IBM Edge Content Hub

IBM Electronic Support at Edge2013: Learn how to upgrade/maintain products for peak performance & efficiency

2013-05-23T21:00:00Z

Look who's attending...

Linda Edd, Support Portal Enablement Specialist. Follow Linda @IBMFlexSyseSpt

Mark Drummond, eClient Support Content Enablement. Follow Mark @IBMStorageSupt

What are we doing at Edge2013?

IBM Edge2013 provides an excellent opportunity for you to learn more about IBM Electronic Support and the many tools available to you

to plan, upgrade, and maintain your IBM System and related products for peak performance and high availability.
Expand your knowledge of the IBM Support Portal and the wealth of information available at your fingertips!

This is your chance to provide input to our web strategy and future enhancements.

Solution Center Hours:

Monday, 12:00 PM. - 12:45 PM - Solution Center Open
Monday, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM - Solution Center Reception
Tuesday, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM - Solution Center Open
Tuesday, 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM - Solution Center Reception
Wednesday, 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM - Solution Center Open

Drop by and see Mark and Linda during Edge2013 at Booth #904. (See map)

Enjoy this quick reference guide to IBM Electronic Support (PDF)

For more information about all of IBM's Electronic Support sites and tools, please visit: http://ibm.com/electronicsupport

Keep up-to-date with IBM Electronic Support through these social media channels:
IBM Electronic Support Info Site | Twitter | Facebook | IBM Electronic Support Community Blog | YouTube | LinkedIn

If you are unable to access YouTube, our videos are available from IBM Education Assistant.

Toigo's Take: Getting Ready for IBM Edge 2013

2013-05-23T20:30:00Z

We are closing in on IBM Edge 2013, a multi-track edutainment event focused on Big Blue storage technology taking place at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas from June 9 through June 14. The event reprises a very interesting and informative show staged closer to my house in Florida last year about this time. I delivered six Technical Edge sessions covering Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning in 2012 and I guess my reviews were sufficiently positive to be invited back this year to deliver three sessions on data protection, one on tape and Linear Tape File System, and to participate in a panel discussion on social media.

Cliché as it may sound, I am looking forward to this trip - despite the grueling schedule leading up to the show and while on site. I found the first one, in 2012, to be one of the best shows, from a signal to noise standpoint, of all vendor sponsored events I had attended...ever.

I am also going to Edge 2013 with my journalist hat on. For one thing, I will be lugging my video camera with me to do some interviews, I hope, with some IBM smart guys. I am especially interested in learning more about

Progress on IBM's multiple storage management initiatives - and I mean multiple. Between their Tivoli Storage Manager, their Storage Director product, the storage cloud/software-defined storage stuff they are talking about on webinars that leverages SVC, and whatever progress they have made with Project Zero (enabling RESTful management of IBM gear), I find it difficult to discern a coherent strategy for storage management. Maybe some big data analytics are aimed at storage infrastructure?
Speaking of Big Data, have we gotten any closer to brain-mimicking algorithms for sorting data and learning from it over time? If Jeff Jonas is there, maybe I can get him to talk about it.
Of course, LTFS (IMHO) is the most important development in storage technology in years. I know that the uptake of the technology has been good in Broadcast and Pre/Post Media Editing, but are we seeing it going anywhere in other verticals? Also, what's up with the noise around all other storage BUT tape? This year, I have heard a lot from IBM about FLASH storage (leveraging the purchase recently made of Texas Memory Instruments, I guess), and the new boss of IBM storage gave an interesting interview to El Reg at The Register not long ago where he suggested that IBM (like EMC and everyone else) was seeing momentum toward an all FLASH storage paradigm. Scary thought, that.
So, is disk dead? (Hardly think so.) Is the future capture storage all FLASH, and retention storage is all TAPE? That is an interesting idea? Also, what does IBM think about the FLASH hype: can server hypervisors REALLY see their speeds and feeds improved by caching them with FLASH - or is this just so much spoofing?
Speaking of which, an IBM partner/technology provider at the show is intriguing me with the idea that they have surmounted the challenges of latency in wide area networks. Has Einstein met his match, or is the vendor's PR organization overstating the case? I'll find out.

I will try to put as many of these questions to IBMers on camera, and maybe get a few customers to share their views as well. All will be posted here, together with some conventional blogs and my on-going live tweets about the show.

On a related tangent, Gartner was quoted in Processor.com on May 3 on pg. 17 of their print publication - Hey, I like newspapers; beats training puppies with an iPad! - to the effect that just 10% of business social media initiatives succeed. IBM has one of the best social media teams in the industry and either proves or disproves Gartner's thesis, depending on what you see as the goals of social media.

As a business tool for IBM, social media provides great inroads through the often confusing morass of IBM technology initiatives and product announcements, webinars and events, management and strategy change-ups and refits. Basically, you would have to spend weeks on their web sites to find what you are seeking. With IBM social media, I only need to tweet a question to get all of the links I need. I call that successful.

Anyway, I am heading to IBM Edge on the 9^th. I hope some of you are, too. Here's the registration page.

A look at IBM Edge 2013 tracks: Storage, PureSystems & more

2013-05-23T16:21:00Z

Nobody ever accused this blogger of being executive caliber but that hasn't stopped me from rummaging around the Executive Track offerings at IBM Edge 2013 coming up Jun 10-14 in Las Vegas. Called the Executive Edge, the sessions run the first two and a half days and look pretty interesting. (The technical track, which is larger and runs the entire conference, actually looks much more interesting if you are inclined toward serious geekiness; this blogger intends to attend sessions from both tracks.)

Executive Edge is organized into three sections. The third section seems to have most of the technology product material. Here you will find sessions on PureSystems, FlashSystems, the eX5 (x86), Storwize, and Enterprise Storage (probably DS8000). This third section also includes this intriguing topic: How Data Science Will Change the Course of History. If I reported to an executive, I would steer him to that one, which should be intriguing to say the least.

The first section has some interesting topics. One looks at customer usage scenarios around big data and storage. Some of those DancingDinosaur has already covered, like the City of Honolulu. Another session, titled All-Flash Everywhere, will probably explain to executives how flash storage radically changes several decades of traditional storage thinking. Again, DancingDinosuar covered it a few weeks back here and also on the Storage Community blog.

Another intriguing topic in this group is Storage Futures. This is being described as: The Next Big Thing in Storage is Software Defined Storage - the inclusion of cost effective, highly automated storage in a Software Define Environment. In the session the presenter will describe the value of this approach, the technologies involved, and the adoption roadmap IBM recommends clients to follow. This is a great topic, a part of what I describe as Software Defined Everything. This blogger has been briefed on IBM's plans in this regard but can't write or talk publicly until-guess when-IBM Edge 20913. This should be an interesting session.

The second section picks up where Storage Futures left off with Software Defined Networking, another part of my Software Defined Everything but one that is gaining traction today. Another session in this section will look at defending against cyber-threats with security-ready infrastructure and security intelligence in a virtualized world.

Security should attract a crowd of executives; whenever DancingDinosaur talks with executives about cloud computing you can see fear sweep over them. The cloud, to them, is the Wild West filled with bad guys behind every rock. They may be right, but those same bad guys already are feeding on their on-premise systems. Reputable cloud computing vendors intending to survive are highly attuned to the security challenges. With luck this session will reassure them that they aren't defenseless.

Have you registered for IBM Edge 2013 yet? Last year this blogger was shocked at how many people-several thousand-showed up, and this year promises to be even bigger. Overall, IBM Edge 2013 will offer over 140 storage sessions, over 50 PureSystems sessions, more than 50 client case studies, and sessions on big data and analytics along with a full cloud track. Look for me in the Social Media Lounge at the conference and in the sessions. You can follow this blogger on Twitter for conference updates @Writer1225 and using hashtag #IBMEdge to post live Twitter comments from the conference. And then there is the FREE drink: I'll buy a drink for the first two people who come up to me and say they read DancingDinosaur. How's that for motivation!

Mainframe and Storage: Highlights from IBM's Technical Edge Conference Agenda

2013-05-18T01:27:00Z

The IBM Edge conference is June 10-14 in Las Vegas, Although the conference is held in Las Vegas this year, the sessions should bring enough expert material to divert mainframe storage managers from the gaming tables. Although mainframe isn't the primary focus, the Technical Edge agenda offers considerable material that addresses mainframe storage. Here are some of the sessions that look particularly interesting:

IBM z/OS Storage Management Ecosystem Update-provides an overview of IBM's strategy for managing the z/OS storage ecosystems. Learn how the strategic z/OS storage management product, OMEGAMON XE for Storage, fits into the strategy and how the rest of the Tivoli z/OS Storage management portfolio works together to address common z/OS storage tasks and problem resolution. The session also promises to include a short review of Tivoli z/VM storage products.
IBM z/OS + DS8K Synergy-offers an overview of the IBM DS8000 architecture and its deep integration with IBM z/OS to deliver performance, high availability, optimization, and manageability. No other storage system has the unique integration with the IBM mainframe, according to IBM. That becomes particularly apparent when you start looking at Flash storage.
Introduction to the TS7700 Virtualization Engine Grid for the Uninitiated or Those Needing a Refresher-intended to introduce attendees to the IBM TS7700 Virtualization Engine, a virtualized tape solution. This basic level discussion will start by explaining why tape virtualization came about, and then cover basic and advanced concepts, up through the latest enhancements. If you are not already familiar with virtual tape you don't want to miss this.
Retention management is an increasingly important and tricky topic these days, particularly as it ties in with compliance and even legal ediscovery. Edge 2013 offers two complementary sessions on retention management.
Untangling Retention Management under DFSMSrmm-DFSMS Removable Media Manager (DFSMSrmm) delivers a wide variety of retention controls for the z/OS tape resources it manages. Often the variety of options and the differences in how they behave can be confusing. The session promises to explain how and why DFSMSrmm does what it does so attendees can make the best decisions for their environment.
DFSMSrmm Best Practices, Features and New Stuff-DFSMS Removable Media Manager (DFSMSrmm) is one of the most regularly enhanced tape management systems in the market. Often, however, new features are overlooked. This session offers an overview of key product features that every DFSMSrmm data center should be taking full advantage of to properly safeguard their environments. In addition, it will detail several little-known product capabilities that can streamline administrator efficiency, allowing more time for other management activities.

Overall, IBM Edge 2013 will offer over 140 storage sessions, over 50 PureSystems sessions, more than 50 client case studies, and sessions on big data and analytics along with a full cloud track. In June, I'll be attending IBM Edge 2013. Look for me in the Social Media Lounge at the conference and in the sessions. You can follow me on Twitter for conference updates @Writer1225. I'll be using hashtag #IBMEdge to post live Twitter comments from the conference.

NOTE: Full disclosure: this blogger's trip to Edge 2013 and related DancingDinosaur posts are being underwritten by IBM. However, the choice of content, ideas, and opinions are my own. Hope to see you there!

Flash Storage Innovation: A Hot Topic at IBM Edge 2013

2013-05-15T20:45:00Z

In order to help attendees get a taste for some of the hot topics on the IBM Edge Agenda, IBM Edge has a made a series of videos available on their YouTube channel to give viewer a taste of the conference. The video series features IBM Experts and executives having a series of roundtable conversations about things IBM Customers are particularly interested in. Flash Storage is a hot topic with a bullet. This technology offers cost savings and increased employee productivity. Flash storage is really changing the way customers are deploying infrastructure. It is simultaneously being deployed on every layer. It's in servers, networks and storage, and it's all about how do you coordinate that using software from a management cross-domain and really driving a huge benefits.

Watch this video by clicking on the picture link above to learn more.

Social Media will be a Highlight of IBM Edge 2013

2013-05-15T17:26:00Z

Social Media is going to play a key role in June in the activities at the IBM Edge2013 conference. In addition to interacting in real time at the conference, IBM is encouraging attendees to interact socially via social media and to share their conference experiences. Following is a list of all the social activities at the conference. These are activities you'll want to participate in to win prizes, and to enhance your social IQ. Bookmark this blog post, and then refer to it through the conference to get the Social Edge!

Look for the Social Media Lounge at IBM Edge in the show foyer, during these hours:

Monday June 10: Social Lounge Open 9:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m

Tuesday June 11th Social Lounge Open 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m

Wednesday June 12th Social Lounge Open 10:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m,

Tweet up in the Social Lounge 4pm to 5:30 pm

Thursday June 13th Social Lounge Open 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Friday June 14th Social Lounge Open 10:30 a.m. to noon

Sharpen your social media skills in the IBM Edge Social Media Lounge. If you're new to Social Media, ask one of our Social Concierges at the Lounge to help you talk about IBM Edge on your social networks.
Join the Storage Community at www.storagecommunity.org
Join the Twitter conversations, follow @SystemsandTech @IBMSTG, @IBMTechConfs & @IBMEdge on Twitter, use Hashtag #IBMEdge
Enjoy refreshments & enter to win prizes! The lounge will be stocked with candy, snacks and coffee.

Share your #IBMEdge photos on Instagram and receive a Starbucks card

It’s easy to use Instagram, and enjoy some Starbucks coffee too! Here’s what you need to do.

1) Download Instagram as an app on your mobile phone (Android, iPhone or iPad) and set-up your account

1. Sign up for an Instagram account and choose a username that clearly represents you.

2. Add a profile photo, a biography and a link to your website .

3. Connect your account to Facebook, Twitter and any other third-party sharing sites where you have an account (Go to Profile > Edit sharing settings).

2) Share your #IBMEdge photos with us on Instagram to receive a Starbucks coffee card!

3) Simply share your picture via Twitter with the #IBMEdge hashtag, like this:

a. I’m at #IBMEdge enjoying this XXX (pick the place to describe your picture: session, tech lab, event: @FitzandTantrums/ #YoungtheGiant, dinner, etc)

b. Then share your picture on Instagram via your Twitter account, and bring it to the Social Media Lounge, for your coffee card. Look for the Social Edge signs to find the lounge. Note, you must use the #IBMEdge hashtag to be eligible.

c: Follow @IBMEdge on Instagram to see our pictures to get ideas.

Share your #IBMEdge experience on Twitter receive a Starbucks card

Send us a Tweet us @IBMEdge and tell us how you’re enjoying the conference with the hashtag #IBMEdge. Show us your Tweet on your mobile phone in the Social Edge lounge and receive a Starbucks card.

Check in to IBM Edge at Mandalay Bay from your mobile phone to receive a Starbucks card

Check in on Foursquare from your mobile phone or iPad for a complimentary Starbucks card, when you check in to IBM Edge 2013. Show us your check-in at the Social Lounge to receive a card.

Special Events in the Social Lounge: All conference attendees are invited to join us in the IBM Social Lounge on Wed, June 12th for a special Happy Hour Tweet-up the Social Lounge 4pm to 5:30 pm

All IBM Attendees are invited to join us in the Social Lounge near the registration desk in the show foyer throughout the show!

IBM Edge2013 Session Highlights and IBM Customer Speakers Announced!

2013-05-02T16:01:00Z

As most of our Storage Community members know the IBM Edge event is coming on June 10-14th in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Last year's event was so well received, it sold out.

As a result, IBM Edge has been greatly expanded for 2013. The event now includes much more than IBM storage, The week long event will feature an extensive curriculum that covers storage, cloud, IBM® PureSystems™, x86 servers and converged infrastructure.

At IBM Edge, IBM customers and IBM Business Partners will be able to get educated on industry directions, new innovations, discover best practices and get certified.

Session highlights:
Here are just a few of the sessions offered at IBM Edge2013. These are some of the hot topics on the agenda!
	•	Overview of IBM’s Big Data Strategy
	•	Where to Put the Flash in the Data Center
	•	The Dark Side of the Cloud
	•	Hadoop: It's Not Just About Internal Storage
	•	The Future of Analytics Infrastructure
	•	Introducing IBM Storwize® V3700 Entry Level Virtual Storage System
	•	Introducing IBM PureFlex™ Express, Standard and Enterprise
	•	How the IBM FlashSystem™ Architecture Delivers Differentiated Business Value
	•	Simplifying the Tivoli Storage Manager Administrative Experience with the New Interface
	•	IBM PureApplication System Technical Overview
	•	The Emerging IT Threat Landscape
	•	For more information, download the agenda.

At Edge2013, you can also hear from IBM executives and innovators, along with more than 30 client guest speakers. Check out some of the IBM customers who will be sharing best practices at Edge,

The list of logos is super impressive.

Featured IBM speakers:

Watch the Pushing the Edge video series to catch the excitement, check out the week-at-glance and plan to attend IBM Edge2013… at the beautiful Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV.

Special Offer: Register by April 28, 2013 Save 15% on IBM Edge

2013-04-24T18:44:00Z

The IBM Edge conference promises to be a great event. The conference features many benefits for IBM Customers and Partners. Over the course of a week in Las Vegas, IBM will feature customer case studies, technical labs and hands-on product presentations. A few of the conference highlights include:

350+ technical sessions and hands on labs geared for novices to experts, with the ability to test drive the latest technology.

Exciting general sessions focused on Smarter Computing innovations and real-world success stories.

World class certification available on-site to validate your skills and demonstrate your proficiency in the latest IBM technology and solutions.

A comprehensive and expanded Solution Center giving you access to the latest storage, System x and PureSystems solutions from IBM and our sponsors.

Check out the list of IBM Customers coming to speak at this year's conference. Impressive doesn't even begin to cover it! Customers like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kroger ,Trinity Health & Prudential will be sharing best practices on stage on at IBM Edge.

So, if you're interested in attending, we have a special offer for you. If you register online by April 28th, you'll automatically receive 15% off the registration fee. There is no discount code to input. When you register, you will automatically get the savings.

That's a $345.00 savings simply for registering before April 28th. To learn more about IBM Edge, see the agendas and get more details, visit the IBM Edge website.

IBM Edge Pushing The Edge Video Series - "Betting on Big Data"

2013-03-29T15:52:00Z

In June, the IBM team will be hosting the IBM Edge conference in Las Vegas. Last year, the conference sold out and was well-received by our customers. To respond to customer requests, this year's conference has expanded to include more than Storage. The conference will cover best practices for managing storage growth, accelerating and optimizing x86 server and cloud deployments,from big data and secure critical information. To help our customers and partners better understand the conference, we've developed a series of five videos to offer previews of various topics on the IBM Edge agenda. This is the first installment of the Pushing the Edge series, where IBM experts discuss topics surrounding IT innovation and optimization. This video features renown IBM experts, like IBM Fellow & Researcher Jeff Jonas, discussing the issue of how to handle the ever expanding problem of data storage, known as "Big Data." As Jonas humorously remarks in the video, "If it fits in a spreadsheet bro, it ain't Big Data." Everyday, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone.

So what is Big Data? Technically it's a group of data that becomes so large, it becomes challenging to work with and store. Big data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is Big Data. How do you deal with your Big Data? Watch this video roundtable discussion from IBM experts for insights on big data. I think you'll enjoy the candor and the humor of the video in approaching one of the biggest issues in IT today.

Learn more about Big Data at IBM Edge2013 June 10-14 | Mandalay Bay | Las Vegas, NV. For more information visit us at the IBM Edge website. Storage Community members can receive 15% off IBM Edge Registration when they register before April 28, 2013.
For IBM Edge updates in real-time, follow @IBMEdge on Twitter and join the conversations with the hashtag #IBMEdge.

IBM Edge 2013 Preview: IBM Experts Discuss Security & Privacy Implications

2013-03-15T20:14:00Z

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Security and Privacy will be hot topics at the 2013 IBM Edge conference. This video features a discussion from IBM Experts on the implications of system design and IT infrastructure. Today's IT security needs to be bullet-proof to protect mission critical data and customer information. Issues like identity and access control, privacy issues, cross-border translation and more are discussed. Security is on the agenda at IBM Edge 2013.

Learn more at ibm.com/edge

Consolidation and IT Service Delivery By Larry Carvalho

2013-03-13T23:58:00Z

Having an optimum IT infrastructure is key to delivering services in an optimal manner. Increasing demands from a deluge of information from social and mobile sources challenges most enterprises to provide an agile and cost-effective IT infrastructure. One approach to this problem, IT Optimization, is driven by enterprises hoping to align IT so it can be better managed with business objectives.

Converged infrastructure solutions designed to meet these requirements are being developed and marketed by many vendors including Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Oracle and VCE. With the costs of maintenance skyrocketing, enterprises are also looking to converged infrastructures as an answer to their perennial IT problems.

Only IBM and Oracle have well-defined, end-to-end and consolidated IT solutions that allow enterprises to tackle infrastructure, middleware and analytics as discrete solutions. IBM’s PureSystems portfolio utilizes a “Pure” prefix born out of the Expert Integrated Systems theme while Oracle uses the “Exa” prefix under the umbrella of Engineered Systems.

Some of the product families are shown in the table below:

	IBM and Oracle Solution Areas
	Infrastructure	Application	Data
IBM	PureFlex	PureApplication	PureData
Oracle	Oracle Optimized Data Center	Exalogic	ExaData, Exalytics

Both IBM and Oracle target existing partners of shared customers and encourage these partners to become Pure- and Exa- Ready. A greater challenge will be to get start-ups to use IBM and Oracle platforms as the underlying infrastructure to develop their SaaS solutions.

Recently I attended an IBM PureSystems Executive Summit held at Huntington Beach, California. The agenda had senior IBM executives present their strategy to help customers with their transformation. With customers depending on improved business outcomes from IT, it was not surprising that it was a major theme during the entire summit. Enterprise customers and partners shared their experience in using IBM solutions that was well received. I noted two interesting announcements:

Mini-packaged PureApplication: When enterprises embark on new initiatives, they prefer a low investment that does not need approval from upper management. My biggest concern when IBM announced the PureSystems family last year was the high cost of entry with the minimum configuration of 96 cores. Earlier this month, IBM announced a much lower cost of entry with the 32 core version of the PureApplication product. The smaller package (also referred to as Cloud in a Box) enables enterprises to experiment with a lower investment and may entice mid-market companies to use the platform to support new solutions to their customers. The “Pay as You Grow” model allows qualified partners to add capacity as needed.
Application Patterns: A persistent headache for enterprises is the time required for installation, configuration and management of software. IBM’s “Patterns” which are pre-optimized/integrated solutions developed by IBM and ISV partners, are meant to help PureApplication customers overcome these hurdles while also reducing the time to market for solutions. One of the new Patterns that IBM announced addressed mobile application enablement and management, which is critical to the success of many enterprises. Getting partners to leverage this pattern in delivering cloud services to customers would make it even more beneficial.

While most vendors are hawking pre-integrated systems, there are major disruptors entering the market. For example, ProfitBricks provides user-defined virtual servers of up to 48 cores each is partnering with data center leader SwitchNAP for facilities that provides start-ups optimum service solutions. If enterprise vendors want to break into the start-up space, they will have to come up with similar capabilities.

The recent BM Executive Summit in Huntington Beach offered an excellent overview of the benefits of the company’s PureSystems family. While I am optimistic about the short-term success of IBM in their efforts to make IT simpler for enterprises, they will need to adapt to expectations from innovators and start-ups. In order to truly transform themselves, enterprises need to incorporate more of a start-up DNA into their culture. When enterprise vendors are able to meet the challenging and dynamic requirements from start-ups, they increase the likelihood of being able to meet new enterprise expectations.

Note: IBM PureFlex will be a topic on the agenda at the IBM Edge Conference coming June 10-14 in Las Vegas, NV.

SmartCloud Storage Access Simplifies Private Cloud Storage by Alan Radding

2013-03-13T23:52:00Z

IBM has long been offering storage as part of its SmartCloud family of products. In early February it introduced SmartCloud Storage Access, a storage software appliance that looks to be a game changer, at least for IBM storage shops. It offers easy private cloud storage-as-a-service through a self-service portal for storage provisioning, monitoring and reporting. DancingDinosaur, however, also finds the software appliance concept intriguing, especially as it can be applied to simplifythe zEnterprise.

Two issues are driving interest in SmartCloud Storage Access. The first is a report that labor costs will consume 70% of IT spending this year. The second: 90% of organizations expect to adopt or deploy a cloud model in the next three years. It’s no surprise that IBM thinks the time is right to introduce SmartCloud Storage Access as a way to facilitate storage in the cloud while lowering the IT labor costs associated with storage.
IBM SmartCloud Storage Access enables organizations to implement a private cloud storage service through which users can create an account, provision storage, and upload files over the Internet—with only a few clicks and without involving IT labor if done through the automated self-service GUI portal. Not only will SmartCloud Storage Access reduce IT labor involvement but it should speed the delivery of storage resources, which in turn boosts user productivity. No longer do they have to wait for a storage admin to provision storage for them.

Unlike several IBM appliances, SmartCloud Storage Access is a software-only appliance; no hardware ships with it. Of course, if you are using it with a private cloud, you still need to populate your private cloud with physical storage. For that you can use most of the IBM storage products. The SmartCloud Storage Access appliance itself installs on an Intel server running VMware. Basically, it is a VMware image loaded on a VMware virtual machine.
As an appliance, all the technical complexity of the storage provisioning process is hidden; this abstraction to the storage-as-a-service level relieves the user of dealing with conventional storage provisioning. It simplifies and standardizes monitoring, reporting, and control to reduce operational complexity. It also does away with the typical collection of point tools required to address various storage functions.

It allows admins to quickly and easily set up a private cloud storage service complete with elastic capacity, automatic or routed approval flows, multiple service classes with different QoS. Admins can simply define the service without concern about the underlying technical details. The SmartCloud Storage Access appliance hides all the complexity. It also simplifies monitoring and reporting.

The bottom line: it delivers storage provisioning on demand in seconds and with minimal involvement of IT. The result is increased productivity for both storage users and IT; fast, consistent high quality service; and high operational efficiency. Reduced IT involvement translates into better TCO while automated self-service leads to faster deployment and higher end user satisfaction.

And it can play with most of IBM’s storage lineup; XIV, Storwize V7000 and V7000 Unified, and SONAS. The DS8000 and other block storage systems are not expected to play much of a role in SmartCloud Storage Access; clouds today primarily focus on file storage. In recent years the idea of a private storage cloud has emerged as the Holy Grail of storage; something that would finally put an end to the difficulty of responding to rapidly escalating storage demands for different types of storage. But it proved difficult to implement. As a software appliance, however, SmartCloud Storage Access already is proving effective, as early adopters like ETH Zurich University and the Tallink Group attest. If the software appliance concept can simplify private storage clouds what other aspects of enterprise computing can it help? One IBM researcher already thinks that because it can hide complicated platform specifics, the concept is a particularly good fit for System z. More on this to follow.

Note: IBM Smart Cloud will be a topic on the agenda at the IBM Edge Conference coming June 10-14 in Las Vegas, NV.

Interested in Speaking at IBM Edge 2013? Here's how!

2013-01-11T22:48:00Z

The IBM Edge call for Speakers is now open! We're looking for industry experts, bloggers, analysts, IBM customers and Business Partner to share their stories with you. Submit an abstract until Jan 25, 2013. Speaking at the IBM Edge conference is a great way to network and market your organization. IBM Edge2013 will be held June 10-14, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada at the beautiful Mandalay Bay Resort. The premier Storage and Optimized IT Solutions event will bring together over 3500 IT professionals from all industries to sharpen expertise, discover new innovations, and learn industry best practices for managing storage growth, accelerating cloud deployments, unlocking the insights from big data, and securing critical information and processes.

Edge2013 will offer over 350 expert technical sessions covering Storage, PureSystems and System x across these 16 tracks:

Big Data & Analytics
Business Continuity
Cloud
Efficiency
Enterprise Virtualization
IBM PureSystems
ISVs, Databases and Business Applications
Networking Performance Optimization
Product Updates
Security & Compliance
Storage Solutions for Mainframe Environment
Storage Virtualization
Systems Management
Technical and High Performance Computing

If you're an IBM Customer, IBM Partner, analyst, blogger or technology expert, start thinking about composing a pitch for a compelling talk on one of these areas. Note that Call for Speakers closes on January 25, 2013.

Following Up on IBM Edge 2012

2012-06-20T16:38:00Z

While no shortage of articles, columns and blogs have hit the airwaves, print media and Intertubes in the wake of IBM's excellent Edge 2012 conference, underscoring the value proposition of IBM's active data compression technology (manifested today on products like Storwize V7000 and SAN Volume Controller), my enthusiasm remains somewhat dampened.

Yes, I contributed to the noise around the compression announcements. I moderated a webcast about the IBM compression technology story just this past Wednesday. (The customer testimonial was compelling and probative and the IBMers on the call were excellent ombudsmen for their wares, as always.) But, still, I want to be clear.

I see compression (and deduplication), at best, as tactical technologies. More precisely, I see them as weapons for fighting a delaying action in the struggle most companies face with respect to unmanaged data growth.

Compression (and dedupe to some extent) have the potential to slow the rate at which we fill our disk systems, but they ultimately do little-to-nothing to turn the tide, or to bend the cost curve in storage over the long term. Ultimately, the combination of unmanaged data growth, combined with the store-everything-on-disk dogma (Omnia in Orbis) that has become so dominant in the marketecture around storage today, will lead to a predictable outcome: storage acquisition expense will soon dwarf all other IT hardware spending in contemporary data centers. And just as inevitably, increasing the complement of disk will ultimately run afoul of rising energy costs and will plow headlong into the coming energy crisis created by an archaic and over-saturated power distribution grid that is already creating issues in the New England Corridor, Northern and Southern California, the St. Louis grid nexus, and elsewhere.

To deal with the challenge effectively and permanently, our solution must be strategic and long terml. If compression and dedupe deliver tactical advantage, it is by delaying the deployment of more disk capacity and by buying us time to do what must be done: coming up with a way to manage the glut of data that is finding its way into the data junk drawer at an accelerating rate.

That's a major reason why I believe that the most important technology demonstrated at the IBM Edge 2012 event was not compression, but rather an up-and-coming mass storage technology leveraging magnetic tape and the Linear Tape File System (LTFS). I am going to be writing about this on ESJ.com and probably in several other venues in the near future. Here is some of my source material: an interview I was generously granted at Edge with the top LTFS mavens at IBM. The videos below are a bit noisy at first, shot as they were in the social media area of the Edge event. But, I hope you will find it useful in understanding the history and future direction for LTFS-augmented tape storage from the perspective of IBM. I will contribute my commentary in a later post, and hope to add interviews with others in the industry who are offering complementary technology to realize the Tape NAS vision, including Spectra Logic and Crossroads Systems.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Followup blogs to come...

A Recap of the Storage Meet the Developers Session from IBM Edge

2012-06-10T01:00:00Z

What is a Storage Free for All? That was the question many IBM Edge Attendees stopped by the Social Media Lounge Thursday in the late afternoon to ask me. On Twitter some were speculating that it would be a "storage throwdown." I had to look at the conference agenda to see that there reallly was such a session on the agenda. So what's a Storage Free for All? It turned out to be an opportunity for IBM Edge attendees to bring their questions about IBM products forward to a team of IBM developers and exports. The Q&A panel across all storage topics was moderated by Scott Drummond. . Here are the questions and the panel responses during the session. This session was extremely popular with attendees and a chance for IBM to talk honestly with customers about their concerns. Despite the late hour, here's a transcript of session topics and questions captured with help from IBM Super Star storage blogger Tony Pearson.

When will IBM unify their storage management between Mainframe z/OS and the distributed systems platforms?

IBM offers a Change and Configuration Management Data Base (CCMDB) for this purpose with appropriate collectors from z/OS and distributed systems, but hasn't sold well.

When will IBM devices have RESTful interfaces?

Both IBM Systems Director and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC) offer RESTful APIs. IBM Systems Director can manage z/VM and Linux on System z, as well as Power Systems and x86 based distributed systems. Since October 2008, IBM's Project Zero introduced RESTful interfaces to PHP and Groovy software running on WebSphere sMash environments. We have not heard much about this since 2008.

Will IBM TPC support NPIV on Power Systems?

TPC 5.1 has support for this, and we expect to retrofit to feature with TPC 4.2.2 Fixpack 2.

We would like TPC for Replication to run on Linux for System z. We do not run z/OS at the disaster recovery site location.

Submit an IBM Request for Enhancement [RFE] for this. We have TPC for Replication on z/OS, as well as the distributed systems version that runs on Windows, Linux and AIX.

We have enhancements we would like to see for XIV and SONAS also, can we use the RFE process for this also?

Yes, submit the requirements for our review.

We heard the Statement of Direction that there would be storage integrated into the PureSystems. What exactly does that mean?

The PureSystems family of expert-integrated systems is based on a new chassis that has a front part, a midplane, and a back-part. All IBM System Storage products that support x86 and Power Systems can work with PureSystems. However, IBM does not yet offer storage that fits in the front part of the PureFlex chassis, but the Statement of Direction indicates that we intend to offer that option. Until then, the IBM Storwize V7000 is the storage of choice that can be put into the PureSystems rack, but outside the individual chasses.

We see some features like Real-Time Compression being put into the SAN Volume Controller (SVC), and other features put into the back-end devices. How are we supposed to make sense of this?

IBM's new pilot program, the SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center, to bring these all together. In general, we have design teams of system architects that determine which features go in which products, and prioritize accordingly.

We heard the IBM Executives during the opening session indicate that IBM's strategy involves supporting Big Data, but I haven't seen any storage that supports native Hadoop interfaces. Did I miss something?

First, I want to emphasize that Big Data is more than just MapReduce workloads. IBM offers Streams and BigInsights software to handle text, as well as Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse solutions for structured data. IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) has a Shared-Nothing-Cluster (SNC) mode with Hadoop interfaces that runs twice as fast as Hadoop's native HDFS file system. The storage products we recommend for Big Data are the SONAS and the DCS3700 disk systems, as both are optimized for the sequential workloads Big Data represents.

Everytime we upgrade our SVC, we review the list for SDDPCM multi-pathing and see that we need to upgrade our back-end DS8000 microcode up to recommended levels. Can we get a list of combinations that work from other customers?

The advantage of storage hypervisors like SVC is that we can separate the multi-pathing driver from the back-end managed disk systems. You only need the SDDPCM to support the SVC, not the back-end devices. For the most part, SVC has not dropped support for any level of previously supported OS or multi-pathing software.

On SVC, when we migrate volumes (vDisks) from one storage pool to another, we would like to throttle this process during FlashCopy.

Yes, we had several requests like this, which is why we now recommend using Volume Mirorring to perform migrations. In fact the GUI wizard uses Volume Mirroring by default when migrations are performed. As for throttling, IBM has implemented "I/O Priority Manager" that offers Quality of Service classes for DS8000 and XIV Gen3, and might consider porting this to other products in our portfolio.

Sizing systems is an art. I just need to know if the DS8000 is running hot. Can we have the equivalent of "red lines" for our disk systems similar to automobile engines?

Storage Optimizer was added to TPC 4.2 to help in this area, identifying heat-maps for IBM DS8000, DS6000, DS5000, DS4000, SVC and Storwize V7000. We recommend you look at the performance violation reports.

How can we evaluate the characteristics of our workloads?

Yes, TPC can do this.

When we are replacing non-IBM storage with IBM, we don't have good tools to evaluate the non-IBM equipment. What is IBM doing for this?

IBM's Disk Magic modeling tool can take inputs from a variety of sources, including iostat from the servers themselves. You can also install a 90-day trial of TPC to help with this.

We really like EMC's "Grab" program, does IBM have one also?

Yes, IBM has one also.

Updating the Host Attachment Kit (HAK) for AIX is quite painful for the SVC. We prefer the method employed for the XIV.

Thanks for the feedback.

For SVC, we need to correlate disk with VMware and VIOS. Can we get vSCSI information on VIOS?

TPC 5.1 has this support, and we believe it has been retrofitted to TPC 4.2.2 Fixpack 2, coming out this month.

Currently, with SVC, when volumes are part of a Global Mirror (GM) session, we need to cancel GM, expand the source volume, expand the target volume, then restart GM. We would like this to be fully automated and non-disruptive.

Sounds like a great requirement to submit for the RFE process.

Can we get an RSS Feed for the RFE community.

Yes, you can subscribe to it. You can also set up "Watch Lists".

Thanks to all of the IBM experts on the panel for their participation at this event!

IBM Edge Content Hub

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Interested in Speaking at IBM Edge 2013? Here's how!

Edge2013 will offer over 350 expert technical sessions covering Storage, PureSystems and System x across these 16 tracks:

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If you're an IBM Customer, IBM Partner, analyst, blogger or technology expert, start thinking about composing a pitch for a compelling talk on one of these areas. Note that Call for Speakers closes on January 25, 2013.

Following Up on IBM Edge 2012

A Recap of the Storage Meet the Developers Session from IBM Edge