IBM Announcements for DS8000 and Spectrum Storage suite

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Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means? IBM Announcements!

(FTC Disclosure: I work for IBM, and have either written code and/or presented the DS8000 storage system and Spectrum Storage products in my professional capacity. This blog post can be considered a "paid celebrity endorsement" for the IBM DS8000 Storage System and Spectrum Storage software.)

IBM DS8880 and DS8880F Storage Systems

For those not up on the DS8000 nomenclature, here's a quick recap:

• DS8880 supports a hybrid mix of Flash cards, SSD, 15K, 10K and 7200 rpm drives.

  This includes the DS8884 and DS8886. The Flash cards are held in High Performance Flash Enclosures (HPFE) directly attached to the controllers, whereas the SSD and spinning disk are in shelves connected via the Device Adapters.

• DS8880F is an all-flash array, with Flash cards only in HPFE. This includes the DS8884F, DS8886F and DS8888F models.
  
  
• DS8880/F is convenient shorthand to refer to both the hybrid and all-flash models collectively.

Today, IBM announces new 7.68TB flash cards for the High Performance Flash Enclosures of the IBM DS8880/F. These are double the capacity of the 3.84TB cards currently available, doubling the total capacity to 368.6TB per HPFE.

Different DS8880 models support a different number of HPFE. An HPFE is a pair of 2U drawers, holding a total of 48 flash cards. You can purchase flash in groups of 16 cards, with the option to mix and match within the HPFE. For example, you can have 16 cards at the 1.6TB capacity, 16 cards with 3.68TB and 16 cards of the new 7.68TB capacity, all in a single HPFE.

The new 7.68TB support 1 Drive Write Per Day (DWPD). Some people call these "Read-Intensive" drives, but IBM refers to them as "High-Capacity Drives", to differentiate them from the "High Performance Drives" that support 10 DWPD.

In reality, the read performance is similar in both types of Flash cards offered, but the write performance is slightly slower for the High-Capacity drives due in part to additional garbage collection performed in the background. Our studies found that over 90 percent of workloads might find the High-Capacity drives good enough to handle I/O requirements.

IBM Easy Tier was updated to distinguish between High-Performance and High-Capacity flash cards, so that blocks of data that have higher or lower I/O characteristics will be relocated to the appropriate level of storage.

To learn more, see [DS8880 Gen1], [DS8880 Gen2], and [DS8880F] press releases.

IBM Spectrum Storage Suite v1.1

The newest level of IBM Spectrum Storage Suite simplifies procurement by bringing together the latest releases of the following software:

• IBM Spectrum Accelerate V11
• IBM Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition V1 (Linux edition)
• IBM Spectrum Control Advanced Edition V5
• IBM Spectrum Protect Suite V8 (including Spectrum Protect Plus!)
• IBM Spectrum Scale Data Management Edition V5
• IBM Spectrum Virtualize Software for SAN Volume Controller V8 (including FlashCopy and Remote Mirror, Real-time Compression and Encryption Software)
• IBM Spectrum Virtualize Software-only V8
• IBM Cloud Object Storage System V3

Instead of buying software products separately, a single license enables administrators to deploy IBM Spectrum Storage Suite software when and where they need it, without having to wait. Simplified capacity pricing can significantly reduce software costs and time spent on license management.

The Spectrum Storage suite also offers a "sandbox" approach for try-and-buy. Since you have access to all the software listed, you can set up a sandbox to experiment with the functionality, without having to pay for the added capacity, until you deploy it to dev/test, quality assurance, or production.

The suite is licensed per Tebibyte [TiB]. For those not familiar with international standards, here is a comparison table:

Terminology	Abbreviation	Notation	Quantity
Terabyte	TB	Always decimal, 10 to the 12th power	1,000,000,000,000 bytes
Tebibyte	TiB	Always binary, 2 to the 40th power	1,099,511,627,776 bytes

The two terms sound similar and represent nearly the same quantity within 10 percent of each other, so it is understandable when people mistakenly use the terms interchangeably.

To learn more, see the [IBM Spectrum Storage Suite V1.1] press release.

IBM Food Trust™ platform

From farm to fork, IBM Food Trust platform is a collaborative network of growers, processors, wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, retailers and others enhancing visibility and accountability in each step of the food supply.

Powered by the IBM Blockchain Platform on IBM servers and storage systems, IBM Food Trust directly connects participants through a permissioned, permanent and shared record of food origin details, processing data, shipping details and more.

(This reminds me of a funny story: the man sitting next to me on my flight back from an IBM Systems conference in New Orleans asked me, "You look familiar. Didn't I see you at the conference this week?" I responded "Yes, were you there for the "server" or "storage" side?" He thought about it for a while, and said "I guess the server side". "Too bad", I replied, "I am on the storage side."

It took us a while, but I realized he worked in the food and restaurant industry, and that he was at a completely different conference. It happened to also have both a "server" and "storage" side!)

The IBM Food Trust platform provides new levels of transparency, quicker recalls, better standardized communication and protection of brand value. As an authorized user, you have immediate access to shared, actionable food supply data through integrated IBM Blockchain-powered modules for faster traceability and more confidence in provenance.

Today, IBM announces new services to enable clients to successfully connect to and make use of the IBM Food Trust Platform.

To learn more, see the [IBM Food Trust virtually-guided onboarding services] press release, and the [Welcome to IBM Food Trust] and [Enhance traceability and safety of food] landing pages.

All this talk about food is making me hungry!