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TechSelect University 2009

By Tony Pearson posted Thu August 13, 2009 01:37 PM

  

Originally posted by: TonyPearson


This week, I was in the Phoenix area presenting at TechData's TechSelect University. TechData is one of IBM's IT distributors, and TechSelect is their community of 440 resellers and 20 vendors. This year they celebrate their 10 year anniversary of this event. I covered three particular topics, and I was videotaped for those who were not able to attend my session. (There were very few empty seats at my sessions)

SVC+Disk combinations

IBM Business Partners now realize that the "killer app" for storage is combining the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller with entry-level or midrange disk storage systems for an awesome solution. Solutions based on either the Entry Edition or the standard hardware models can compete well with a variety of robust features, including thin provisioning, vDisk mirroring, FlashCopy, Metro and Global Mirror. This has the advantage that the SVC can extend these functions not just to newly purchased disk capacity, but also existing storage capacity. The newly purchased capacity can be DS3400, DS4700 or the new DS5000 models. This is great "investment protection" for small and medium sized businesses.

LTO-4 drives and automation

The Linear Tape Open (LTO) consortium--consisting of IBM, HP and Quantum--has proven wildly successful, ending the vendor-lockin from SDLT tape. I presented the latest LTO-4 offerings, including the TS2240, TS2340, TS2900, TS3100 and TS3200. The LTO consortium has already worked out a technology roadmap for LTO-5 and LTO-6. The LTO-4 drives support WORM cartridges and on-board hardware-based encryption. The encryption keys can be managed with IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM).

SAN and FCoCEE switches

IBM has agreements with Brocade, Cisco and Juniper Networks for various networking gear. I focused on entry-level switches for SAN fabrics, the SAN24B-4 and Cisco 9124, as well as new equipment for Convergence Enhanced Ethernet (CEE), including IBM's Converged Network Adapater (CNA) for System x servers, and the SAN32B switch that has 24 10GbE CEE ports and 8 FC ports that support 8/4/2 and 4/2/1 SFP transceivers. FCoE Clients that want to deploy Fibre Channel over CEE (FCoCEE) today have everything the need to get started.

The venue was the [Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa] in Chandler, just south of Phoenix. This compound includes [Rawhide], an 1800's era Western Town attraction, a rodeo arena, and a casino still under construction. Dinners were held nearby at the infamous [Rustler's Rooste] Steakhouse on South mountain.

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