It depends... I've been heavily involved with the soon to be published 'SVC Best Practices and Performance' Redbook - I'll post a link as soon as the book is available, but it struck me that when quizzed by the writers for an opinion on X or Y that I found myself starting the reply with... "Well......   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  storage virtualization svc

I spotted Hu has made a long post about the new mid-range USP, and various articles out there are discussing it. However, it seems my replies to both Hu and Claus fell on deaf ears - yet again they are quoting those incredulous attachment figures. So yet again lets look at the numbers Claus and Hu...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  usp virtualization storage

I must admit that one of the things I have looked forward to this year has been the Saturday qualifying and Sunday race days in the Formula 1 calendar. It's been a great F1 season so far, not just because I'm a Brit (well Scotsman abroad - Coulhtard was always British when he won... ) Nobody, least...   [Continue Reading]

Following on from Chris' comments in "Pause for Thoughtput" I had a look around and there are some interesting posts being made. Being one of those close to the "Virtualmania" scene I had a look through the second paper Gear6 have written, "Provisioning for Predictable Performance" . Jumping to the...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  virtualization cache

I've been following the Solid State Disk (SSD) evolution over the last year or two with a selfish eye. Running one of the largest test stands we have in the Hursley SVC lab (from a number of spindles point of view) I too suffer the pain of drive fall-out. Its more of just an annoyance to me though,...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  data+center disk cache

I'd like to at least take my hat off to HDS for once. I have been laying into them with apparently car salesman like maths , but then it had to be said. So why this sudden note of appreciation. For stepping up to the mark and submitting their USP-V to the Storage Performance Council , SPC-1...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  spc storage usp

There has been much said about the VMware certification process, why isn't SVC fully supported etc; particularly in comments on my blog. Today IBM and VMware jointly announced full certification of SVC 4.2.0 with VMWare ESX 3.0.2. Read the full press release here . As I had previously commented, we...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  virtualization vmware svc

This morning one of my colleagues in my office bay started a discussion about the fine line between divulging useful technical information on this blog-o-sphere while maintaining the confidentiality of technical information, product plans and general intellectual property of IBM. I explained to him...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  svc performance storage virtualization disk

I've been meaning to post this entry in my Storage Virtualization part work for some time now. Day to day work, testing some new functions and customer commitments have left little, if any, time to dump my thoughts. This weekend has proved to be a good respite, and allowed me not only time to catch...   [Continue Reading]

The SPC contacted SUN regarding violations of the SPC 'fair-use' terms. To that end, John and Valdis have retracted both the newsletter comments and blog posts that claimed 'faster than SVC' therefore the links in this post no longer show their original content. I have left this post in place for...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  usp storage virtualization svc spc benchmark

With the kids having next week off, its time for the trek back up the M6 to Scotland to take them to see their grandparents. After a few manic weeks at work with calls at both ends of the day, I'm off for some well needed rest back in Glasgow. I will reply to any comments when I return.

Over at The SAN Technologist Steven is making some wild and mostly inaccurate statements, particularly about SVC, as well as some curious associations between startup company failures and storage virtualization. He asks : So why has storage virtualization failed? I wasn't aware it had, and with SVC...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  virtualization storage data+center svc invista

IBM today announced the next release of SVC - version 4.2.1 - which will be generally available as of November 16th. The key highlights of this release are : Copy Services Enhancements - including Incremental FlashCopy, Cascaded FlashCopy, configurable copy services space Aid business continuity by...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  virtualization copy+services svc storage

I promised a bit more detail on the very limited sample set used by EMC's latest blogger Dr Kartik , in response to his analysis that SPC-1 IOPs is directly proportional to the number of drives used by the system under test. So I cannot deny the fact that : larger number of drives = larger IOPs...   [Continue Reading]


Tags:  benchmark usp emc spc svc storage