Barry Whyte and Andrew Martin : IBM Storage

Previous Posts

  • Evolution of Storage

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 25th April 2008 7,227 views on developerworks One of the nice things with working on SVC is actually helping customers to solve their day to day storage headaches. We all know and feel the pains caused by the ever increasing amount of storage media needed in our SANs. The management costs, from a people and resource point of view alone start to spiral out of control and adding yet another box that needs another set of skills to maintain or provision becomes a nightmare. Thats where storage virtualization comes in, and in particular SVC. Over at http://www.information-age.com there… [Read More]

    Evolution of Storage

  • … oh my!

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 24th April 2008 14,048 views on developerworks Over at Burke HQ, I see that he’s a little put out by a few questioning articles after EMCs 1Q broadcasts. In his latest post titled “Lions and Tigers and Bears” I can only but say “oh my!” Its unlike BarryB to tee himself up for such an obvious retort and to use his words not mine, let me explain. While discussing “Thin Provisioning”, or as EMC are calling it “Virtual Provisioning” – now a quick aside – don’t be fooled, this naming is a deliberate attempt to try and use… [Read More]

    … oh my!

  • The maths must be contagious

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 21st April 2008 10,489 views on developerworks So I’m still on holiday, but while getting myself prepared for the final stage of the re-decoration efforts at home I was browsing while having my morning intake of caffeine and came across an interesting viewpoint reported at Blocks and Files claiming that HDS are the #1 in storage virtualization… I did a little digging and found the report on TheInfoPro (select storage on the right and it wants some details before it lets you view it). Now its difficult to actually see for real, but on the slide on page… [Read More]

    The maths must be contagious

  • Off Topic – Get the painters in

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 20th April 2008 9,399 views on developerworks After a few hectic months, I’d booked a week or so off work so that we could take the kids up to see their grand-parents. I originally hale from Glasgow and my parents still live there. My sister works in Edinburgh as a special-needs teacher and recently had a baby girl, so the plan was during the (rather late) Easter school holidays, to make the 400 mile trip back home to catch up and meet my niece. The best laid plans and all that. My son was off school the week… [Read More]

    Off Topic – Get the painters in

  • SVC Cache Partitioning – Redpaper Draft Available

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 16th April 2008 14,534 views on developerworks I keep making excuses for not posting much recently, but I really have been very busy. One of the things I started what seems a long time ago now was a paper describing why, how and what we implemented back in the November 2007 release of SVC – with respect to Cache Partitioning. Since no SAN in perfect, and you can’t always assume that a storage controller is going to behave nicely with its peers, or at least not hit hardware or other such failures, we decided it was worthwhile setting… [Read More]

    SVC Cache Partitioning – Redpaper Draft Available

  • A break in the clouds

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 14th March 2008 11,634 views on developerworks Another couple of weeks fly by, and far too many evenings have been spent on conference calls and the like – such is life when many of your close colleagues and executive team are six to eight hours behind you. Anyway, thats my excuse for not having posted much recently. I’ve been following the usual suspects blogs however, and I’m glad to see that there is a ‘lull in the storm’ or maybe thats a break in the clouds and our friends at EMC have stopped the IBM bashing for a… [Read More]

  • Do our customers want it?

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 29th February 2008 10,116 views on developerworks I’m glad that BarryB is finding things amusing, while at least there is some humour there, I find it amusing how much time he spends advertising IBM products. Out of his last 6 posts 3 have been about IBM, in particular DS6000 and DS8000. I think we get your message BarryB, you *think* these products are dead. We know they are not, its against IBM’s policy to pre-announce actual features otherwise I could tell you of all the things that are coming this year, but then I’d be shot. I wanted… [Read More]

  • More Q&A

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 27th February 2008 9,308 views on developerworks Been struggling to find the time over the last few weeks to pay you all as much attention as I should 😉 Two weeks ago I had a flying visit to Austin, Texas for an internal Summit. In attendance were Distinguished Engineers, Senior Technical folks and other specialists in the topic at hand, covering IBM’s Systems and Technology Group (STG – which storage is a part of), Software Group (SWG) and Research. It was good to see and hear everyone’s perspectives on the topic and I guess one of the major… [Read More]

    More Q&A

  • Here is the SMB data migration

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 15th February 2008 6,559 views on developerworks I was pointed to an article on TechTarget by Tory Skyers where he vents his frustration / asks what aren’t people making products that will solve their data migration issues. Whether he’s been looking at software or backup solutions, and missed the key killer app that storage virtualization… he asks : If you sense some irritation on my part, you’re spot on. While it may not directly affect me, it most certainly does affect those who rely on my expertise. I’d like to be able to say “Hey, just get Product… [Read More]

    Here is the SMB data migration