Clod Barrera, IBM Chief Technical Strategist for IBM System Storage, and Axel Koester, IBM Chief Technologist and Executive IT Specialist for IBM System Storage, co-presented the first session of the conference.
Nearly all storage users are struggling with the combined effects of significant capacity growth, data as both an asset and potential liability, and the lack of staff and expertise to exploit new technology.
In addition to [Systems of Record], representing the traditional workloads of databases and on-line transaction processing (OLTP), we are now seeing [Systems of Engagement], which represent new workloads such a mobile apps, social business, and big data analytics.
We are now at a tipping for Flash. IBM FlashSystem can perform I/O in about 100 microseconds, which is roughly 10x faster than solid state drives (SSD), and 50x faster than spinning disk. For those clients who value performance, this can easily justify its use.
Take for example an IBM Power system running DB2 PureScale application with 43,000 transactions per second, including 13,000 updates per second, that result in 1.3 million IOPS to the back-end storage. This can be accomplished with either (a) all-disk 5,000 spinning disk spindles, (b) hybrid 2,500 spinning disk spindles combined with 128 solid state drives (SSD), or (c) IBM FlashSystem.
The comparisons are astounding. The IBM FlashSystem solution is 11x less expensive then the hybrid system, and 14x less expensive than the all-disk solution. The solution also uses 26x less energy, and 80x less space in the data center.
Clod also feels that Software Defined Storage has come of age. IBM has three offerings in this area. The first, code-named Elastic Storage, represents IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) and GPFS-based products like SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified. The second is the IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center and Storwize family of storage hypervisors. The third is IBM XIV Storage System.
Software Defined Storage can be used in private, hybrid and public clouds. In 2013, only 22 percent of storage was Cloud, but this is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2017.
IBM will support a range of Software Defined Environments, from the highly proprietary VMware, to the open source OpenStack foundation. Where applicable, IBM will provided added value above and beyond the basic OpenStack infrastructure.
Axel Koester presented storage futures. He works closely with IBM Research and described some of the projects they are working on:
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120PB file system solution that involved a grid of IBM POWER 775 servers. Instead of traditional RAID, the system used GPFS Native Raid, which offers an 8+3 Reed Solomon protection scheme.
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Multi-cloud storage that allows you to access storage from multiple public providers without having the bottleneck of a single master scheduler.
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Phase Change RAM (PCRAM) which does not rely on capturing an electrical charge. This will be 12x faster than PCIe Flash, and 275x faster than consumer SSD.
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Liquid state storage. Rather than solid state, metal is kept in its liquid state to store binary information.
Finally, he mentioned IBM Research's success at storing a single bit of information in just 12 atoms. To do this, the folks at Almaden Research Center had to manually move the atoms into place using the needle of a scanning tunneling microscope [STM] to nudge each atom into position.
Axel gave a great example of scale. An atom compared to a tennis ball is like a tennis ball compared to the entire planet Earth. If an atom was the size of a tennis ball, the point of the STM needle would be the size of Mount Everest, but upside down.
In previous years, my session on Storage Strategy was scheduled on Wednesday or Thursday, and attendees would comment "Why wasn't this sooner in the week? Everything makes more sense now!"
This time, I was featured immediately after Clod and Axel's keynote session, resulting in hundreds of attendees in a large standing-room-only ballroom. The session was repeated Thursday morning for those who were turned away.
IBM's storage strategy has three main themes.
First, IBM is focused on data-intensive solutions such as big data analytics. This means storage needs to be efficient to manage the growth in a cost-effective manner. IBM offers real-time compression and data deduplication to be capacity-efficient, Flash, Nearline drives and tape to be energy-efficient, and extremely easy-to-use graphical user interfaces and automation to be labor-efficient.
Second, IBM wants to optimize business critical workloads. IBM wants to eliminate the manual effort needed to balance between performance versus cost. IBM Easy Tier, I/O priority manager, and FlashSystem solutions are just a few examples.
And third, IBM wants to help you start quickly, and add value, by deploying private, public and dynamic hybrid cloud environments. IBM is not limiting its solutions to just VMware, but rather supporting other server hypervisors including KVM, Hyper-V, PowerVM and z/VM. IBM is a platinum sponsor for OpenStack foundation, and IBM storage systems support Cinder interfaces.