IT Storage 411: Inside Systems Storage by Tony Pearson

Facing Your Fears about Storage Efficiency

az990tony — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:49:00 GMT

It seems I have been on the road non-stop for the past nine weeks! On my flights, I often find myself sitting next to a young adult who is flying for the first time. Many of these young adults formed their fear of flying a decade ago, in their teenage years, during the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Some are just now trying to face those fears.

(What does any of this have to do with storage? Actually, there are similar fears for enabling various storage efficiency functions like data deduplication, thin provisioning and compression, so work with me here!)

Flying from Seattle down to Los Angeles, I sat next to Michele (shown in the picture on the left). She was facing her fear of flying overseas by taking seven months off to visit Japan, China, Thailand, Laos, Ireland, England and various countries in continental Europe. Wow! She was joining up with her friend Brittney in Los Angeles, and the two will be travelling together. Since I had been to nearly every country she was planning to visit, I gave her a list of survival phrases and cultural guidance.
Flying from Los Angeles to Tucson, I sat next to Alex on his first day of flying adventures. He flew from Jacksonville, to Dallas, to Los Angeles, to finally Tucson to pick up his fiancée. He met her in Florida, but her father was re-assigned to Fort Huachuca Army Base near Tucson, Arizona. He kept in touch with his bride-to-be, and now faced his fear of flying to go pick her up and bring her back for the wedding. This was the first time he had been west of the Mississippi river.
On a short 18-minute flight from Tucson to Phoenix, I sat next to Rachel, a college student at the University of Arizona, on her way to visit her folks in Santa Ana, California. She immediately apologized to me for not wearing pants. What I mistook for bikini bottoms were actually stretchy exercise shorts she wears to play [Lacrosse]. She had sprained her ankle, then went [AMA] to wear high-heeled shoes on a girl's weekend to Las Vegas, only to trip and break her ankle completely. Her foot was in a cast, thus preventing her from driving her car, or, as it turned out, wear any pants.
Returning from a briefing in Poughkeepsie, on the short flight from Stewart Airport to Philadelphia, I sat next to Krista (shown in the picture on the right), who formerly was a [Bacardi Girl], but now decided she wants to do something more meaningful in her life than handing out prizes and free samples of spiced rum. She decided to go visit her friend in Charlotte, North Carolina, but did not want to drive 15 hours to get there. She faced her fears of flying to avoid driving by herself all that distance. She didn't know what she wanted to do with her life, so I suggested she get a Myers-Briggs profile analysis, and perhaps determine her strengths using Gallup's [Strengths Finder 2.0]. This might help her find a career choice that best fits her interests.

What do all of these have in common? They all faced their fear of flying, either because their situation forced them to, something more important drove them to, or they felt it was just time to do it. Good for them!

As is often the case, many fears are unfounded. Statistically, flying is safer than being on the road in car. As a result of facing their fears, they all got to meet me, and be one step closer to accomplishing their life goals.

In my talks with clients about storage, I find similar hesitation on turning on various storage efficiency features that IBM (and other vendors) have to offer. Let's examine a few of them.

Less than half of businesses have activated "thin provisioning" on storage devices that support this feature. Why? IBM introduced thin provisioning on its RAMAC Virtual Array back in 1997! The technology is well proven in the field. Don't know how to report this for charge-back activity? Charge your end-users for the maximum capacity upper limit. Simple enough!
What about Data Deduplication? IBM has had this feature on its N series since 2007, but it wasn't until IBM came out with the IBM ProtecTIER gateway and appliance models that people started to take notice of this technology. Yes, I agree Hash Collisions can be quite scary on competitive gear, but on IBM ProtecTIER we do not use hash codes, and all data is compared byte-for-byte. For those considering hash-based deduplication, hash collisions in general are quite rare. Jeff Preshing does the math for you in his blog post: [Hash Collision Probabilities]. Of course, if you want to leave no doubt in the minds of a jury of your peers, stick with byte-for-byte comparison methods in the IBM ProtecTIER.
Lastly, I have heard concerns of using real-time compression? Really? Real-time compression has been used in wide-area network (WAN) transmissions ever since IBM developed the Houston Aerospace Spooling Protocol (HASP) for NASA back in 1973. IBM has offered real-time compression on tape cartridges since 1986, the year I started with IBM, some 27 years ago. And now, real-time compression is available for file-based and block-based disk systems. All of these solutions are based on the Lempel-Ziv lossless compression algorithms introduced in 1977. One customer I spoke with was unwilling to try compression, because it requires thin provisioning as a pre-requisite. How is that for having one fear based on another one!

IBM places a high value on data integrity. For each data footprint reduction method, IBM has designed a solution that returns back the exact ones and zeros, in the correct quantity and order, as was originally stored.

For more on this topic, come see me present "Data Footprint Reduction -- Understanding IBM Storage Efficiency Options" at [IBM Edge 2013 conference] in Las Vegas, June 10-14.

IBM, I.R.I.S.-ICT, Belgium, Storage, Expo, System x, Ans America, DFSMS, z/OS, System z, mainframe, Veeam, Arrow, Huawei

az990tony — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 21:07:00 GMT

Wrapping up my coverage of the 2013 IT Security and Storage Expo in Belgium, I noticed some interesting things in the other booths.

The EMC booth had a whiteboard so that clients could do some one-on-one collaboration. All of their cocktail waitresses were wearing sharp pin-stripe coats with matching mini-skirts.

Another booth had a "virtual graffiti wall". Using a "digital spraycan", you could write on the wall. I am not sure what connection this had with anything the company had to offer, but perhaps they also wanted to collaborate with attendees on solutions. In either case, it was very cool, and brought a lot of traffic.

(FTC Disclosure: I work for IBM. I was not paid to mention any of the other companies, their products or people on this blog post. Mentioning other companies is not to be considered an endorsement of any kind.)

There were some interesting costumes. Leila from [Aerohive] wearing a "bee costume" complete with black wings. Hans from STS in a bright orange business suit. (Orange is the national color of Belgium). Sophie from Fortinet handed out champagne. The plastic glassware were cones that snapped onto her tray, but they had no flat bottom to rest your glass down, so you had to hold it the entire time until you finished drinking it. The Homer Simpson sticker eating the Apple logo shows the Belgians have a sense of humor!

The NetApp booth had a huge banner claiming that "Data OnTap" was the #1 storage OS. Obviously Windows, AIX, Solaris and Linux aren't consider "storage Operating Systems" per se. Is NetApp claiming they outsell FreeNAS, the only other storage OS that I can think of?

While IBM and I.R.I.S-ICT easily won the "Best Looking Big Booth" award, I have to give the "Best Looking Small Booth" award to my friends at Hitachi Data Systems. Like EMC, the Hitachi team did not have any equipment on the floor, but they made use of their tiny space by having a Japanese theme, with cocktail waitresses in kimonos.

Meet the Experts Reception at the Belgium IT Security and Storage Expo

az990tony — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:06:00 GMT

Continuing my coverage of the IT Security and Storage Expo in Brussels, Belgium, we had a nice reception Wednesday evening.

Clara handed out Ceasar Chicken salads. Joelle handed out small rolled up pieces of duck.

Ilsa is an IBM expert in System x, VMware and the PureSystems family on hand to help with the demos and any client questions. I.R.I.S.-ICT employee Ans is only in her 20's, but is recognized as one of Belgium's leading experts in System z mainframe. I used to be the lead architect for DFSMS on z/OS, so we had plenty to talk about.

Of course, the best time for the press to ask for interviews is during the reception, where everyone is relaxed and ready to speak. I am "media-trained" which allows me to speak to the press about IBM matters. I do a lot of these interviews either over the phone, or on camera.

I took a picture to capture the typical setup. Mandy on the left is asking me questions, while camera operator Lisa focuses on my body language. The trick is to spend 80 percent of the time focused on your interviewer, and then 20 percent looking into the camera for strategic pauses. If Mandy decides to use any of the footage, she will be sending me the YouTube video link!

(If you are interested in Media Training, I recommend fellow blogger Brad Phillips' post [21 Most Essential Media Training Links])

Hans and Sophie from Veeam stopped by the IBM booth to say hello. (See 2010 Aug 27 blog post comparing Veeam to Tivoli Storage Manager). These two DJ's kept the IBM and I.R.I.S-ICT booth hopping.

Belgium is a small country, and many of the IT storage people know each other. This made for quite the party! Our group closed up the booth around 8:30pm and we went over to join their friends at Arrow and Huawei. Here is Maiva from Huawei.

Storage Solutions at the IBM and I.R.I.S.-ICT Booth for the Belgium IT Security and Storage Expo

az990tony — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:04:00 GMT

Continuing my coverage of the IT Security and Storage Expo in Brussels, Belgium, we had some great storage solutions on display at the IBM and I.R.I.S-ICT booth.

Here my IBM colleague Tom Provost is showing the front of the "Smarter Office" solution. The second photo gives the view from behind. While I always explained the solution from the front of the box, many of the more technical attendees at this conference wanted to inspect the ports in the back.

This sound-isolated 11U solution combines the following:

The [IBM Storwize V3700] with 300GB small-form-factor (SFF) drives provides shared storage for the servers.
Two [IBM System x3550 M4 servers] that can run VMware, Hyper-V or Linux KVM server hypervisor software for your Windows and/or Linux applications. These are two socket servers that can have up to 16 x86 cores each.
An [IBM System x3650 M4 server] pre-installed with backup software and an integrated [IBM RDX] removable disk cartridge system. (see 2010 Sep 27 for RDX reference)
A Juniper EX2200 switch to network the servers and storage together.
A Local Console Manager (LCM) with rackable keyboard, video, and mouse.

In this next example, the IBM team combined a BladeCenter S chassis that can hold six blade servers, with a Storwize V7000 Unified which offers FCP, iSCSI, FCoE, NFS, CIFS, HTTPS, SCP and FTP block and file protocols.

If those configurations are too small for your needs, consider the Flex System chassis or full PureFlex system frame. The rack-mountable 10U chassis can hold the Flex System V7000 and 10 compute notes. The PureFlex frame can hold up to four of these chasses.

IBM and I.R.I.S-ICT also had an IBM XIV Gen3 and a TS3500 Tape library on display.

My Presentations at the Belgium IT Security and Storage Expo

az990tony — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:36:00 GMT

Continuing my coverage of the IT Security and Storage Expo in Brussels, Belgium, here is my post on the presentations I gave during the week.

There were four presentations each day. Of the five rooms, I was assigned one room in which to give all of my presentations, room 3. My room was quite large, with sixty seats.

It is a good idea for public speakers to understand Dutch, French, German and English in Belgium. In recognition of the fact that Belgians are multi-lingual, I started each session with "Goede Middag, Bon Jour and Good Afternoon!" and ended each with "Dank U, Merci and Thank you for attending!"

Time	Wednesday	Thursday
12:00 to 12:30pm	What is big data? Architectures and Practical Use Cases	What is big data? Architectures and Practical Use Cases (repeat)
12:45 to 1:15pm	An IBM Storage solution for small and mid-size business? The Storwize V3700!	An IBM Storage solution for small and mid-size business? The Storwize V3700! (repeat)
1:30 to 2:00pm	A New Generation of Storage Tiering	A New Generation of Storage Tiering (repeat)
2:15 to 2:45pm	Replication for High Availability, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery	Storage, Server and Network in one Flexible and Integrated solution! The PureSystems family

The sessions were all half-hour slots. The only presentation that I had a challenge getting down to 30 minutes was my session on "New Generation of Storage Tiering" in which I was asked to cover Easy Tier sub-LUN automated tiering, Server-to-Storage cooperative caching, Texas Memory Systems, hierarchical storage Management (HSM), Active Cloud Engine, and SmartCloud Storage!

Helping me out were three local IBM interns. From left to right: Joelle, Clara and Bryan. I hadn't noticed that there were only short breaks between sessions, all of this time consumed with one-on-one discussions with clients, so the interns were kind enough to fetch me snacks and drinks.

Joelle and Bryan speak Dutch, which is similar to the local Flemish language. Clara speaks French, which came in handy for translations.

I would like to thank my room monitors: Jolijn, Ella and Chloe. All three are local college students hired by the conference for the two days to scan name badges and count bodies in seats.

(I had to ask Jolijn to write her name on a piece of paper because it is Dutch and I had no clue how to spell it for this blog post.)

While it might appear that room 3 was "The Tony Pearson Show -- all Tony, all the time!" there were actually worthwhile sessions in the other rooms. Fellow blogger Jon Toigo [known for his DrunkenData blog] presented "Storage Infrastruggle 2013 -- Containing Storage Costs without Sacrificing Access, Protection or Management". My IBM colleague Ron Riffe presented a vendor-neutral look at Storage Hypervisors.

If the attendees wanted copies of my presentations, they were directed to get their name badge scanned at the IBM and I.R.I.S-ICT booth, all the way at the other end of the hall, and my presentations would be emailed to them.

(For those who have missed it, you can find all five of my presentations uploaded to the [IBM Expert Network] on Slideshare.)

Finally, I would like to thank my IBM colleagues who helped me develop and review my presentations: Brigitte Van Den Eynde, Joe Hayward, Jeff Jonas, Tom Deutsch, Chris Saul, Marisol Diaz, Iliana Garcia, Harley Puckett, Jack Arnold, and Steve McKinney.

Did You Miss IBM Pulse 2013?

az990tony — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:45:00 GMT

Did you miss IBM Pulse 2013 this week? I wasn't there either, having scheduled visits with clients in Washington DC this week, only to have those meetings cancelled due to the [U.S. sequestration cuts].

Fortunately, there are plenty of videos and materials to review from the event. Here's a [12-minute video] interview between Laura DuBois, Program VP of Storage for industry analyst firm [IDC], and fellow IBM executive Steve "Woj" Wojtowecz, VP of Tivoli Storage and Networking Software.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The two discuss client opportunities and requirements for storage clouds and compute clouds. Client cloud storage requirements include backup and archive clouds, file storage clouds, and storage that supports compute cloud environments.

On a related note, IBM has published a Redbook on its latest addition to the SmartCloud Storage family. I have added [IBM SmartCloud Storage Access V1.1 Configuration Cookbook] to the right panel for "Featured IBM Redbooks".

IBM Announces SmartCloud Storage

az990tony — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:25:00 GMT

Well, it was Tuesday again, and we had quite a lot of announcements here at IBM this week! Over 1,800 clients attended the [Live February 5 webcast]! The announcements were all part of IBM's SmartCloud Storage portfolio. Here are the highlights:

STN7800 Real-time Compression Appliance

Back in October 2010, IBM announced the acquisition of Storwize, Inc., renaming its NAS-compression units to the IBM Real-time Compression appliances. Some folks were confused, so I had a blog post [IBM Storwize Product Name Decoder Ring]. IBM initially offered two models:

The [STN6500 model] had 16 Ethernet ports 1GbE (16x1GbE) and a pair of four-core processors.
The [STN6800 model] had either eight 10GbE ports (8x10GbE), or four 10GbE plus eight 1GbE ports (4x10GbE+8x1GbE). It has a pair of six-core processors.

Now, IBM offers the [STN7800 model], which can replace either of the ones above, offering 16x1GbE, 8x10GbE, and 4x10GbE+8x1GBE port configurations. It has a pair of eight-core processors to handle more robust Cloud Storage environments. See [Announcement Letter 113-012] for more details.

New XIV Gen3 model 214

With its awesome support for VMware, the XIV is often chosen for Cloud storage. The new XIV model 214 now offers up to a dozen 10GbE ports, or you can stay with the 22 1GbE ports available on previous models. These can be used for iSCSI host attachment and/or IP-based replication.

IBM strives to make each new model of every storage device more energy efficient than the last. The new XIV model is no exception. The original XIV, introduced in 2008, consumed 8.4 kVA fully loaded. The XIV Gen 3 model 114 consumed 7.0 kVA. This new model 214 consumes only 5.9 kVA!

It has been almost three years since my now infamous post [Double Drive Failure Debunked: XIV Two Years Later]. Back then, the XIV offered only 1TB and 2TB drives, with rebuild time for 1TB drive of less than 30 minutes, and for 2TB less than 60 minutes.

The new XIV Gen3 software 11.2 release, available for both the 114 and 214 models, can now rebuild a 2TB drive in less than 26 minutes, and a 3TB drive in less than 39 minutes. There is also support specific to Windows Server 2012 including thin provisioning, MSCS, VSS, and Hyper-V. See [Announcement Letter 113-013] for more details.

SmartCloud Storage Access

IBM is the first major storage vendor to offer a product of this kind, so understanding it may be a bit difficult.

The concept is simple. Rather than having end-users having to ask IT every time they need some storage space, IBM created a self-service portal that frees up the IT department to work on more important transformational projects.

This is basically what people can do with "Public Cloud" storage service providers, so basically IBM is now giving you the capability with your "Private Cloud" storage deployment.

Here is the sequence of events. End users point their favorite web browser to the self-service portal, and login using their credentials stored in your Active Directory or LDAP server database.

Once validated, the end-user now can request new storage space, expanding their existing space, or returning the space to the IT department. For new storage requests, users can have a choice of storage classes, -- such as Gold, Silver and Bronze-- defined in the Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (TPC), either stand-alone or in the SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center.

But wait! Do you want to give every end-user a blank check to provision their own storage? Most IT staff are horrified at the thought.

Knowing this, IBM has included an option to put in an approval process, based on the end-user and the amount of capacity requested. The approver can be the cloud administrator, or someone delegated for approvals, known as an environment owner.

For some users, policies may restrict the storage classes as well. For example, Fred can only have Silver or Bronze, but not Gold.

Once the approval is obtained, TPC then issues the appropriate commands to the appropriate SONAS or Storwize V7000 Unified device. SmartCloud Storage Access can do this for thousands of storage devices across dozens of geographically dispersed locations.

Before, the Cloud Admin had to configure storage pools of managed disks, define file systems, dole out file sets to hundreds or thousands of users with hard quotas, and then configure shares based on the protocols required, like CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, etc.

With SmartCloud Storage Access, the Cloud admin still defines the pools and file systems, but then lets the self-service capability of the software to create the file sets, set the quotas and configure shares with the appropriate protocols. This greatly reduces the work on the IT staff, and greatly improves the turn-around time for end-user requests to get exactly what they want, when they need it.

The next time you withdraw money from an ATM machine, fill up your gas tank at the self-service gas station, then serve your own salad at the salad bar and fill up your own soft drink at the fast food restaurant, you will realize and appreciate that SmartCloud Storage Access is a brilliant move for the IT staff.

Cloud administrators, environment owners, and end-users can all use SmartCloud Storage Access to monitor and report on storage usage.

See [Announcement Letter 213-087] for more details.

For more information on these announcements, check out the [IBM Smarter Storage landing page].

For a different perspective on this, consider Dave Vallente's thoughts on Wikibon, in his [Message to IBM's Ambuj Goyal: A Prescription for Storage Transformation]. Ironically, Ambuj Goyal was my fifth-line manager for the past two years, but since he took this new job leading Storage and System Networking, he is no longer in my management chain.

STORSever Enterprise Backup Appliances based on IBM hardware and Tivoli Storage Manager

az990tony — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:18:00 GMT

Recently, I spoke with Jarrett Potts, my long-time friend and former IBM colleague, who now works as Director of Strategic Marketing over at STORServer. If you have never heard of STORServer, it is a company that makes purpose-built backup appliances.

Last month, STORServer announced their [backup appliances are sold with a data recovery guarantee].
Two weeks ago, STORServer announced [free migration services from environments running TSM verion 5 to their backup appliances based on TSM version 6].

What is a Backup Appliance? It is an integrated solution of hardware and software that serves a single purpose: backup and recovery. STORServer Enterprise Backup Appliance (EBA) combines IBM's high-end x86 M4 server, IBM disk and tape storage, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) backup software.

(Fun Fact: The 2012 IBM year-end financial results were announced last month. IBM not only continues its #1 lead in servers overall, but has the #1 marketshare for high-end x86 servers, market-leading disk and tape storage hardware, and market leading backup software.)

To determine the appropriate size of your backup appliance, the folks at STORServer help you every step of the way. They figure out the number of TB you will backup every day, and even help configure all of the TSM server parameters to achieve the policies that make the most sense for your organization.

The appliance can backup every type of data, from databases and Virtual Machines (VMs) to documents, spreadsheets, and other unstructured data.

Are you then left with a solution too complicated to run yourself? No. The STORServer Console is an easy-to-use GUI for ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Plus, your friends at STORServer are only a phone call away in case you have any questions.

(FTC Disclosure: I work for IBM, and STORSever is an approved IBM Business Partner that uses IBM hardware and software to build their solution. I have no financial interest in STORServer, and was not paid by STORServer to mention their company or products on my blog. This post may be considered a celebrity endorsement of STORServer and its Enterprise Backup Appliances.)

Perhaps my readers feel that I am a bit biased in describing a TSM-based solution, and you want a second opinion. No worries, I understand. In the latest 165-page [2012 DCIG Backup Appliance Buyer's Guide], the STORServer models ranked very high. Here is an excerpt:

"Nowhere is this demand for purpose built appliances more evident than in the rise of purpose built backup appliances (PBBAs) over the last few years and their anticipated growth rate going forward. A recent market analysis performed by IDC found that worldwide PBBA revenue totaled $2.4 billion in 2011 which was a 42.4 percent increase over the prior year.

This scoring came into play in preparing this Buyer's Guide as the STORServer EBA 3100 model scored so highly overall that it fell outside of the two (2) standard deviations that DCIG generally uses as a guideline for inclusion and exclusion of products.

The reason DCIG included this model in this Buyer's Guide whereas in other situations it might not is that DCIG is unaware of any other backup appliance(s) from any other providers that come close to matching the EBA 3100's software and hardware attributes. As such, DCIG felt it would be doing STORServer specifically and the market generally a disservice by not highlighting in this Buyer's Guide that such a backup appliance existed and was generally available for purchase."

Backup Appliance Models Score Ranking

1. STORServer EBA 3100 91.70 ENTERPRISE

2. Symantec NetBackup 5220 Backup Appliance 87.11 Recommended

3. STORServer EBA 2100 86.90 Recommended

4. STORServer EBA 1100 85.70 Recommended

5. STORServer EBA 800 85.60 Recommended

6. Symantec Backup Exec 3600 Appliance 78.83 Excellent

7. Unitrends Recovery-823 76.55 Excellent

8. RackTop EBR-FE 76.50 Excellent

9. Unitrends Recovery-833 76.25 Excellent

10. Unitrends Recovery-822 76.15 Excellent

The STORServer is ideal for small and medium-sized business (SMB), but can scale quite large to handle business growth. If you are currently unhappy with your current backup environment, and feel now is the time to look around for a better way of taking backups, you won't go wrong choosing a solution based on IBM's market-leading server and storage hardware with Tivoli Storage Manager software.

On the Future of Hyperconnectivity

az990tony — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:24:00 GMT

Wrapping up this week's theme on the future, fellow blogger David Spark has a great post on his SparkMinute blog titled [20 Brilliant Minds on the future of Hyperconnectivity].

(What does this have to do with Storage? When IBM got back into networking in a big way, they had to decide whether to combine it with one of the existing groups, or form its own group. IBM decided to merge networking with storage, which makes sense since the primary purpose of most networks is to access or transmit information stored somewhere else.)

Last April, the Wharton School and the Institute for the Future convened a one-day [After Broadband] workshop in San Francisco, California, that brought together a group of leading technologists, entrepreneurs, academics and policymakers to explore the future of broadband over the next decade.

At the event, David interviewed 20 people for 10 minutes, and the videos are now available online. Here is one I particularly liked, [David interviewing Bran Ferren of Applied Minds] on Vimeo.

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In addition to the [rest of the interview videos], you can find a [gallery of drawings], and the 26-page [report] in PDF format.

Full Disk Encryption for Your Laptop

az990tony — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:54:00 GMT

I had an interesting query about my last blog post [Enterprise Systems are Security-Ready], basically asking me what I decided to do for Full-Disk Encryption (FDE) for my laptop.

Earlier this year, IBM mandated that every employee provided a laptop had to implement Full-Disk Encryption for their primary hard drive, and any other drive, internal or external, that contained sensitive information. An exception was granted to anyone who NEVER took their laptop out of the IBM building. At IBM Tucson, we have five buildings, so if you are in the habit of taking your laptop from one building to another, then encryption is required!

The need to secure the information on your laptop has existed ever since laptops were given to employees. In my blog post [Biggest Mistakes of 2006], I wrote the following:

"Laptops made the news this year in a variety of ways. #1 was exploding batteries, and #6 were the stolen laptops that exposed private personal information. Someone I know was listed in one of these stolen databases, so this last one hits close to home. Security is becoming a bigger issue now, and IBM was the first to deliver device-based encryption with the TS1120 enterprise tape drive."

Not surprisingly, IBM laptops are tracked and monitored. In my blog post [Using ILM to Save Trees], I wrote the following:

"Some assets might be declared a 'necessary evil' like laptops, but are tracked to the n'th degree to ensure they are not lost, stolen or taken out of the building. Other assets are declared "strategically important" but are readily discarded, or at least allowed to [walk out the door each evening]."

When it was [time for a new laptop] in 2010, I spent a week [re-partitioning the drive], [transfering files], [installing programs], [re-organizing my folders], and finally [testing my system]. It was dual-boot so that I could run either Windows or Linux, as needed, to demonstrate various software solutions at the IBM Tucson Executive Briefing Center.

Unfortunately, dual-boot environments won't cut it for Full-Disk Encryption. For Windows users, IBM has chosen Pretty Good Privacy [PGP]. For Linux users, IBM has chosen Linux Unified Key Setup [LUKS]. PGP doesn't work with Linux, and LUKS doesn't work with Windows.

For those of us who may need access to both Operating Systems, we have to choose. Select one as the primary OS, and run the other as a guest virtual machine. I opted for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 as my primary, with LUKS encryption, and Linux KVM to run Windows as the guest.

I am not alone. While I chose the Linux method voluntarily, IBM has decided that 70,000 employees must also set up their systems this way, switching them from Windows to Linux by year end, but allowing them to run Windows as a KVM guest image if needed.

Let's take a look at the pros and cons:

Pros

Cons

LUKS allows for up to 8 passphrases, so you can give one to your boss, one to your admin assistant, and in the event they leave the company, you can disable their passphrase without impacting anyone else or having to memorize a new one. PGP on Windows supports only a single passphrase.
Linux is a rock-solid operating system. I found that Windows as a KVM guest runs better than running it natively in a dual-boot configuration.
Linux is more secure against viruses. Most viruses run only on Windows operating systems. The Windows guest is well isolated from the Linux operating system files. Recovering from an infected or corrupted Windows guest is merely re-cloning a new "raw" image file.
Linux has a vibrant community of support. I am very impressed that anytime I need help, I can find answers or assistance quickly from other Linux users. Linux is also supported by our help desk, although in my experience, not as well as the community offers.
Employees that work with multiple clients can have a separate Windows guest for each one, preventing any cross-contamination between systems.

Linux is different from Windows, and some learning curve may be required. Not everyone is happy with this change.
(I often joke that the only people who are comfortable with change are babies with soiled diapers and prisoners on death row!)
Implementation is a full re-install of Linux, followed by a fresh install of Windows.
Not all software required for our jobs at IBM runs on Linux, so a Windows guest VM is a necessity. If you thought Windows ran slowly on a fully-encrypted disk, imagine how much slower it runs as a VM guest with limited memory resources.

In theory, I could have tried the Windows/PGP method for a few weeks, then gone through the entire process to switch over to Linux/LUKS, and then draw my comparisons that way. Instead, I just chose the Linux/LUKS method, and am happy with my decision.

Enterprise Systems are Security-Ready

az990tony — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:50:00 GMT

My October blog post [New IBM PureData Systems help clients harness data for critical insights] included a video on Enterprise Systems being "Data Ready" for analytics. That was the first of a series of videos I filmed in Austin. Here is the next in the series, a [YouTube video] focused on security:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

In my blog post [The Three Different Meanings of "Protect"], I mentioned that to protect data, you need to protect data against unethical tampering, unexpected loss, and unauthorized access.

For the past three decades, IBM has offered security solutions to protect against unauthorized access. Let's take a look at three different approaches available today for the encryption of data.

Approach 1: Server-based

Server-based encryption has been around for a while. This can be implemented in the operating system itself, such as z/OS on the System z mainframe platform, or with an applicaiton, such as IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for backup and archive.

While this has the advantage that you can selectively encrypt individual files, data sets, or columns in databases, it has several drawbacks. First, you consume server resources to perform the encryption. Secondly, as I mention in the video above, if you only encrypt selected data, the data you forget to, or choose not to, encrypt may result in data exposure. Third, you have to manage your encryption keys on a server-by-server basis. Fourth, you need encryption capability in the operating system or application. And fifth, encrypting the data first will undermine any storage or network compression capability down-line.

Approach 2: Network-based

Network-based solutions perform the encryption between the server and the storage device. Last year, when I was in Auckland, New Zealand, I covered the IBM SAN32B-E4 switch in my presentation [Understanding IBM's Storage Encryption Options]. This switch receives data from the server, encrypts it, and sends it on down to the storage device.

This has several advantages over the server-based approach. First, we offload the server resources to the switch. Second, you can encrypt all the files on the volume. You can select which volumes get encrypted, so there is still the risk that you encrypt only some volumes, and not others, and accidently expose your data. Third, the SAN32B-E4 can centralized the encryption key management to the IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM). This is also operating system and application agnostic. However, network-based encryption has the same problem of undermining any storage device compression capability, and often has a limit on the amount of data bandwidth it can process. The SAN32B-E4 can handle 48 GB/sec, with a turbo-mode option to double this to 96 GB/sec.

Approach 3: Device-based

Device-based solutions perform the encryption at the storage device itself. Back in 2006, IBM was the first to introduce this method on its [TS1120 tape drive]. Later, it was offered on Linear Tape Open (LTO-4) drives. IBM was also first to introduce Full Disk Encryption (FDE) on its IBM System Storage DS8000. See my blog post [1Q09 Disk Announcements] for details.

As with the network-based approach, the device-based method offloads server resources, allows you to encrypt all the files on each volume, can centrally manage all of your keys with TKLM, and is agnostic to operating system and application used. The device can compress the data first, then encrypt, resulting in fewer tape cartridges or less disk capacity consumed. IBM's device-based approach scales nicely. IBM has an encryption chip is placed in each tape drive or disk drive. No matter how many drives you have, you will have all the encryption horsepower you need to scale up.

Not all device-based solutions use an encryption chip per drive. Some of our competitors encrypt in the controller instead, which operates much like the network-based approach. As more and more disk drives are added to your storage system, the controller may get overwhelmed to perform the encryption.

The need for security grows every year. Enterprise Systems are Security-ready to protect your most mission critical application data.

Mark Your Calendars - IBM Storage Events for 2013

az990tony — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:49:00 GMT

Mark your calednars! The dates are now official for IBM storage-related events in 2013. I know many of you plan your travel budgets early in the year, so I hope this will help you plan accordingly.

[IBM Pulse 2013] will be held March 3-6, 2013, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Back in 2008, I helped launch the inaugural event, combining previous events that focused on Tivoli and Maximo software solutions.

On a smarter planet, organizations must implement bold strategies to optimize business services, processes, and relationships. Cloud and mobility offer unlimited potential to create smarter infrastructures that fundamentally change the way we do business.

However, to deliver on this potential, you must manage your infrastructure through rapid change while changing the economics of IT: unleashing innovation, reinventing relationships and uncovering new markets.

Attend Pulse 2013 for the opportunity to share your expertise with thousands of your business and IT peers as you explore these strategies and more. With three days of top-notch keynotes, over 300 breakout sessions, labs, certification and our best Solution Expo ever, Pulse will provide the tools, insights and networking you need to turn opportunities into outcomes.

[IBM Edge 2013] will be held June 10-14, 2013, at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada. Last year, I helped launch the inaugural event, combining previous storage events for storage admins, executives, and IBM Business Partners. Next year, Edge2013 will offer:

Over 400 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.

The list of speakers have not yet been finalized, but I hope to participate at one or both of these events!

Five Gift Ideas for Cyber Monday

az990tony — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:14:00 GMT

I hope all of my American readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! The day after Thanksgiving is "Black Friday", the unofficial starting data for shopping for upcoming holiday presents and decorations. The Monday after that is now often referred to as "Cyber Monday", where many people purchase items on-line.

I thought this would be good time to promote my book series, Inside System Storage, Volumes I through V. These are available direct from my publisher, [Lulu], or from other on-line retailers.

The old adage "Never judge a book by its cover" often leads technical authors to select bland cover designs. I designed the cover art for the series to have a consistent look, but be unique enough to know each book is different. They all have a beige background with black text, three or four graphics representing the various storage themes du jour, and a color stripe spread diagonally across the spine.

Several readers have asked if there was any rhyme or reason for the color of each spine. One guessed it was based on the [electronic color code] used on resistors to mark their value. When I was getting my college degree in Electrical Engineering, the mnemonic "Better Be Right Or Your Great Big Venture Goes West" helped us remember the sequence: Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Grey and White.

I can assure everyone I was not that clever. Here, instead, is the story behind each color chosen:

Volume I: Green
I received a flyer from Barnes and Noble advertising various books on sale. One caught my eye, so I went to buy it, but forgot to bring the flyer with me. A young woman offered to help me find it, but I could not remember the title, nor the editor, but it had a green cover, and was a collection of the world's shortest stories, all exactly 55 words in length, all winners in some high school contest. She found the flyer, looked up the book, and directed me to the shelf. After several minutes of her scanning the shelf by author, I reached for it, saying, "Here it is, the green one. This shade of green will fit perfectly in my collection of green books!" As I stood in line, the young woman told her boss, "That guy buys green books!" The rest of the folks in line overheard her, and all started laughing at her gullibility.

Volume II: Orange
In late 2007, I was under NDA to review the acquisition of a company called XIV. I was disclosed on the innovative design of the storage system, so that I could blog about it when the announcement was formal. This box would have a distinctive orange stripe across the disks. The announcement launch was a big success. Since then, every time the storage sales team needed a boost in sales for the [IBM XIV Storage System], I would write another blog about the clever features and capabilities.

Volume III: Purple
In 1996, I joined a social club called "Mile High Adventures and Entertainment", headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with locations in Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon. It was a group for singles to meet each other through social activities and events. A year later, it colapsed under the weight of heavy radio advertising debt. The local staff bought out the membership list, and launched a new club, under the name Tucson Fun and Adventures. It was a big part of my social life.

However, as the owners dropped out, one to start a family, another to take care of her father after her mother passed away, I started 2009 as the majority owner. The economic recession took its toll. Members were not spending as much of their disposable income of fun and entertainment. We restructured the company, revamped the website, and adopted Purple as our official color. Our event coordinators all wore purple shirts, and carried purple clipboards. Despite this major transformation, I just did not have time to run this company while still working full-time at IBM, so I sold it at year end.

Volume IV: Blue
As I mentioned in my blog post [IBM Introduces a New Era of Computing], IBM launched [PureSystems], a new family of expert-integrated systems. Since Volume IV was going to publish shortly after this announcement, I decided on the color blue to match the new door covers on the racks they came in. In less than a year, IBM has already sold over 1,000 of these systems in over 40 different countries.

Volume V: Grey
Chosing a color to represent the IBM Watson computer proved quite a challenge. I finally decided on grey, to represent "grey matter", a phrase often used to refer to the human brain. I picked a shade of grey that complements the three graphics that represent last year's strategic storage marketing themes. My blog post [How to Build Your Own Watson Jr. in your Basement] continues to be one of my highest read posts.

If you were having trouble getting ideas for gifts this holiday season, hopefully, this post gave you five new ideas for your friends, family, coworkers and clients! They are all available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook (PDF) for viewing on desktops, laptops, tablets or smartphones.

IBM announces new Storage for Small and Medium Size Business workloads

az990tony — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:25:00 GMT

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

Today also happens to be [Election Day] in the United States, and some have questioned IBM's logic of making major storage announcements on Election Day. During the campaigns, a major theme was to help Small and Medium size businesses, because these are the engines of economic growth and improved employment.

To tie in with this Election Day theme, all of today's [storage announcements are designed for Small and Medium size business workloads]! Whether you want to [Move Forward] with new features and functions to help transform your business for the future; [Live Free] with improved flexibility and ease-of-use for your storage infrastructure; adopt a more [Green and Environmentally-friendly] platform; or merely [Take Back Control] of uncontrolled growth in storage expenses, IBM has efficient, easy-to-use storage that fits your budget!

Hopefully, you all saw today's Launch Webcast on these announcements, but in case you missed it, waiting in line at the polling station to cast your vote, or caught without electricity or Internet access from [Superstorm Sandy], it is now available [On-Demand].

Here is a quick recap:

IBM Storwize V3700 Disk System

The latest addition to the Storwize family is the new [IBM Storwize V3700 disk system] which offers a smaller, entry-level version of the amazingly successful IBM Storwize V7000. Here is a quick [3-minute YouTube video]:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The 2U control enclosure can have up to four additional 2U expansion enclosures, for a maximum of 120 drives, or 180TB of raw disk capacity. Like the Storwize V7000, the Storwize V3700 supports a [large number of servers and operating systems.] Many of the features you already know from the Storwize V7000 are carried forward:

Feature	Storwize V7000	Storwize V3700
Protocols (included)	1GbE iSCSI + 8GbFC	1GbE iSCSI
Protocols (optional)	10GbE iSCSI/FCoE	8GbFC, 10GbE iSCSI/FCoE, Statement of Direction for 6Gb SAS
Cache	8GB per canister	4GB per canister, upgradeable to 8GB
Expansion	Up to 4 control enclosures in a clustered system, each with up to 9 expansion enclosures	Up to 4 expansion enclosures
Maximum Number of drives/TB	960 drives/1.44PB	Up to 120 drives/180TB
RAID levels supported	0,1,5,6,10	0,1,5,6,10
User Interfaces	GUI, CLI, SMI-S API	GUI, CLI, SMI-S API
Thin Provisioning	Included	Included
Virtualization	Internal (included), external (optional)	Internal only (included)
Non-disruptive data migration	Two-directional (included)	One-directional (migrate to Storwize V3700, included)
Easy Tier	included	Statement of direction
FlashCopy	Up to 256 targets (included)	Up to 64 targets (included) Statement of Direction for optional 2,040 targets
Remote Mirror	Metro Mirror and Global Mirror (optional)	Statement of Direction (optional)
Real-time Compression	Optional	Not available

The IBM Storwize V3700 is offered at attractive leasing options through IBM Global Financing.

IBM LTO-6 drives and midrange tape libraries

Last month, IBM's [Tape and Storage Hypervisor Announcements] included LTO-6 for the enterprise-class TS3500 tape library. Today, the LTO-6 support is complete with support for midrange tape drives and libraries.

There are two tape drive models. The TS2260 is based on the half-height drive, intended for occasional 9-to-5 usage. The TS2360 is based on the full-height drive, intended for 24x7 access. These drives can read LTO-4 and LTO-5 tape cartridge media, and can write LTO-5 cartridge media. The new LTO-6 tape cartridge media is expected to be available next month.

In addition to the IBM TS3500 Enterprise Tape Library, LTO-6 is now supported on all of the midrange tape libraries: TS2900, TS3100, TS3200 and TS3310.

IBM Linear Tape File System Library Edition V2.1.2

There are two levels of [Linear Tape File System], or LTFS for short. The first is the Single Drive Edition (LTFS-SDE), which allows you to attach an LTO-5, LTO-6 or TS1140 tape drive to a single workstation, and allow you to mount tape cartridges as easy as mounting USB memory sticks. This presents a full file system view that allows you to read, edit, create, and even drag-and-drop files to other file systems. The LTFS-SDE driver is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

The second is the Library Edition (LTFS-LE), which allows you to mount the entire tape library as a file system. Each tape cartridge in the library is presented as a subdirectory folder, that you can access like any file system on disk. This was only available for Linux systems, which could then export the files through NFS, FTP or HTTP protocols to other clients. Now, with release v2.1.2, LTFS-LE supports Windows servers, so that you can share the files with other clients through CIFS as well.

Whether you are a midsize business looking to expand, or a large enterprise with midsize workloads, these products could be just the right solution for you! To learn more, see the [November 6th Storage Announcement Landing Page].

Upcoming Webcasts for Smarter Storage

az990tony — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:07:00 GMT

We have some exciting webcasts in the upcoming weeks!

Smarter Enterprises Need Smarter Storage

In this [InformationWeek webcast], my IBM colleague Allen Marin will present a brief overview of IBM Smarter Storage for the enterprise with a focus on new high-end disk and Virtual Tape solutions.

Allen will take you through the recent enhancements [announced earlier this month], highlighting how the new capabilities can address the requirements of your mission-critical applications, as well as your evolving business analytics, and cloud initiatives.

Date: Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM PDT / 10:00AM Arizona / 1:00 PM EDT
Duration: 60 Minutes

[Register now!] All registrants will get the independent Clipper Group Report - "When Infrastructure Really Matters - A Focus on High-End Storage" - free!

Smarter Storage for Midsize Businesses

Businesses of all sizes are getting buried in the avalanche of data. Data is coming in at faster rates and in greater volumes. The value of data is increasing. Old processes and technologies aren't working. Midsize businesses have the same issues managing the rapid growth of data as large enterprises, but they don't have the same size budget or staff. They need advanced capabilities at an affordable price that are easy to implement.

Speakers for this webcast include Brian Truskowski, General Manager, IBM System Storage and Networking; Ed Walsh, Vice President of Market and Strategy, IBM System Storage; and Tommy Rickard, IBM Director, UK Storage Development.

Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Time: 8:00 AM PST / 9:00AM Arizona / 11:00 PM EST
Duration: 60 Minutes

[Register now!] Learn how new IBM Smarter Storage solutions can help midsize businesses tame the explosion of information and their IT budgets.

I hope you can find time in your busy schedule to participate in one or both of these webcasts.

technorati tags: IBM, Smarter Computing, Smarter Storage, Allen Marin, Brian Truskowski, Ed Walsh, Tommy Rickard,

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