Barry Whyte and Andrew Martin : IBM Storage

Previous Posts

  • Introducing Spectrum Virtualize 7.7.0 (Part2)

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 30th May 2016 10,427 views on developerworks Last week while in Sweden and Denmark I posted about the new 7.7.0 Spectrum Virtualize software that was announced while I was there. Back home in New Zealand now, and got some time to fill you in on the rest of the features this new release brings to SVC, Storwize, FlashSystem V9000 and VersaStack. Supporting Lower Cost Storage and Networking iSCSI Storage Virtualization Since the inception of SVC back in 2003, we have always supported Virtualisation of external Fibre Channel storage. When we added Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capabilities in… [Read More]

    Introducing Spectrum Virtualize 7.7.0 (Part2)

  • Introducing Spectrum Virtualize 7.7.0 (Part1)

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 27th May 2016 13,713 views on developerworks Introducing Spectrum Virtualize Version 7.7.0 Software This week I have been travelling in the Nordics. Despite now living in New Zealand, I can’t escape from the great User Group events that the Swedish team have been running for many years now, and its great to actually visit Stockholm in the ‘almost’ summer, rather than my usual visit in chilly December. On Tuesday we also held our first Spectrum Storage User Group in Denmark, and it was great to see over 50, new and familiar faces at this inaugural event which everyone… [Read More]

    Introducing Spectrum Virtualize 7.7.0 (Part1)

  • Spectrum Virtualize XML Statistics Definitions – LINK – SVC/Storwize/FlashSystem

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 15th December 2015 8,794 views on developerworks Hi all, I know over the years I’ve had hundreds of enquiries regarding the XML statistics, what they contains and how they can be decoded. Some of you have written your own parsers and need to know when new things have been added or items changed. Google isn’t much help as it finds, the old 5.1.0 page only… So for those of you that care, you can find the most up to date definitions in the Knowledge Center. It is kind of hidden away under the ‘Troubleshooting’ section, and against the… [Read More]

    Spectrum Virtualize XML Statistics Definitions – LINK – SVC/Storwize/FlashSystem

  • Introducing Spectrum Virtualize 7.6.0 – DRAID, Encryption and more

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 3rd November 2015 26,123 views on developerworks Its that time again, another six months since our last software update and we bring you version 7.6 of the Spectrum Virtualize software. Applicable to all SVC and Storwize systems currently supported out there, but not the end of life for support of 8G4 and 8A4 systems in the RFA details issued last month. The abstraction of function is one of the great advantages of the SVC platform over competitors products, either those with limited built in virtualization capability like those from HDS and HP, or those from, I guess Dell… [Read More]

    Introducing Spectrum Virtualize 7.6.0 – DRAID, Encryption and more

  • Ever wondered what happens at a User Group?

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 25th June 2015 6,597 views on developerworks I think its true to say that the SVC and Storwize User Groups that IBM has helped to setup and run has created a real community of users and partners around the globe. There are very active groups in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Sweden and Finland and of course the USA. (Sorry if I missed some) With my new role in AP, I’m looking to setup and run some of these meetings here, as the feedback is always great and people really appreciate the chance to talk directly with the… [Read More]

    Ever wondered what happens at a User Group?

  • Introducing Spectrum Virtualize 7.5.0 – HyperSwap, grep and more

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 24th June 2015 16,848 views on developerwortks Over two weeks ago, we released v7.5.0 of the recently re-branded ‘Spectrum Virtualize’ software, that software that we all know as the code running in both SVC and Storwize products. The major new feature in 7.5.0 is HyperSwap – which you can think of as a new and improved Stretched Cluster solution, allowing I/O Groups to be placed at each site, rather than nodes at each site – which means we can now run HyperSwap configurations using Storwize hardware (V5000 and V7000 only) While this is the main feature, and I’ll… [Read More]

  • Christchurch NZ – FlashSystem V9000

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 2nd April 2015 7,614 views on developerworks First trip in new role has been to Christchurch for the last couple of days. Some good meetings with Business Partners to see the lay of the land here, and look over some interesting prospects being worked on. The recent FlashSystem V9000 announcement, which I didn’t cover in my absence during the move process has been creating a lot of interest amoungst our existing and new customers. For those of you that haven’t heard about it, the FlashSystem 840 was available as the V840 which in itself provided the SVC functionality… [Read More]

  • Time for a change of Scenery

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 24th March 2015 9,817 views on developerworks I do have a good excuse this time for the short hiatus in posts, as things have been a bit more crazy than normal, but to be expected when you up and move the whole family, literally to the opposite side of the globe! My wife was born in New Zealand and spent much of her youth there, with most of her family still living there. We’d always had a long term plan to sound out moving back there, and while I was attending the STG Symposiums in Melbourne and Auckland… [Read More]

  • Introducing New Storwize and SVC Software v7.4.0

    ORIGINALLY POSTED 30th October 2014 25,721 views on developerworks With half term week here in the UK and preparations for next months travels, I almost forgot that yesterday we announced the contents of version 7.4.0 of the SVC and Storwize software that will be GA’d on 28th November. The full RFA can be viewed here, but here’s a quick summary. Multi-instance RACE Upgrading to 7.4 will enable (on supported platforms) two instances of the RACE (Random Access Compression Engine) software – which in short means almost twice the performance for most workloads. The supported platforms are the new SVC DH8 hardware… [Read More]

    Introducing New Storwize and SVC Software v7.4.0