Hi all, I've been getting some questions recently about using the Spectrum Virtualize REST API, and I noticed that the documentation is missing some useful information. So I thought I'd put together some tips based on what I have been able to find out so far. If you have questions or your own tips -... Continue Reading →
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... Continue Reading →
Are you using FlashSystem storage behind SVC/Storwize in an EasyTier pool?
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 12th June 2015 Here's a quick one that I was reminded of today... The EasyTier 3 feature was introduced in 7.3.0.0 and introduced a number of new EasyTier features, but a few of them relied on knowledge of the maximum throughput and IOPs capability for each managed disk. On Storwize RAID arrays, this... Continue Reading →
SVC Standby Engine
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 6th July 2015 Hi again. I wanted to mention a feature that we released recently which we are calling the SVC Standby Engine. Unfortunately this feature is not available for Storwize systems, so it's probably not worth you reading this, but let me know if it's the kind of feature you would want... Continue Reading →
What do we mean when we talk about Clustering on the Storwize Products
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 9th October 2015 There's a particular business partner (I'll be shocked if he isn't the first person to comment on this post) who has asked for a "what is clustering" session at almost every one of the UK user groups for what seems like a couple of years now. I really couldn't see... Continue Reading →
Using EasyTier with Nearline Storage (and other ET tips)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 22nd October 2015 Hi, As more and more of you start to use Nearline storage in your EasyTier pools, there are a couple of scenarios which I would like to describe to you to help you avoid some pitfalls. Migrating from a single tier pool to a multi-tier pool containing Nearline. So you... Continue Reading →
Thin Provisioning – what should you think about from an operational point of view
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 27th May 2015 Thin provisioning is a well understood technology in the storage industry, but a surprising number of you haven't actually deployed it yet due to the "what-ifs" that keep you up at night. In this post I will hopefully give you a pointer to my thoughts about how you could address... Continue Reading →
Can you do Encryption as well as Compression
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 10th February 2016 Hi All, I got this question from a customer and thought it was worth a discussion. The short answer is yes you can perform both compression and encryption on data - as long as you do the steps in the correct order. The problem is that encrypted data is basically... Continue Reading →
Some details about how DRAID works
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 17th March 2016 Hi, There have been a number of DRAID questions on the forums recently, so we thought it was worth giving you some extra details about the benefits of DRAID. Ian Boden has provided the following information, and if you ask nicely he may come back and give us some more... Continue Reading →
RAID 5 Versus RAID 6
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 13th June 2016 Hi All, I was at the US user group last week - and this topic came up quite a lot. The main reason that we started discussing R5 versus R6 is because the development team are currently recommending that all Distributed RAID arrays be configured as R6, and people are... Continue Reading →
