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XIV Capacity Upgrade - as easy as 1, 2.. done
So I had the pleasure last night of observing a capacity upgrade on a client's XIV (so yes this is all real world). The client in question had an 11 module XIV with 1 TB drives. This meant they had 54,649 GB of useable capacity ( approx 54TB ). . They client had ordered one new XIV module as an incremental capacity upgrade . All hardware upgrades are performed by IBM, so the upgrade work was... [More]
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Dont throw away the dust covers!
So something I truly hate to see when visiting computer rooms is fibre cables hanging in the breeze with no dust covers, their precious glass connectors exposed to the world. Even worse are fibre patch panels and HBAs without dust covers. . When new equipment arrives, every HBA, every patch panel port and every fibre optic cable will have a dust cover. So what to do with these little guys once... [More]
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Don't stand so close to me
Its a given today that SAN implementations have redundancy by design. When we sell SAN switches we always urge clients to use dual fabrics. Its accepted industry best practice. By having hosts with dual HBAs, each host can attach to both fabrics and survive the failure of a SAN switch. . Equally when we sell SAN Volume Controller (SVC) we always sell the SVC nodes in pairs. Each SVC node can run... [More]
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Changing times call for NTP
In many years of providing storage support, my greatest bugbear was time co-ordination. I am not talking about work-life balance or finding the perfect time slot to schedule a meeting. I am talking about getting every device in the data center to show log entries that are time syncronized. As an example: When investigating a SAN pathing issue with SVC, we can have time stamps from: Host... [More]
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What will I be doing in September?
Its been two weeks since I came back to work from a truly fantastic vacation with my family. And boy what a busy two weeks it has been.... IBM had a great Q2 and since one of my roles is to deliver professional services, this means I am busy helping IBM clients implement their new IBM Storage Solutions. My main focus at the moment is on DS8700 and XIV and since we had some great successes with... [More]
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VMware vSphere 4.1 VAAI and XIV
I recently listed to a great Podcast on VAAI from Greg Knierieman over at the Storage Monkeys website. You can find the podcast here (the whole site is well worth a visit). He was talking with Marc Farley (his co-host, from 3PAR), Chad Sakac (from EMC) and Chris Evans (the 'Storage Architect'). The topic was VMWares newly announced VAAI. To quote from the podcast, VAAI is a set of APIs... [More]
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tripadvisor for IT?
I spent the first week of my recent vacation in Sydney (I live in Melbourne). For someone who has spent many weeks in Sydney on business, this was the first time I actually went there as a real tourist. First up, it was a great break and my family and I can heartily recommend Sydney to anyone (from any part of the world) who is looking for a "holiday with the lot". As part of our... [More]
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Recent updates to the IBM Storage Support Site
Rob Jackard from the ATS Group has kindly supplied me with this great summation of recent updates to various parts of the IBM Support sites. Its worth just running your eyes down the list to see if there is anything that might apply to you and your environment. . For XIV users, please update to the latest GUI release, version 2.4.3a (see the link below). The release notes (which you can also... [More]
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One more reason to like DS3500
So first up, I have been on leave for two weeks... thus my stunning silence The good news is that I had a great break, the bad news was the size of my inbox on return So for those of you who read my blog entry titled: 10 things I like about the IBM DS3500
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/anthonyv/entry/10_things_i_like_about_the_ibm_ds35002?lang=en I now... [More]
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Forgot your IP Address? There is hope (and ITIL)
So one of the standard work tasks when running a data center is to record the IP addresses assigned to each device. I am routinely surprised (and frankly a little disappointed) to see posts in the DW System Storage forum from end users reporting they cannot manage their storage devices, because they don't know the assigned IP addresses. This situation often arises due to: Changes in personnel... [More]
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Even more praise for the XIV GUI
I know I have already blogged about the XIV GUI and how it just keeps getting better and better.... But I feel the need to share yet another improvement to the way the GUI presents information. In this case its an additional widget to show the health of each module in the XIV. A fully configured XIV consists of 15 modules, each module containing components like fans, power supplies and disk... [More]
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10 things I like about the IBM DS3500
IBM recently announced the new System Storage DS3500 Express. The DS3500 is an entry level storage system that can be easily serviced and managed by an end-user. It is a very worthy successor to the DS3200/DS3300/DS3400 product line. So I thought I would share with you 10 things I really like about the new IBM DS3500 (in no particular order). 1) Its small The base unit is only 2U in size and... [More]
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Upgrading AIX? Don't forget SDDPCM
SDDPCM (Subsystem Device Driver Path Control Module) is the multi-pathing plug-in for AIX 5.3 and 6.1. Customers who use IBM SVC, DS6000, DS8000 and/or ESS800 use this package to allow the operating system to handle multiple paths from OS to storage. The good news is that this plug-in is supplied free of charge. The bad news is that it is not included with AIX fixpacks. What this means is... [More]
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Keeping yourself informed about IBM Storage
Having spent several fantastic years working for IBM's Storage Central team as a post-sales Storage Support Specialist, one of my many tasks was to communicate known issues to the members of my team. This meant keeping up to date with all the alerts; flashes; firmware releases of IBM's very comprehensive range of storage products. I found a vital tool for achieving this was to be registered... [More]
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Distance considerations for longwave 8 Gpbs SFPs
As a follow up to my previous blog, there are also distance considerations for longwave 8 Gpbs SFPs. To provide some background, there are three things that control our ability to reliably send data over longer distances than 300 meters. The intensity (brightness) of the transmitter (for long distances this is normally a laser as opposed to an LED). The transmit value is measured in dBm. There... [More]
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Things to be aware of when migrating to 8 Gbps Fibre Channel
Its now becoming far more common to see 8 Gbps Fibre Channel switches and HBAs. IBM offer a very comprehensive range of 8 Gbps capable switches manufactured by both Brocade and Cisco. These range from top of the line SAN Directors like the IBM SAN768B (Brocade DCX) and the Cisco MDS9513 to 1U switches like the MDS9148 and the IBM SAN40B-4 (Brocade Silkworm 5100). You can check them all... [More]
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How XIV handles a building power failure
I received a question the other day about how the XIV interacts with a customers building UPS. So I thought I would share my answer with you. The XIV has two separate line cords (there is an option to have four line cords but I am trying not to complicate this). This means the clients building power provides the XIV with two separate power sources. As long as one of those two line cords... [More]
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New Cisco MDS9148 fills a gap
I wrote up this blog entry and then deleted the whole entry while editing a typo. It seems to be a glitch in the developerworks Blog interface, but it could also be a code 16 (problem lies 16 inches in front of keyboard). Anyway.... Cisco have filled a gap in the product line with their new MDS9148. IBM have offered the 4 Gbps capable MDS9124 24 ports) and MDS9134 (32 ports plus 2 x 10... [More]
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Storage Interoperability checking using the SSIC
In my current job I commonly get asked about interoperability. The fear of finding your vendor is not willing to support your setup... that's a serious source of anxiety. After all.... what every IT professional wants to deliver is certainty. I think it is the number one deliverable that a good IT company should provide its clients. So how does IBM deliver this certainty? The answer is... [More]
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Missing images
It seems I have some problems with inserting images into this blog. Apologies for this, am working on discovering what I am doing wrong....
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