Continuing my coverage of the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium],
I thought I would start with some photos. I took these with cell
phone, and without realizing how much it would cost, uploaded them to
Flickr at international data roaming rates. Oops!
Here are some of the banners used at the conference. Each break-out session room was outfitted with a "Presentation Briefcase"
that had everything a speaker might need, including power plug adapters
and dry-erase markers for the whiteboard. What a clever idea!
Here is a recap of the last and final day 3:
- Understanding IBM's Storage Encryption Options
-
Special thanks to Jack Arnold for providing me his deck for this
presentation. I presented IBM's leadership in encryption standards,
including the [OASIS Key Management Interoperability Protocol]
that allows many software and hardware vendors to interoperate. IBM
offers the IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM v2) for Windows,
Linux, AIX and Solaris operating systems, and the IBM Security Key
Lifecycle Manager (v1.1) for z/OS.
Encrypting data at rest can be done several ways, by the application at
the host server, in a SAN-based switch, or at the storage system itself.
I presented how IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, the IBM SAN32B-E4 SAN
switch, and various disk and tape devices accomplish this level of
protection.
- NAS @ IBM
-
Rich Swain, IBM Field Technical Sales Specialist for NAS solutions,
provided an overview of IBM's NAS strategy and the three products:
Scale-Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS), Storwize V7000 Unified, and N
series.
- IBM System Networking Convergence CEE/DCB/FCoE
-
Mike Easterly, IBM Global Field Marketing Manager for IBM System
Networking, presented on Network convergence. He wants to emphasize
that "Convergence is not just FCoE!" rather it is bringing together FCoE with iSCSI, CIFS, NFS and other Ethernet-based protocols. In his view, "All roads lead to Ethernet!"
There are a lot new standards that didn't exist a few years ago, such as PCI-SIG's Single Root I/O Virtualization [SR-IOV], Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator [VEPA], and [VN-Tag], Data Center Bridging [DCB], Layer-2 Multipath [L2MP], and my favorite: Transparent Interconnect of Lots of Links [TRILL].
Last year, IBM acquired Blade Network Technologies (BNT), which was the
company that made IBM BladeCenter's Advanced Management Module (AMM) and
BladeCenter Open Fabric Manager (BOFM). BNT also makes Ethernet
switches, so it has been merged with IBM's System Storage team, forming
the IBM System Storage and Networking team. Most of today's 10GbE is
either fiber optic, Direct Attach Copper (DAC) that supports up to 8.5
meter length cables, or 10GBASE-T which provides longer distances of
twisted pair. IBM's DS3500 uses 10GBASE-T for its 10GbE iSCSI support.
Last month, IBM announced 40GbE! I missed that one. The IT industry
also expects to deliver 100GbE by 2013. For now, these will be used as
up-links between other switches, as most servers don't have the capacity
to pump this much data through their buses. With 40GbE and 100GbE, it
would be hard to ignore Ethernet as the common network standard to drive
convergence.
Fibre Channel, such as FCP and FICON, are still the dominant storage
networking technology, but this is expected to peak around 2013 and
start declining thereafter in favor of iSCSI, NAS and FCoE technologies.
Already the enhancements like "Priority-based Flow Control" made to Ethernet to support FCoE have also helped out iSCSI and NAS deployments as well.
The iSCSI protocol is being used with Microsoft Exchange, PXE Boot,
Server virtualization hypervisors like VMware and Hyper-V, as well as
large Database and OLTP. IBM's SVC, Storwize V7000, XIV, DS5000, DS3500
and N series all support iSCSI.
IBM's [RackSwitch]
family of products can help offload traffic at $500 per port, compared
to traditional $2000 per port for IBM SAN32B or Cisco Nexus5000
converged top-of-rack switches.
IBM's System Networking strategy has two parts. For Ethernet, offer its
own IBM System Networking product line as well as continue its
partnership with Juniper Networks. For Fibre Channel and FCoE, continue
strategic partnerships with Brocade and Cisco. IBM will lead the
industry, help drive open standards to adopt Converged Enhanced Ethernet
(CEE), provide flexibility and validate data center networking
solutions that work end-to-end.
Well, that marks the end of this week in Auckland, New Zealand. I am off now to Melbourne, Australia for the [IBM System Storage Technical Symposium] next week.
technorati tags: IBM, EKM, TKLM, SKLM, SONAS, SAN32B-E4, Storwize+V7000, CEE, DCB, FCoE, iSCSI, NAS, CIFS, NFS, Ethernet, PCI-SIG, SR-IOV, VEPA, VN-Tag, DCB, L2MP, TRILL, BNT, BOFM, AMM, DAC, 10GBASE-T, DS3500, 40GbE, , FCP, FICON, PXE, SVC, Cisco, Nexus5000, RackSwitch