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Latest Post
Deployment Models for Policy-based High Availability (PBHA) – Part1
With the availability of 9.1.0 we have address some of the most commonly requested feature capabilities in PBHA and we are… [Read More]
Previous Posts
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Hybrid Value – find out more at IBM’s Virtual TechU – October 26th-29th
No, I’m not talking about part-time electric vehicles, but I struggled to use the Cloud word in the title…. I find it’s often overused and seen as the answer to world peace in IT these days. However, it has to be said that I saw first hand the value of a hybrid cloud environment as the world was hit by this years COVID crisis. One of our clients had already started building a hybrid environment. I should probably explain that what we mean by hybrid is where clients are still having on premise data-centers with their critical production workloads under… [Read More]
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Just one more thing… B2S #9 – HyperSwap – DR, HA, technical dive. 22nd July
By popular request we have added one more session to our Back to School series. Over the last two months we have covered everything from IBM’s unique advantages with FCMs, through saving you money and footprint with IBM Power Systems, managing exabytes of data with ease to simply backing up data. The sessions are all available for download and replay via the portal page, but since so many of you asked, we are adding one more (for now) session. 22nd July – learn everything you need to know about building Highly Available storage solutions using IBM’s HyperSwap technology available with… [Read More]
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The Ongoing Need for Tiering
Its always amusing to be pinged by several people asking for comment on the same topic. This time it seems that Pure are trying to use their lack of function (there are several) and sell it as an advantage, while attacking the competition that do have it. I know reverse psychology worked on my kids when they were younger, but even they have got too smart for that, so don’t let yourself drink too much of the orange kool aid! A Brief History of Tiering Back in 2008 Enterprise class flash drives were a massive game changer when first introduced… [Read More]
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Why IBM FlashSystem? Back to School Webinar Series – Session 1
Hope everyone is well, we are kicking off a series of Systems events for the AP timezones (since most TechU global session are at non AP friendly timezones! Of course, open to anyone WW if you are awake at the time 🙂 These sessions are open to IBMers, BPs and Clients, please pass on the registration information. The first session in the ‘Back to School’ series is “Why IBM FlashSystems” and will be hosted by myself and Abilio Oliveira. Details : When: May, 20thWhat time does it start: 2pm (NZ Time)Registration at: https://ibm.webex.com/ibm/onstage/g.php?MTID=ea9c56f0487e40d45eda1aefe90bdaa4a All the details can be found in this… [Read More]
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abilioTalks Podcast – A chat about Flash, FCM, Insights and Cloud
Hope everyone is keeping well and staying safe at this difficult time for all. As the IBM Systems Technical Universities have been postponed until the second half (hopefully), we have been running the TechU Talks sessions, which Andy posted about last week and he presented the first session which you can watch via replay here. I would have helped out with this, but being in GMT+12 timezone does pose certain difficulties in common timezone scheduling! Meanwhile, my good friend and local NZ Storage Client Technical Specialist Abilio Bueno de Oliveira Neto has already been creating some great youtube resources and… [Read More]
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TechU Talks 2020
Hi Everyone, Since the IBM Technical Universities that would normally be running in the first half of this year are not able to happen as planned – IBM is running a series of TechU talks which are in the form of weekly web casts. I’m the first presenter in the set of Storage related talks – and I’ll be presenting at 11AM EDT. The Title of the talk is “FlashSystem Family Technical Update and Hot Topics“. There’s still (just about) time to register on the TechU Talks website, and replays will be available for those of you unable to make… [Read More]
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DRAID Expansion. The Important Details
When I introduced the updates in Spectrum Virtualize 8.3.1 I promised a dedicated post discussing the details around the new DRAID dynamic expansion feature. Before we dive in, there are some DRAID basic terms that you need to understand. DRAID Basics Check out the DRAID – How it Works post for more details but in summary a DRAID array is made up of a given number of component drives (often called a pack or row) which is usually larger than the RAID geometry. The geometry being the normal n+P+Q layout. Each drive provides a strip that makes up a stripe.… [Read More]
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Introducing SVC – SV2 & SA2 Node Hardware
So to round off the week, the final thing we announced last month was a refresh to the SVC node’s themselves. SVC has been providing our clients with true heterogeneous storage virtualization in the form of an appliance for over 16 years now. Depending on how you count them, these are the 9th generation, and 10th/11th physical node engines we have releases. And yes we still have some clients that have non-disruptively upgraded their clusters from the original 4F2 hardware in 2003 all the way to today – same ‘logical’ system but whole new ‘physical’ system – something Andy and… [Read More]
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Introducing FlashSystem 5000, 7200 & 9200. FCM Gen2 & SCM
On February 11th/12th 2020 (depending which timezone you are in!) IBM announced that it was updating the entire modular entry, midrange and enterprise block portfolio. The family name of Storwize being replaced with the FlashSystem family. For the 5000 range, this really is a name change, since we only updated the hardware during 2019, so the Storwize V5000 and V5100 become FlashSystem 5000 and 5100. For the 7000 and 9000 series we introduced the next generation of NVMe controllers. We also announced the second generation of Flash Core Modules (FCM) and the first set of Storage Class Memory drives that… [Read More]
Barry Whyte and Andrew Martin : IBM Storage 