Archive
Introducing IBM Spectrum Storage – Inside Perspective
Good Blog article by fellow IBMer Ron Riff:
Every once in a long while there are discoveries that, well, change everything. Stuff like discovering the earth isn’t flat, it’s round. People talked about that possibility for centuries but it wasn’t until a Ferdinand Magellan expedition stepped out and circumnavigated the globe that everything changed. In some ways, today’s announcement of IBM® Spectrum Storage™ has done the same thing for the idea of software defined storage.
IBM Announces New Storage Platform: Commits $1B to Storage R&D over 5 years.
Today IBM is announcing a new storage platform named Spectrum. This new family of products allow customers to handle the burden of increasing storage needs. There are a few blogs and articles already out there so I am not here to re-hash those. I will point out the fact we are able to offer our storage products in both a software only form or a tried and true system is something unique.
I took this from the announcement today. As you can see we are truly taking the material from our existing software and now making them a part of a family.
Spectrum Control (IBM Virtual Storage Center) allows control of the infrastructure with analytic-driven data management that will help reduce cost by up to 50 percent.
Spectrum Protect (IBM Tivoli Storage Manager) reduces backup costs and protects data.
Spectrum Accelerate (XIV as Software) allows for accelerated enterprise storage for cloud deployments.
Spectrum Scale (Elastic Storage) scales high-performance storage up to 1B petabytes of unstructured data.
Spectrum Virtualize (IBM SAN Volume Controller) can virtualize mixed environments and store up to 5 times more data.
Spectrum Archive (IBM LTFS) can archive data that allows fast access and reduces TCO for archived data by approximately 90 percent.
As you see, some of these were software products already and they were added to the family. What I am most impressed with is now the ability to buy the XIV software and create your own XIV with your hardware. When I first hear about this about a year ago, I didn’t understand the real value in doing an all software offering for XIV. But since then I have seen where customers are wanting to either create smaller XIV systems than our 55TB systems or they are wanting to run a standard hardware platform which costs them less to maintain.
I also see great opportunities for IBM to move the XIV software stack into a hyper-converged solution where customers can run more than just storage on box, but their networking, applications and middle-ware as well. The other aspect is it opens up the ability to run an all flash XIV, more then 15 ‘modules’ which equals larger scale. Who knows what else is in the works for this product but I think we/IBM is on the right track.
The other big news coming out of IBM today was the announcement of a $1 BEEELION dollar investment in R&D for IBM Storage Software over the next 5 years. According to the press release, the money will help clients with object storage and open standards.
To accelerate the development of next-generation storage software, IBM also announced plans to invest more than $1 billion in its storage software portfolio over the next five years. With this investment, the company aims to extend its storage technology leadership having recently been ranked #1 in software defined storage platforms for the first three quarters of 2014 by leading industry analyst firm IDC.1 The investment will focus on R&D of new cloud storage software, object storage and open standard technologies including OpenStack.
As you can imagine, that is a huge commitment for IBM or for any storage company. I think this goes to tell that IBM is in the storage business for the long haul and our commitment to our clients stays strong. From what I can tell from our R&D teams, there are some really cool things coming down the road and I am for one very excited about IBM Storage.
IBM Edge 2014 Call for Customer Speakers now OPEN!
IBM Edge 2014 Call for Speakers is Open!
Do you have a story that you want to tell? IBM is giving you a chance to tell the world how you are making your business or the industry better. This year we are focused on four areas: Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud. These subjects will be the cornerstone of the conference and sessions will be selected on how your business was changed by them.
We want attendees to better understand why its important to move Infrastructure from an afterthought to a strategic mission critical choice, and want presenters to discuss how IBM infrastructure is a unique enabler for growth and innovation. Ideally, a speaker can incorporate how the company’s strategic and forward thinking decisions about infrastructure have directly impacted the enterprise’s ability to respond effectively to new opportunities, challenges and the demands of growth and innovation. We look forward to inviting customers to speak and will pay for their conference fee as a token of thanks.
If you are interested in speaking and attending Edge, please email me back with some details below and I will get your information into the database for the selection committee.
Please send me your name, company and contact information and the specifics you might include in your project/story including:
What IBM solution components? what is your implementation?
What terms of the decision process did you go through and the impact to your business?
Will you be comfortable including some business impact context?
Is there a tie-in with Cloud, Analytics, Mobile or Social type of workload ?
How has IBM technology helped you run the business better?
If you are interested, please let me know by March 12 as the deadline is next Friday for submissions.
IBM Triangle Storage User Group Meeting May 20
IBM Scripting Tools for SVC and Storwize has been updated
Great news, check out the new Storwize load balance script
The Rebalance script for IBM SVC has been updated. This is the first update I have seen since 2010. This release of the SVCTools package will now work on the Storwize family of products without modification and it can rebalance Easy Tier managed disk groups.
Why use this? Normally in SVC (and always with Storwize products), each MDisk is a different RAID array. In those cases, when you add MDisks (arrays) to a pool (MDiskGrp) then you are adding extra spindles to that pool. By rebalancing extents from existing volumes onto new MDisks, existing volumes will almost always get a performance boost. It also means that you free up space on the older MDisks so that when you later create new volumes in that pool, they will get a chance to use extents across a wider range of MDisks (old and new, not just new)…
View original post 109 more words
IBM Scripting Tools for SVC and Storwize has been updated
Great news, check out the new Storwize load balance script
The Rebalance script for IBM SVC has been updated. This is the first update I have seen since 2010. This release of the SVCTools package will now work on the Storwize family of products without modification and it can rebalance Easy Tier managed disk groups.
Why use this? Normally in SVC (and always with Storwize products), each MDisk is a different RAID array. In those cases, when you add MDisks (arrays) to a pool (MDiskGrp) then you are adding extra spindles to that pool. By rebalancing extents from existing volumes onto new MDisks, existing volumes will almost always get a performance boost. It also means that you free up space on the older MDisks so that when you later create new volumes in that pool, they will get a chance to use extents across a wider range of MDisks (old and new, not just new)…
View original post 109 more words
IBM Scripting Tools for SVC and Storwize has been updated
Great news, check out the new Storwize load balance script
The Rebalance script for IBM SVC has been updated. This is the first update I have seen since 2010. This release of the SVCTools package will now work on the Storwize family of products without modification and it can rebalance Easy Tier managed disk groups.
Why use this? Normally in SVC (and always with Storwize products), each MDisk is a different RAID array. In those cases, when you add MDisks (arrays) to a pool (MDiskGrp) then you are adding extra spindles to that pool. By rebalancing extents from existing volumes onto new MDisks, existing volumes will almost always get a performance boost. It also means that you free up space on the older MDisks so that when you later create new volumes in that pool, they will get a chance to use extents across a wider range of MDisks (old and new, not just new)…
View original post 109 more words
Great Blog article from the The Storage Buddhist about sizing for SONAS and V7kU
Out there in IBM land the field technical and sales people are often given a guideline of between 5% and 10% of total NAS capacity being allocated for metadata on SONAS or Storwize V7000 Unified systems. I instinctively knew that 10% was too high, but like an obedient little cog in the machine I have been dutifully deducting 5% from the estimated nett capacity that I have sized for customers – but no more!
Being able to size metadata more accurately becomes especially important when a customer wants to place the metadata on SSDs so as to speed up file creation/deletion but more particularly inode scans associated with replication or anti-virus.
[updated slightly on 130721]
The theory of gpfs metadata sizing is explained here and the really short version is that in most cases you will be OK with allowing 1 KiB per file per copy of metadata, but the…
View original post 255 more words
How to compare storage?
We hear it all the time, “How does your system compare to your competitor’s system”. That is when the architect or engineer starts to rattle off the different features and how this works and that. But I think you don’t have to go far below the surface to start seeing real differences. We all know the SPC numbers for these systems and try to spin them when our system doesn’t beat the current record. What I do know is there is more to the evaluation of a storage system than just how many bits it can serve in microsecond.
I love cars and all types of cars. This past weekend I got to see one of the best looking, best sounding cars that is made in America. The Chevrolet Corvette ZR1. This car just oozes raw power and from the sidewalk will make men into boys as it rumbles by. But how does it perform? How does it match up with the other ‘great’ cars in that same genre?
Let me introduce you to the SRT Viper GTS. I had to do some research before finding a car so similar that they even look alike. When you look at the hardware the cars are almost identical:
So from the surface you can see these two cars are not only similar in shape but engine size, power and torque. In order to tell which car is better suited, one would need to go head to head and see how these cars perform in certain conditions. Like storage, we compare systems CPU, cache port speed, maximum number drives etc. At first glance you can determine if you are comparing similar systems or not. You may be trying to compare a sports car to mini van.
Now what do you do next? Put the cars on the track and see who is fastest. Drag style. In the storage world, this is done from either a bake-off or looking at benchmarks likes SPC numbers. Now your numbers could show you exactly how your system COULD perform. Now when looking at benchmarks like SPC you have to take in account of how the boxes are configured, how they stack up price wise and even what the green value might be.
But when it comes down to it, it’s all about handling both for cars and storage. As people look at the solutions on paper they may or may not be the right fit. Just because a car can go 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds doesn’t do you any good if you are driving on the interstate for three hours. But a nice comfortable seat with adaptive cruise control makes your back feel better in the end. Its the things that you sometimes can’t see in the data sheet or someone’s elevator pitch.
IBM does have ways to let you test drive their systems either onsite, remotely or even at a IBM facility. The idea of putting your hands on the equipment and finding the little things that make you more comfortable can effect how you see storage in a different light. If you are in the process of looking at a new storage system, take the time to sit in the car and see how it handles.
Here is a great YouTube video showing the Head2Head comparison of the Viper GTS vs the Corvette ZR1.
The Storage Tank 