Originally posted by: TonyPearson

Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means? IBM Announcements!

Spectrum Scale

The Collaboration of Oak Ridge, Argonne, and Livermore [CORAL] is a joint procurement activity among three of the Department of Energy's National Laboratories launched in 2014 to build state-of-the-art high-performance computing (HPC) technologies that are essential for supporting U.S. national nuclear security and are key tool s used for technology advancement and scientific discovery.

Of course, when you hear "state-of-the-art technology", IBM is probably the first company that comes to mind!

The new IBM Spectrum Scale 5.0 has been greatly enhanced to meet CORAL requirements:

• Dramatic improvements in I/O performance
   
• Significant reduction in internode software path latency to support the newest low-latency, high-bandwidth hardware such as NVMe
   
• Improved performance for many small and large block size workloads simultaneously from new 4 MB default block size with variable sub-block size based on block size choice
   
• Improved metadata operation performance to a single directory from multiple nodes

Spectrum Scale 5.0 now handles automatically tuning more than twenty communication protocol and buffer management parameters, aiding setup for optimal performance. The enhanced GUI features many capabilities including performance, capacity, network monitoring, AFM (multicluster management), transparent cloud tiering, and enhanced maintenance and support, including interaction with IBM remote support.

Spectrum Scale 5.0 now offers file-level immutability. Previous releases supported immutability at the file set granularity, so this allows greater granularity. Immutability can be an effective tool as part of an overall Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable [NENR] compliance policy.

Spectrum Scale comes in both "Standard Edition" and "Data Management Edition". The latter offers some additional features, including Transparent Cloud Tiering, Asynchronous AFM Disaster Recovery support, and Encryption. Some additional enhancements to Data Management Edition in Spectrum Scale 5.0 are:

• File audit logging capability to track user accesses to file system and events supported across all nodes and all protocols
   
• Parseable data stored in secure retention-protected fileset
   
• Data security following removal of physical media protected by on-disk encryption

To learn more, see [Spectrum Scale 5.0] and [Spectrum Scale 5.0-Passport Advantage] press releases.

Storage Utility Offerings

The new IBM Storage Utility Offerings include the IBM FlashSystem 900 (9843-UF3), IBM Storwize V5030 (2078-U5A), and Storwize V7000 (2076-U7A) storage utility models that enable variable capacity usage and billing.

These models provide a fixed total capacity, with a base and variable usage subscription of that total capacity. IBM Spectrum Control Storage Insights is used to monitor the system capacity usage. It is used to report on capacity used beyond the base subscription capacity, referred to as variable usage.

The variable capacity usage is billed on a quarterly basis. This enables customers to grow or shrink their usage, and only pay for configured capacity.

Suppose you only need 300 TB today, but expect this to grow to 1 PB (1000 TB) over the course of three years. You install 1000 TB (1 PB) of capacity, and pay for the base 300 TB, plus whatever above this 300 TB you might be using during each subsequent quarter. After 36 months, you pay for the rest of capacity installed.

(There are comparable offerings from IBM's competitors, but they often require that you pay for at least 75 to 85 percent of the installed amount, and then you would need to continue to disrupt your operations with additional capacity installed throughout the 12 to 36 month period. IBM's approach allows you to avoid installation disruption during the entire 36 month period!)

To learn more, see [Storage Utility Offerings] press release.

Spectrum Virtualize

IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud V8.1.1 delivers a powerful solution for the deployment of IBM Spectrum Virtualize software in public cloud, starting with IBM Cloud. This new capability provides a monthly license to deploy and use Spectrum Virtualize in IBM Cloud to enable hybrid cloud solutions

Remote replication will be supported between Spectrum Virtualize-based appliances (including SAN Volume Controller (SVC), the Storwize family, IBM FlashSystem V9000, and VersaStack with Storwize family or SVC), or Spectrum Virtualize Software, to the IBM Cloud.

Using IP-based replication with Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, or Global Mirror with Change Volumes, clients can create secondary copies of on-premises data in the public cloud for disaster recovery. IBM has over 25 data centers around the world available to chose from. Remote copy services can also be used between two IBM Cloud data centers for improved availability.

The solution is based on bare metal servers. You can create either two- or four-node high availability clusters.

Spectrum Virtualize on-premise SVC and Storwize now also support 2.4 TB 10K rpm 2.5-inch SAS hard disk drives.

To learn more, see [New Capacity Drive Option] and [Public Cloud] press releases.

IBM is #1 for Software-Defined Storage, and these offerings are an excellent example of IBM's continued commitment in this area!

technorati tags: IBM, Spectrum Scale, CORAL, Oak Ridge National Lab, Livermore National Lab, Department of Energy, DOE, HPC, High Performance Computing, NVMe, Active File Management, AFM, immutability, NENR, Standard Edition, Data Management Edition, audit logging, Passport Advantage, Storage Utility+Offering, SUO, FlashSystem 900, Storwize V5030, Storwize V7000, Spectrum Control, Storage Insights, Spectrum Virtualize, Public Cloud, IBM Cloud, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, FlashSystem V9000, IP-based Replication, Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, Global Mirror Change Volumes, GMCV, Softwaare Defined Storage