Barry Whyte and Andrew Martin : IBM Storage

Previous Posts

  • Off Topic : Build it Yourself – DVD Recorder

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 30th November 2007 12,722 views on developerworks About two years ago when our DVD player packed up we splashed out on a mid-range Sony DVD-R to replace the DVD player and the old VHS video recorder under the TV. This proved quite useful in finally putting those home movies onto DVD and saving the odd film for future viewing. Not to mention clearing off quite a few of the kids TV series that had accumulated on the Sky+ box. (For those out side the UK, Sky+ gives you hard drive recording of Satellite TV – encoded on the… [Read More]

    Off Topic : Build it Yourself – DVD Recorder

  • SVC 4.2.1 GA and 10,000th SVC Node shipped.

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 17th November 2007 8,668 views on developerworks Today we are have made available IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) Version 4.2.1 with more function than previously announced, including new VMware support, and also announced that IBM has passed an historic milestone by shipping its 10,000th SVC node. A press release issued today (see the original IBM press release in the IBM Press Room) describes how IBM has shipped the 10,000th SVC node to Able Body Labor, a mid-sized business in Florida. This 10,000th SVC node is now part of the more than 3,400 SVC clusters that are… [Read More]

    SVC 4.2.1 GA and 10,000th SVC Node shipped.

  • SVC Performance Redbook Available

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 15th November 2007 13,630 views on developerworks [2019 Comment – is was from this Redbook that I became known as Barry “it depends” Whyte] Just a quick post to let those interested know that the [SVC Best Practices and Performance Guidelines] Redbook has just been made publicly available on the IBM Redbooks website. Many thanks to Jon Tate and his team of able (and pestering) technical writers for all their hard work. Jon and I spent a few days fleshing out the various contents / topics for this book back in the first half of the year. Mr… [Read More]

    SVC Performance Redbook Available

  • Lowest Vendor-neutral Denominator

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 15th November 2007 7,714 views on developerworks There is a big difference to “in the switch” network based storage virtualization and “appliance” network based storage virtualization. Hu Yoshida and Dr. Kevin McIsaac, seems to have forgotten that in my comparison series of the three approaches to storage virtualization, both the appliance and array based approaches share most of the same benefits and, certainly with Hitachi’s USP models, nothing they can do we can’t with SVC – for MUCH less cost to the end users. Hu is responding to an article quoting Dr. Kevin McIsaac recently posted on ComputerWorld.… [Read More]

    Lowest Vendor-neutral Denominator

  • SVC 4.2.1 – Technical Details – Part2 – Addressability and Cache

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 13th November 2007 8,111 views on developerworks Last week was a long one. The main SVC test-lab in Hursley suffers from the same problems that haunts most machine rooms – lack of power and not enough cooling. Thats not to say that we don’t have a lot of both, just that as the support and test requirements have increased over the last five years, so has the lab footprint. We are now at the limit of the power and chilled water supply in the main building, so have been migrating some stands over to a second lab in… [Read More]

    SVC 4.2.1 – Technical Details – Part2 – Addressability and Cache

  • SVC 4.2.1 – Technical Details – Part1 – FlashCopy

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 6th November 2007 7,8,72 views on developerworks With the GA of IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) v4.2.1 only a couple of weeks away, its been the usual last minute rush to get the last few code changes benchmarked on my performance stand. Luckily the set of scripts and tools I inherited, and have modified over the years, allow 24×7 benchmarking, including code upgrades and downgrades so today was spent analysing the output of the weekends runs. However, a few weeks back I mentioned a deeper dive into the details of the feature enhancements in v4.2.1 as this release… [Read More]

    SVC 4.2.1 – Technical Details – Part1 – FlashCopy

  • Re: Mathematics of SPC-1

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 31st October 2007 12,098 views on developerworks I promised a bit more detail on the very limited sample set used by EMC’s latest blogger Dr Kartik, in response to his analysis that SPC-1 IOPs is directly proportional to the number of drives used by the system under test. So I cannot deny the fact that : larger number of drives = larger IOPs result It is quite clear, and pretty obvious that the limiting factor in most of todays storage hardware offerings is the number of drives it can support. Each drive will have a fixed number of… [Read More]

    Re: Mathematics of SPC-1

  • Announced – SVC v4.2.1

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 24th October 2007 7,230 views on developerworks IBM today announced the next release of SVC – version 4.2.1 – which will be generally available as of November 16th. The key highlights of this release are : Copy Services Enhancements – including Incremental FlashCopy, Cascaded FlashCopy, configurable copy services spaceAid business continuity by helping enable online point-in-time copy of data in reduced time using Incremental FlashCopySupport more flexible backups of targets by using Cascaded FlashCopyIncrease storage supported in copy service relationships and allow users to dynamically configure FlashCopy and Remote Copy space Increased cluster addressabilityFour times increase in maximum… [Read More]

    Announced – SVC v4.2.1

  • Startup Failure != Virtualization Failure

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 20th August 2007 6,891 views on developerworks Over at The SAN Technologist Steven is making some wild and mostly inaccurate statements, particularly about SVC, as well as some curious associations between startup company failures and storage virtualization. He asks : So why has storage virtualization failed? I wasn’t aware it had, and with SVC exceeding targets quarter on quarter it seems nobody has has told us – nor our customers. Steven goes on to say : IBM gives SVC away in hopes to get customer traction, however, most deployments of SVC never have been used in production and… [Read More]

    Startup Failure != Virtualization Failure