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Visio Cafe Updates
Just a short update to say that Visio Cafe has some new IBM stencils. IBM supply the stencils to Visio Cafe who make them available free of charge to all our customers. You can use these stencils without acknowledgement or payment. Clearly you still need to buy Visio from Microsoft. The latest updates can be found here: http://www.visiocafe.com/ibm.htm They include: . IBM-Common.zip ... [More]
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XIV and AIX - Part three - Change your attributes
In part three of my series, AIX and XIV.... I will explore
the recommended configuration changes you should make to AIX when attaching XIV
disk. AIX uses three device types when considering fibre channel disk: fcs This is the physical fibre channel
adapter (we get one for every fibre channel adapter port), e.g.
fcs0 and fcs1 fscsi This is the SCSI software interface for the... [More]
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Virtualizing a Storwize V7000 with an IBM SVC
IBM have offered Enterprise Storage Virtualization since June 2003 with the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC). October 2010 saw IBM releasing the Storwize V7000, taking the SVC code and packaging it into a midrange disk product. So now you have four possible choices: Use SVC to virtualize your storage. Use Storwize V7000 to provide internal SAS drives plus virtualize your storage. Use Storwize... [More]
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Updating Storwize V7000 drive code
************************************************************************** Update 17/12/2011: A flash reporting a possible issue that could occur if a drive fails during drive firmware update can be found here . Until the flash is updated showing how to avoid this issue, only update drive firmware when installing a new machine or if all hosts are offline.... [More]
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CMUA00007E error while running the IBM STAT tool
The IBM Storage Tier Adviser Tool (known as STAT for short) is a clever piece of software that lets you predict how much business value you would get from adding SSDs to your Storwize V7000, SVC, DS8700 or DS8800. This is because you can add SSDs to all of these products and then have hot spots dynamically and automatically migrated to SSD using IBM's Easy Tier technology (which is offered... [More]
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SVC and Storwize V7000 Release 6.3: Configuring LDAP
Once your SVC or Storwize V7000 is upgraded to version 6.3 you can start using LDAP for authentication. This means that when you logon, you authenticate with your domain user-id and password rather than a locally created user-id and password. So why is this important? It saves you having to configure every user on every SVC or Storwize V7000. If you have multiple machines this makes it far... [More]
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Simulators for IBM Storage products
One of the biggest challenges when working on such a wide variety of products is staying familiar with the GUIs used by each product. So its worth remembering that there are simulators and demo modes in all of IBM's disk products. XIV The XIV GUI offers a demonstration mode that can be accessed by simply logging on with a user-id of p10demomode. No password is needed. While the demo mode does... [More]
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SVC and Storwize V7000 Release 6.3: Performance Monitor Panel
With the 6.3 release of the Storwize V7000 and SVC code (which I blogged about here ), there are so many new features and functions that I have plenty more to blog about! The first new feature I blogged about was LDAP support, but an existing feature that has been enhanced is the performance monitor (brought in with release 6.2). When this first came out I put a video on You Tube showing what... [More]
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Brocade SAN Switch Models
IBM has been selling IBM branded Brocade switches since 2001 when we announced the 8-port 2109-S08 and 16-port 2109-S16. These were classic switches that ran at 1 Gbps. They had a front operator panel with a small keypad (a feature which in the rush to fit in more SFPs, did not appear in future models). Since then IBM has gone on to sell many of Brocades switches and directors. Sometimes you... [More]
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Installing the IBM XIV VASA Provider for VMware
If you have combined vSphere 5.0 with XIV, then you may want to try out the new IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA (vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness). You can download the installation instructions, the release notes and the current version of the IBM VASA provider from here . Clearly because VASA is introduced in vSphere 5.0 your VMware vCenter also needs to be on version 5.0. Now... [More]
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