity options.

Virtual I/O Server (VIOS)

[VirtualI/O Server] has been around for System p machines, but now available on System i as well. This allows multiplelogical partitions (LPARs) to access resources like Ethernet cards and FCP host bus adapters. In the case of storage, the VIOS handles the 520-byte to 512-byte conversion, so that i5/OS systems can now read and write to standard FCP devices like the IBM System Storage DS4800 and DS4700 disk systems.

IBM System Storage DS4000 series

Initially, we have certified DS4700 and DS4800 disk systems to work with i5/OS, but more devices are in plan.This means that you can now share your DS4700 between i5/OS and your other Linux, UNIX and Windowsservers, take advantage of a mix of FC and SATA disk capacities, RAID6 protection, and so on.

IBM PowerVM

To call [IBM PowerVM] the "VMware for the POWER architecture" would not do it quite justice. In combination with VIOS, IBM PowerVM is able to run a variety of AIX, Linux and i5/OS guest images.The "Live Partition Mobility" feature allows you to easily move guest images from one system to another, while they are running, just like VMotion for x86 machines.

And while we are on the topic of x86, PowerVM is also able to represent a Linux-x86 emulation base to run x86-compiled applications. While many Linux applications could be re-complied from source code for the POWER architecture "as is", others required perhaps 1-2 percent modification to port them over, and that was too much for some software development houses. Now, we can run most x86-compiled Linux application binaries in their original form on POWER architecture servers.

BladeCenter JS22 Express

The POWER6-based [JS22 Express blade] can run i5/OS, taking advantage of PowerVM and VIOS to access all of the BladeCenterresources. The BladeCenter lets you mix and match POWER and x86-based blades in the same chassis, providing theultimate in flexibility.

Now that's exciting!

technorati tags: IBM, System x, System p, System i, System z, island, COMMON, AIX, Linux, POWER, POWER6, Windows, EMC, DS6000, DS8000, TS1120, LTO, ESCON, FICON, 520-byte, z/VM, z/VSE, z/OS, z/TPF, OpenSolaris, mainframe, LOST, CPW, x86, VMware, VMotion, BladeCenter, JS22, i5/OS, V6R1, PowerVM, VIOS, LPAR, DS4700, DS4800, LTO, disk, SAN, tape, storage

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Tags:  disk infrastructure tape bc linux san

While many are just becoming familiar with the end-user interfaces of Web 2.0, from blogs and wikis to FaceBook and FlickR, fewer may be familiar with the "information infrastructure" of servers and storagebehind the scenes.

Last year, I bought an XO laptop under the One Laptop Per Child [OLPC] foundation's Give-1-Get-1 program and posted my impressions on this blog. One in particular, my post[Printingon XO laptop with CUPS and LPR] showed how to print from the XO laptop over to a network-attached printer.This caught the attention of the OLPC development team, who asked me tohelp them with another project as a volunteer. Before accepting, I had to learn what skills they were really looking for, especially since I do notconsider myself an expert in neither printing nor networking.

(Unlike a regular 9-to-5 job where most people just try to look busy for eight hours a day, doingvolunteer work means being ready to ["roll up your sleeves"] and actuallyaccomplish something. This applies to any kind of volunteer work, from hammering nails for [Habitat for Humanity] to sorting cans at the [Community Food Bank].Best Buy uses the phrase "Results Oriented Work Environment" [ROWE] to describetheir latest program, modeled in part after the mobile workforce policies of Web2.0-enlightened companiesIBM and Sun, but that is perhaps a topic for another blog post!)

Apparently, to support a school full of students with XO laptops, it would be nice to have a few serversthat provide support to manage the class lesson plans, make reading materials and other content available,and keep track of results. What they need is an "information infrastructure"! They decided on two specific servers:

• School Server -- this would run a popular class management system called [Moodle]
• Library Server -- a server for a digital library collection, based on Fedora Commons[16-minute video]

In keeping with OLPC philosophy to use free and open source software[FOSS], both servers are based on the [LAMP] platform. LAMP is an acronym for thecombined software bundle of Linux, Apache, MySQL and a Programming language like PHP. The "XS" team working onthe school server wanted me to build a LAMP server and install Moodle to help test the configuration, determinewhat other software is required, and perhaps develop a backup/recovery scenario. Basically, they needed someone with Linux skills to put some hardware and software together.

(I am no stranger to Linux. Back in the 1990s, I was part of the Linux for S/390 team, led the effort to createthe infamous "compatible disk layout" (CDL) that allows z/OS to access ESCON and FICON-attached Linux volumes,took my LPI certification exam, and led a team to validate FCP drivers for our disk and tape storage systems. For an IBMer to volunteer foran Open Source community project, you have to take an "open source" class and get management approval to reviewfor any possible "conflicts of interest". I got this all taken care of, and accepted to help the XS team.)

Building a test environment is similar to baking a cake. You have a recipe, utensils, and ingredients. Here'sa bit of description of each of the ingredients:

Linux

Like Windows, the Linux operating system comes in different flavors to run on handhelds, desktops and servers. For servers, IBM tends to focus on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Eneterprise Server (SLES). However, the XS team decidedinstead to use [Fedora 7], a community-supported version from Red Hat. Earlier versions of Fedora were known as "Fedora Core", but apparently with version 7, the word "Core" has been dropped. Fedora 7 can be used in either desktop or server mode.

Apache

[Apache] is web server software, and half of all web servers on the internet use it. It competes head-on against Micorosofts Internet Information Services (IIS) serverprovided in Windows 2003. The Apache name is partly from thefact that its origins were "a patchy" variant of the NCSA HTTPd 1.3 codebase. Thepopular [IBM HTTP Server] is poweredby Apache, with added support to the rest of the IBM WebSphere software portfolio. The XS team chose Apache v2as the web server platform.

MySQL

[MySQL] is a relational database management system (RDBMS) software, similar to commercial products like IBM DB2 Universal Database, Oracle DB, or Microsoft SQL Server. The SQL stands for Structured Query Language, developed by IBM in the early 1970s as a standard languageto update and query database tables. MySQL comes in two flavors, MySQL Enterprise for commercial use, and MySQLCommunity, which is community-supported. There are over 10 million instances of MySQL running websites on the internet, which helps explain why Sun Microsystems agreed to acquire MySQL AB company last month.The XS team decided on MySQL 5.0 as the database platform.

Programming

To make HTML pages dynamic, including the possibility to add or query database contents, requires programming.A variety of web scripting languages were developed, all starting with the letter "P" to claim to be the programming part of the LAMP platform, including [PHP], Perl, and Python. Later, new programming language frameworks have been developed that do not start with the letter "P", like [Ruby on Rails]. PHP is short for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor which explains that it pre-processes HTML during web serving,looking for special tags indicating PHP code, allowing programming logic to insert HTML content, such as information extracted from a database.While Python is the language that runs the Sugar interface on the XO laptops, the XS team decided onPHP v5 as the programming language for the server.

As for utensils, you only need a few utilities

• A simple text editor: I go old-school and use the classic "vi" (to learn this editor, see the["Cheat Sheet" method] on IBM Developerworks)
• secure socket shell (SSH): this allows you to access one server from another
• browser access to the internet: when you encounter problems, get error messages, or whatever, it pays to know how to search for things with Google

As for a recipe, the Moodle website spells out some unique details and parameters. For the base LAMP platform,I chose to follow the book [Fedora 7 Unleashed] that has specific chapters on setting up SSH, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Squid and so on. The resultingconfiguration looks like this:

Here were the sequence of events:

1. I took an old PC that I wasn't using anymore, backed up the Windows system, and installed Linux on top. Thebook above had a Fedora 7 DVD on the back jacket, but I used the [OLPC LiveCD] that had some values pre-configured.
2. Set the IP address static. I set mine to 192.168.0.77 which nobody sees except my other systems.
3. My school server is "headless" which means it does not have its own keyboard, video or mouse. It also runs only to Linux run level 3, command line interface only, no graphics.I was able toshare using a KVM switch], but this meant having to remember something on one screen while I was switching over to the other. My Windows XP system has mybrowser connection to the internet to follow instructions or read error messages, so I need that up all thetime. To get around this, on my Windows XP system,I generated SSH public and private keys, copied the public key over to my new Linux system, and used [OpenSSH for Windows] to connect over. Now, on one screen,I have my Windows XP Firefox browser, and a separate command line window that is accessing my Linux schoolserver.
4. With SSH up and running, I can now use "vi" to edit files, and issue commands to install or activatethe remaining software. First up, Apache. I got this working, and from Windows XP, verified that going to"http://192.168.0.77" showed the Apache test screen.
5. I installed PHP, and tested it with a simple short index.php file.
6. I installed MySQL, setup the base "installation databases", and created a test database. Here is whereyou might want to set a password for the MySQL root user, but I chose to do that later for now.
7. I installed Moodle. It was smart enough to check that Apache, PHP, and MySQL were operational, andapparently I missed a few special "PHP" modules that had to be linked in. I was able to find them, downloadthem, and get them installed.
8. I brought up Moodle, created a "class category" of SCIENCE and a new class "Chemistry 101", and it allworked.
9. I also activated Squid, which is a web proxy cache server that stores web pages for faster access.
10. Another idea was to activate Samba, to provide CIFS file and print sharing, but I decided to put this off.

I got all of this done last Saturday, start to finish. Now the fun begins. We are going to run throughsome tests, document the procedures, and try to get a system up and running in a remote school in Nepal. Fornow, I have only one XO laptop to simulate what the student sees, and one laptop that can represent eithera teacher's Windows-based laptop, or run QEMU and emulate a second XO laptop.For tuning, I might go through the procedures mentioned on IBM Developerworks "Tuning LAMP"[Part 1, Part 2,Part 3].

For those in the server or storage industry that need to understand Web 2.0 information infrastructure better,building a LAMP server like this can be quite helpful.

technorati tags: XO, OLPC, XS, Moodle, Fedora Commons, LAMP, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Squid, CIFS, Samba, OpenSSH, vi, QEMU, IBM, FOSS,LPI, CDL, S/390, RHEL, SLES

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Tags:  linux infrastructure

An astute reader, Andrea, asked me the following:

Are you covering the business impact of the internet failure across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa? The outage has brought business in those regions to a standstill. This disaster shines a direct spotlight on the vulnerability of technology and serves as a reminder of the ever increasing importance of protecting business critical information.

Disaster recovery needs to be a critical element of every technology plan. We don’t yet know the financial impact of this wide spread internet failure, but the companies with disaster recovery plans in place, were likely able to failover their entire systems to servers based in other regions of the world.

When I first heard of this outage, I am thinking, so a few million people don't have access to FaceBook and YouTube, what's the big deal? We in the U.S.A. are in the middle of a [Hollywood writer's strike] and don't have fresh new television sitcoms to watch! Yahoo News relays the typical government's response:[Egypt asks to stop film, MP3 downloads during Internet outage], presumably so that real business can take priority over what little bandwidth is still operational. Fellow IBM blogger "Turbo" Todd Watson pokes fun at this, in his post[Could Someone Please Get King Tutankhamun On The Phone?].Like us suffering here in America, perhaps our brothers and sisters in Egypt and India may getre-acquainted with the joys of reading books.

However, the [Internet Traffic Report-Asia] shows how this impacted various locations including: Shanghai, Mumbai, Tokyo, Tehran, and Singapore. In some cases, you have big delays in IP traffic, in other cases, complete packet loss, depending on where each country lies on the["axis of evil"].This is not something just affecting a few isolated areas, the impact is indeed worldwide. This would be a goodtime to talk about how computer signals are actually sent.

Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing [DWDM]

DWDM takes up to 80 independent signals, converts each to a different color of light, and sends all the colors down a single strand of glass fiber. At the receiving end, the colors are split off by a prism,and each color is converted back to its original electrical signal.

Course Wavelength Division Multiplexing [CWDM]

Similar DWDM, but only eight signals are sent over the glass fiber. This is generally cheaper, becauseyou don't need highly tuned lasers.

Wikipedia has a good article on [Submarine Communications Cable],including a discussion on how repairs are made when they get damaged or broken.It is important to remember that lost connectivity doesn't mean lost data, just lack of access to the data. Thedata is still there, you just can't get to it right now. For some businesses, that could be disruptive to actualoperations. In other cases, it means that backups or disk mirroring is suspended, so that you only have yourlocal copies of data until connectivity is resumed.

ABC News had this report:[Conspiracy theories emerge after internet cables cut]. Of course, Al Qaeda practiced their bombing skills in their own backyard, from embassies inAfrica to the [USS Cole], before taking it toNew York and Washington. Here's an excerpt:

When two cables in the Mediterranean were severed last week, it was put down to a mishap with a stray anchor.

Now a third cable has been cut, this time near Dubai. That, along with new evidence that ships' anchors are not to blame, has sparked theories about more sinister forces that could be at work.

For all the power of modern computing and satellites, most of the world's communications still rely on submarine cables to cross oceans.

It gets weirder. In his blog Rough Type, Nick Carr's[Who Cut the Cables?] reportsnow a fourth cable has been cut, in a different location than the other two cable locations. If the people cuttingthe cables are looking to see how much impact this would have, they will probably be disappointed. Nick Carrrelates how resilient the whole infrastructure turned out to be:

Though India initially lost as much as half of its Internet capacity on Wednesday, traffic was quickly rerouted and by the weekend the country was reported to have regained 90% of its usual capacity. The outage also reveals that the effects of such outages are anything but neutral; they vary widely depending on the size and resources of the user.

IBM does have a large outsourcing, help-desk and R&D presence in these areas. Al Jazeera reports[India wrestles with internet outage]:

Outsourcing firms, such as Infosys and Wipro, and US companies with significant back-office and research and development operations in India, such as IBM and Intel, said they were still trying to asses how their operations had been impacted, if at all.

Whether it is man-made or natural disaster, every business should have a business continuity plan. If you don't have one, or haven't evaluated it in a while, perhaps now is a good time to do that. IBM can help.

technorati tags: internet, outage, Asia, Middle East, North Africa, Egypt, India, Iran, DWDM, CWDM, submarine communications cable, Al Jazeera, disaster, business continuity, IBM

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Tags:  bc infrastructure

I got the following comment on my earlier post [A Recap of Storage Industry Acquisitions], Reuben wrote:

According to Gartner data (from 2005!), host-based storage accounts for 34 percent of the overall market for external storage, with the remaining 66 percent going to "fabric-attached" (network) storage, expect this share to grow from 66 percent to 77 percent by 2007.What is the current reality? SAN vs. NAS, FC vs iSCSI?

IBM subscribes to a lot of data from different analysts, they all have their methods for collecting this data, from taking surveys of customers to reviewing financial results of each vendor. While theymight not agree entirely, there are some common threads that lead one to believe they represent "reality". Hereare some numbers from an IDC December 2007 report:

Worldwide Disk Storage	2007 Petabytes	Percentage	2006-2011 CAGR
Internal (host-based)	1701	32	50
External	3640	68	60

While the 32/68 split is similar to the 34/66 split you mentioned before, you can see that external growth isgrowing faster, so internal host-based storage will drop to 25 percent by 2011, with external storage growing to 75 percent, very close to the 77 predicted. Looking at just the externaldisk storage, there are basically three kinds: DAS (direct cable attachment), NAS (file level protocols suchas NFS, CIFS, HTTP and FTP), and SAN (block-level protocols like FC, iSCSI, ESCON and FICON):

Worldwide External Disk Storage	2007 Petabytes	Percentage	2006-2011 CAGR
Direct-attach (DAS)	738	20	33
NAS (NFS/CIFS/etc)	815	22	65
SAN-FC/iSCSI/ESCON/FICON	2087	57	66

At these rates, fabric-attached (SAN and NAS) will continue to dominate the storage landscape.Looking more closely now at the block-oriented protocols.

Worldwide External Disk Storage	2007 Petabytes	Percentage	2006-2011 CAGR
Fibre Channel (FC)	1733	83	48
iSCSI	262	13	137
ESCON/FICON	92	4	28

At these rates, iSCSI will overtake FC by 2011. IBM System Storage N series, DS3300 and XIV Nextraall support iSCSI attachment.

Jon Toigo over at DrunkenData offers some additional data from ex-STKer:[Fred Moore Outlook on Storage 2008]. I met Fredat a conference. He had left STK back in 1998, and started his own company called Horison. NeitherJon nor Fred cite the sources of his statistics, but the following comment leads me to assume hehasn't been paying attention closely to the tape market:

With the demise of STK, who will be the leader in the tape industry?

Depending on how old you are, you might remember exactly where you were when a significant eventoccurred, for example the[Space Shuttle Challenger]explosion. For many IBMers, it was the day our friends at Sun Microsystems announced they were [puttingour lead tape competitor out of its misery]. I was in New York that day, but there was still someconfetti on the floor in the halls of the IBM Tucson lab when I got home a few days later. IBM hasbeen the number one market share leader in tape for over the past four years.

technorati tags: Gartner, IDC, host-based, fabric-attached, NAS, iSCSI, SAN, FC, ESCON, FICON, NFS, CIFS, internal, external, disk, systems, storage, DrunkenData, Fred Moore, STK, Sun, confetti, Challenger

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Tags:  tape infrastructure disk

Last July, IBM and EMC traded blog postings over SPC-1 benchmark results. Fellow EMC bloggerChuck Hollis wrote his post [Does Anyone Take The SPC Seriously?]. Here is an excerpt:

I think most storage users have figured this out. We've never done an SPC test, and probably will never do one. Anyone is free, however, to download the SPC code, lash it up to their CLARiiON, and have at it.

I responded with [Getting Under EMC Skin], and then followed up with a series explaining IBM SVC and SPC benchmarks here:

• [Controversy over Comparisons - Twin Towers]
• [What Constitutes a Disk System?]
• [PerformanceMetrics for Disk Systems]
• [SPC Benchmarks for Disk Systems]
• [Why Not Miles Per Hour?]

So what is the good news?Yesterday, our friends at NetApp took up Chuck's challenge and posted results on their FAS3040 as well as their EMC CLARiiON devices. IBM sells the FAS3040 under the name IBM System Storage N5300 disk system. Knowing that NetApp maintains excellent performance when it is doing point-in-time copies, NetApp ran both with and without on both boxes. I include DS4700 and DS4800 as well for comparison purposes, but only have them without FlashCopy running.

Product	Mode	SPC-1 IOPS
IBM DS4800	No FlashCopy	45,014
NetApp FAS3040 (IBM N5300)	No SnapShot	30,985
NetApp FAS3040 (IBM N5300)	With SnapShot	29,958
EMC CLARiiON CX3-40	No SnapDrive	24,997
IBM DS4700 Express	No FlashCopy	17,195
EMC CLARiiON CX3-40	With SnapDrive	8,997

One would expect some performance degradation with a box running point-in-time copies at the same time it is reading and writing data, but NetApp/IBM N5300 does not degrade by much, but EMC's drops a significant amount.

So what is the bad news? Last October, I welcomed HDS USP-V to the [Super High-End Club], but now we need to invite Texas Memory Systems as well.In 2006, I posted [Hybrid, Solid State and the future of RAID], and poked fun at Texas Memory Systems using the slogan "World's Fastest Storage", which at the time that honor belonged to IBM SAN Volume Controller instead.The VP of Texas Memory Systems, Woody Hutsell, explained the only reason their solid-state disk system, RAMSAN-320, didn't have faster results is that they didn't have the fastest IBM server to run against it. It may not surprise you that nearly everyone's SPC benchmarks use IBM servers because IBM has the fastest servers as well. I didn't have a million-dollar System p UNIX server to send Woody for this, but it looks like they have finally gotten one, and a new RAMSAN-400 device, as they have posted their latest results.

Product	Mode	SPC-1 IOPS
Texas Memory Systems RAMSAN-400	Cache only	291,208
IBM SAN Volume Controller 4.2	Cache/External Disk	272,505
HDS USP-V	Cache/Internal Disk	200,245

EMC doesn't publish numbers for their Symmetrix box, despite their announcement of faster SSD drives. They claim that SSD drives make their overall disk system performance faster, but without SPC benchmarks, we will never know. If you have a Symmetrix, this YouTube video may help you decide where it belongs:

YouTube Video: Recycling the Symmetrix

You can read all the[SPC-1 Benchmark Results]on the Storage Performance Council (SPC) website.

technorati tags: IBM, EMC, Chuck Hollis, SPC, SPC-1, NetApp, FAS3040, N5300, CLARiiON, CX3-40, SnapShot, SnapDrive, FlashCopy, DS4800, DS4700, Texas Memory Systems, RAMSAN-320, RAMSAN-400, SSD, Hybrid, RAID, HDS, USP-V, Symmetrix,

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Tags:  disk

IBM came out with their latest "5 in 5". These are five predictions for technologies that will havean impact over the next five years, summarized on 5 pages. Before I give my take on this year's set,here is a quick recap of[Last Year's 5 in 5]:

1. Access health care remotely
2. Real-time speech translation
3. 3-D internet, based on systems like [Second Life]
4. Nanotechnology for cleaning up and improving the environment
5. "Presence aware" cell phones that learn our preferences and habits

Here's my take on the [Next 5 in 5]:

3-D representations of the human body to improve health care

This prediction is based on the idea that most medical mistakes result from lack of informationabout the patient. A 3-D avatar of the patient would allow the doctor to click on the section ofthe body, and this would trigger retrieval of patient records, relevant X-rays, MRI images, and so on.For example, IBM System Storage Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS) provides the storage that wouldallow any doctor to access these records, even if the image was taken at a different facility.

Unfortunately, this prediction only applies to patients who can actually afford to see a doctor. Apparently,no amount of technology, no matter how cool it is, can convince governments to make health care somethingeveryone has access to. Michael Moore has done a good job explaining this in his film documentary [Sicko].

Digital passport for food

Using RFID tags and second generation barcodes, you will have access to details of a food's origin,transportation conditions, and impact to the environment. Much of this information is already gathered,just not stored in a database accessible to the consumer.

Last year, the term "locavore" was the2007 Word of the Year for the Oxford American Dictionary, referring to people who limit what they eatto food produced within a certain radius, from family farms and locally-owned businesses.Here is an excerpt from a [Locavores] website:

Our food now travels an average of 1,500 miles before ending up on our plates. This globalization of the food supply has serious consequences for the environment, our health, our communities and our tastebuds.

Certainly, I am all for selling storage capacity to the food industry to help store vasts amount ofinformation for this, and certainly some people will be able to make smarter decisions based on thisinformation. This is not the first time this idea came up. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration introduced [nutrition labeling requirements] on thehope that people would choose more healthier foods. Despite this, people still opt for white bread, iceberg lettuce, and processed meats, so possibly having more information about where food comes from, and how it was transported, may not mean much to some consumers.

Technology to manage your own carbon footprint

"Smart energy" technologies allow you to walk the talk, by managing your own carbon footprint inyour home. For example, if you forgot to turn off the heat or air conditioner before leaving thehouse on your commute to work, your home would call your mobile phone, so that you can turn aroundand go back and correct that mistake. Better yet, IBM is working with others to provide web-enabledelectric meters that would allow you to turn off systems from work or cell phone browser.

Of course, such technology already exists for the data center. IBM Systems Director Active EnergyManager (AEM) allows you to monitor the actual usage of your servers and storage devices, and insome cases make adjustments to control energy consumption. This can feed into the IBM TivoliUsage and Accounting Manager software to incorporate energy usage as part of the charge-backcalculations. See the [IBM Press Release] formore details.

Cars that drive themselves

Not only will cars that drive themselves reduce the number of drunk-driving accidents, it canalso help reduce congestion in big cities, by routing traffic to different directions, based onGPS and presence-aware technologies. Stockholm (Sweden) has already reduced peak hour traffic by 20 percentusing this approach.

While I admire the concept, cars are perhaps the least energy-efficient mode of transportation.Often, a family can only afford a single vehicle, and it is purchased based on the worst-case scenario.A friend of mine has only two children, but a sever-person mini-van that gets only 17 MPG. Why suchan energy-inefficient vehicle? Because she occasionally drives her daughter and her friends tosoccer practice, and that represents the worst-case scenario, minimizing the parent/child ratio. Theother 99 percent of the time, she is driving by herself, or with one child, and consuming a lot ofgasoline in the process.

A better approach would be to find technology that connects airports, trains, buses and light rail forpublic transportation to greatly reduce the need to drive a car in the first place.

The idea that a family can have only one vehicle plays in the storage arena as well. Larger companiescan afford to have different storage for different workloads. The IBM System Storage DS8000 high-end disk system for their large OLTP anddatabase workloads, an XIV Nextra for their Web 2.0 storage needs, DR550 to hold their compliance data,and so on. Smaller companies are often tasked to find a single solution for all their needs, andfor them, IBM offers the IBM System Storage N series, providing a "unified storage" platform.

Increased dependence on cell phones

Before the cell phone, the last don't-leave-home-without-it technology most of us carried was the credit card. Now, IBM predicts that we will be even more dependent on our cell phones, becoming our banker, ticket broker, and shopping buddy.For example, you could use your cell phone to take a picture of a shirt at the mall, and it will then show you what youwould look like wearing that shirt, on a 3-D avatar representation of yourself, or perhaps your spouse, and getinformation on what discounts are available, or where else the shirt is being offered.

None of this example actually uses the "phone" part of the cell phone, however the cell phone is one device thatnearly everyone carries, so it becomes the development platform for all other technologies to be based on.

The common theme running through these is that it can be helpful to store more information than we do today,provided we make it accessible to the people who need it to make better decisions.

technorati tags: IBM, predictions, health care, nanotechnology, secondlife, speech translation, 3-D, avatar, GMAS, Michael Moore, Sicko, digital passport, food, nutrition labeling, FDA, carbon footprint, AEM, locavore, Tivoli, Usage Accounting Manager, DS8000, XIV, Nextra, DR550, unified storage, cell phones, decisions

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Tags:  secondlife

Last week, I got the following comment from Bob Swann:

I am looking for the IBM VM Poster or a picture of the IBM VM "Catch the Wave"

Do you know where I might find it?

Well, Bob, I made some phone calls. The company that published these posters no longer exists, butI found a coworker at the Poughkeepsie Briefing Center who still had the poster on his wall, and he was kind enough to take a picture of it for you.

VM: The Wave of the Future (click thumbnail at left to see larger image)

Some may recognize this as a [mash-up] using as a base the famous Japanese 10-inch by 15-inch block print[The Great Wave off Kanagawa] byartist [Katsushika Hokusai]. I had this as my laptop'swallpaper screen image until last year when I was presenting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was told that it reminded people about the horrible tsunami caused by the [Indian Ocean earthquake] back in 2004.I was actually scheduled to fly the last week of December 2004 to Jakarta, Indonesia, but at the last minute ourclient team changed plans. I would have been on route over the Pacific ocean when the tsunami hit, and probably stranded over there for weeks or months until the airports re-opened.

The Wave theme was in part to honor the IBM users group called World Alliance VSE VM and Linux (WAVV) which is havingtheir next meeting [April 18-22, 2008] in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I presentedat this conference back in 1996 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, as part of the IBM Linux for S/390 team. It started onthe Sunday that Wisconsin switched their clocks for [DaylightSaving Time], and the few of us from Arizona or other places that don't both with this, all showed up forbreakfast an hour early.

When I was in Australia last year, I was told the wave that sports fans do, by raising their hands in coordinatedsequence, was called the [Mexican Wave]in most other countries. When I was there, Melbourne was trying to outlaw this practice at their cricket matches.

The "wave" represents a powerful metaphor, from z/VM operating system on System z mainframes to VMware and Xenon Intel-based processor machines, as the direction of virtualization that we are heading for future data centers.The Mexican wave represents a glimpse of what humans can accomplish with collaboration on a globalscale. It can also represent the tidal wave of data arising from nearly 60 percent annual growth instorage capacity. (I had to mention storage eventually, to avoid being completely off-topic on this post!)

I hope this is the graphic you were looking for Bob. If anyone else has wave-themed posters they would like to contribute, please post a comment below.

technorati tags: Bob Swann, IBM poster, z/VM, Japanese, Great Wave, Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Indian Ocean, Jakarta, Indonesia, WAVV, Mexican Wave, storage, capacity, growth, Linux,Melbourne, Australia, VMware, Xen

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Tags:  linux marketing