Originally posted by: TonyPearson
This week, I am in Orlando, Florida for the [IBM Technical University], with focus on IBM storage, IBM Z mainframes and IBM Power servers.
- The Seven Tiers of Business Continuity and Disaster
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Last year, Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria, ravaged various parts of North America and the Caribbean. My topic on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) was well attended. I have been working in BC/DR for most of my career, including the "High Availability Center of Competency" or HACOC, for short.
However, natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires and floods represent less than 20 percent of all disasters. The majority of disasters, nearly 75 percent, arise from electrical power outages, human error, system failure and ransomware.
The seven tiers were developed by a group of IBM customers back in the 1980s, and have stood the test of time. I recently published an article in IBM Systems Magazine (January/February 2018) based on this presentation.
- IBM Hybrid Cloud Storage Solutions
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Cloud storage comes in four flavors: persistent, ephemeral, hosted, and reference. The first two I refer to as "Storage for the Computer Cloud" and the latter two I refer to as "Storage as the Storage Cloud".
I also explained the differences between block, file and object access, and why different Cloud storage types use different access methods.
Finally, I covered some Hybrid Cloud Storage configurations, showing how a combination of Traditional IT, on-premise local private cloud, off-premise dedicated private cloud and public cloud, and be combined to provide added value.
- Reporting and Monitoring: How to Verify your Storage is Being Used Efficiently
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It is hard to believe that it was over 15 years ago that I was the chief architect for the software we now call IBM Spectrum Connect, Spectrum Control and Storage Insights. There are a variety of editions and bundles for this product, but my focus on this talk was on the advanced storage analytics found in IBM Virtual Storage Center and IBM Spectrum Control Advanced Edition.
I covered three use cases:
- What storage tier to put your workload in, and how to move existing data into a faster or slower tier to meet business requirements and IT budgets.
- For steady state environments, how to re-balance storage pools within a single tier to keep things even for optimal performance.
- When it is time to decommission storage, how to transform volumes from one storage pool to another without downtime or outages.
Special thanks to Bryan Odom for his help in updating this presentation.
- Spectrum Virtualization Data Reduction Pools 101
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Barry Whyte, IBM Master Inventor and ATS for Storage Virtualization for Asia Pacific region, presented on how Data Reduction Pools were implemented in version 8.1.2 of Spectrum Virtualize. The software in the latest IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), IBM Storwize products, and IBM FlashSystem V9000.
Basically, rather than say we "re-wrote" the code, we prefer softer euphemisms like the code was "re-imagined" or, my favorite lately, "re-factored". Legacy Storage Pools will continue to be supported, but IBM anticipates that people over time will transition to the new Data Reduction Pools (DR Pools).
Like Legacy Storage Pools, the new DR Pools also support a mix of Fully-allocated, Thin-Provisioned, and Compressed-Thin volumes. IBM has made a statement of direction that it will offer Data Deduplication feature in the future, but these will only be on the new DR Pools.
While DR Pools are available today with version 8.1.2, there are a few restrictions. There is a limit of four DR Pools per cluster, and the amount of total capacity of each pool depends on the extent size and number of I/O groups configured. Some of the migration methods developed for Legacy Storage Pools are not available, and in reality don't make sense in the new DR pool scheme. Child Pools are not supported either.
One of the big improvements that DR Pools offer is in the area of compression. With Legacy Storage Pools, CPU cores were dedicated for compression, so they were either under-utilized or overwhelmed. With DR pools, all CPU cores can be used for either I/O or compression, which potentially can increase performance by up to 40 percent!
After the sessions, IBM had its "Solution Center Reception". This is a chance to relax and unwind after a long day, with food and drink, and various sponsors in booths to explain their latest offerings.
This is Katie Thacker from [FIT]. In March 2018, FIT was recognized as IBM’s Top Strategic Service Provider of the year!
These are Elizabeth Krivan and Kelly Bouchard, two recently-hired IBM storage sellers. They attended my sessions at the IBM Technical University in New Orleans last October, so it was good to see them again at my sessions here in Orlando.
You can follow along with Twitter hashtag #IBMtechU, or follow me at @az990tony.
technorati tags: IBM, #IBMTechU, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, BC Tiers, Hybrid Cloud, Cloud Storage, Hybrid Cloud Storage, Spectrum Connect, Spectrum Control, SAN Volume Controller, Spectrum Virtualize, Storwize, FlashSystem V9000, Legacy Storage Pool, Child Pools, Katie Thacker, Elizabeth Krivan, Kelly Bouchard, New Orleans, Orlando FL, Storage Insights, Virtual Storage Center, VSC, Bryan Odom, Barry Whyte, Data Reduction Pool, SVC