Barry Whyte and Andrew Martin : IBM Storage

February 9, 2021

Introducing IBM FlashSystem 5200

IBM’s most compact, high capacity & performant entry FlashSystem to date. February 9th 2021 IBM introduced the latest member of the Spectrum Virtualize based FlashSystem family, somewhat unique in the mainstream storage industry coming in at just 1U high, but with power, performance, capacity and functionality that makes this a huge box in a tiny […]
February 4, 2021

The NVMe Revolution

I hope everyone is staying safe and well in these unusual times (COVID-19 year 2 if reading this in the future!). As some of you may know, one of my hobbies is writing EDM style music, having built up a synth and drum machine collection over many years. During the lockdowns and force travel restrictions […]
January 19, 2021

Save the date : 9th February – Revolutionize the entry-enterprise storage space.

Join us on the 9th February for a special announcement webinar where we bring you details of a brand new member of the Spectrum Virtualize and FlashSystem family… It’s time to revolutionize the entry-enterprise storage space. You are challenged to deliver more with less budget. You need to optimize your IT infrastructure to drive growth […]
October 28, 2020

Lets get this right, once and for all, ALUA != passive – Active/Active is not precluded by ALUA

First off, I wrote about this seven years ago… but it seems the usual suspects and some newcomers are back on the FUD spreading band-wagon trying to say that ALUA must mean active/passive … it doesn’t! Secondly lets get the main fact on the table straight away : Spectrum Virtualize, hence SVC, Storwize and FlashSystem […]
October 25, 2020

Virtual TechU 2020 – Follow up Questions

Hi Everyone, The Virtual TechU is nearly here – and once again if you watch any of my sessions and want to ask follow up questions, please feel free to add a comment to this post so I can get back to you. My main session is about how IBM has been enhancing the support […]
September 24, 2020

Why doesn’t SVC support/need backend NVMe-FC connections?

This question has come up a few times in recent conversations, and was asked at the recent German virtual Storage Strategy Days event. Evelyn Perez covered this in the Q&A session, but I thought it was worthy of a post to help explain. The question comes in various guises, either “When will you support”, “Does […]
August 3, 2020

Tips and tricks using the Spectrum Virtualize REST API

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 – […]
July 28, 2020

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 […]
July 8, 2020

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 […]
June 29, 2020

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 […]