Category: Storwize

Polycom Saves Big with IBM Real-time Compression


Amit Bar-On, Manager of IT at Polycom in Israel shares his story with us about not only does IBM Real-time Compression save him storage space, that space can actually  now be used for people instead of equipment.  As Polycom continues it success in the telepresence business, they have grown in the last five years to having over 120 developers in Israel.  Office space anywhere is expensive, in Tel-Aviv it is VERY expensive.  Polycom is taking data storage and data management to a whole new level.

Permanent link to this post (86 words, 1 image, estimated 21 secs reading time)
PDF Creator    Send article as PDF   
Jan 12, 2011 | 1 comment View Post

Key Competitive Advantages to IBM Real-time Compression


It still baffles me when there is so much information available for people to learn about any topic and it is not used.  Many times people just tend to rely on the information provided by their employer (which in many cases is just competitive FUD).  This video was the result of reading an email between IBM and one of their key partners on the competitive knowledge of each others products.

Permanent link to this post (72 words, estimated 17 secs reading time)
PDF Download    Send article as PDF   
Jan 10, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Linked In Storage Discussion on Storage Efficiency


Great conversation on Linked In about deduplication and compression for storage efficiency in the Data Storage Professionals Group.  Help the storage community answer this question:

Does anyone has any experience in NAS de-duplication at filesystem level, like NetApps. Does it really work? I concerns/limitations?

Permanent link to this post (46 words, 1 image, estimated 11 secs reading time)
Free PDF    Send article as PDF   
Jan 04, 2011 | 2 comments View Post

Storage Alchemist Video Update


Hey, as most of you know, IBM purchased Storwize and changed the name.  I have updated all of my previous videos that talked about the technology from saying "Storwize" to "Real-time Compression" - and added some more technical details.  Also, with the help of Media Boss, I have updated the intro - pretty cool stuff!  Have a look and tell me what you think!

Permanent link to this post (66 words, estimated 16 secs reading time)
PDF    Send article as PDF   
Jan 03, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Snowball VFX Keeps the Avalanche Under Control


What a great name, Snowball.  And much like information can behave like a "snowball" turning into an "avalanche", Snowball VFX has been able to control the avalanche of data utilizing the IBM Real-time Compression technology.  Here in this video customer case study, Yoni Cohen, Founder of Snowball talks about the value of Real-time Compression in his environment.

Additionally, we have captured from all of our Media & Entertainment customers what they think about the Real-time Compression technology.  To see the value proposition, check out our Media & Entertainment Portal through our good friends at TechValidate.

By the way, we couldn't have captured this amazing video without the help of the folks at Snowball for all of their footage they let us use as well as the folks at MediaBoss TV who helped us create this video.

Permanent link to this post (137 words, 2 images, estimated 33 secs reading time)
Fax Online    Send article as PDF   
Dec 20, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Top 10 Reasons Real-time Compression Provides Extraordinary Storage Efficiency


Over the past few weeks I have witnessed the proverbial mudslinging that takes place in the blogosphere when marketing feathers are ruffled.  Most recently I was reading Rich Anderson of The StorageSavvy Blog.  The article was "Compression better than Dedup?  NetApp Confirms!"

I have to agree with Rich on many fronts.  First, "When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail."  Rich points out vendors have to sell "what's in the bag" so it is conceivable that all problems look like they can be solved with their solution.  If you look back over the last few years NTAP has always had a "me too" reputation.  Whatever the industry has, they have one too and its better.  For the last few years, while competing against Storwize, they have pulled the EMC tactic of trying to stall a market by saying, "We have optimization for primary storage with deduplication."   The reality is, you can't use it in real time, it is a resource hog, and again Rich mentions, the only use case it works well on in primary storage is VMware (and that is ONLY IF the customer stores their data outside the .vmdk file otherwise compression is much better).  Now that NTAP has compression their story has changed saying that compression on primary storage is better for most use cases.  Duh!  The folks at Storwize (now IBM Real-time Compression) have been saying that for years.  Why, deduplication is great for repetitive data sets, i.e. backup, not primary storage.  There just isn't that much repetitive data in primary storage.  Again, NTAP is trying to stall the market saying they have "in-line" compression for primary storage.  Sorry guys, not good enough.  In-line is NOT Real-time.  Rich also points out that the key characteristics of storage for customers are capacity and performance.  Patrick Rogers of NTAP has said publically that compression WILL indeed impact performance and that they even have a tool that will tell you how much performance will be impacted.  While NTAP may say compression is "free", we all know nothing worth having in life is free, you get what you pay for.  If you need the performance to do compression you are going to have to perform a major upgrade to  your filer in order to just be able to perform compression let alone try to do compression in real time.  No real savings there.

This is a preview of Top 10 Reasons Real-time Compression Provides Extraordinary Storage Efficiency. Read the full post
PDF Printer    Send article as PDF   
Dec 15, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Storwize – What is in a Name, Really?


Today IBM is making one of the most significant storage announcements in the last 10 years.  (Steve Duplessie is quoted as saying “…last 20 years.” but announcing that they were basically getting out of the storage business in 2000 by selling their Mylex division was pretty significant.)

Today IBM has made it abundantly clear that they are back in the storage business.  It makes a lot of sense actually.  Servers have been commoditized to about 3% margins and services is a body business (to make more money you need more bodies).  Storage is the only place these days to add significant ‘value’ to the infrastructure eco-system.

Storage software – or as I like to refer to them, storage services allow vendors to add more value to commodity hardware by providing very useful capabilities such as thin provisioning, virtualization, snapshots, replication, and optimization solutions such as real-time compression.

However this story is as much about the naming of the product as it is the product itself.

Let’s rewind a bit.  It is September 1st in Tel-Aviv.  IBM has just completed the Storwize acquisition and we are having our leadership meetings discussing the integration when the new management team informs us that: “You know, we really like the Storwize name a lot.”  “We like the name so much that we decided we want to use it for a totally separate and new product.”

As new employees we two choices:

  1. Complain and argue about how this will confuse the market
  2. Salute the flag and move on

Having branded products and technology before, I didn’t really see this as an issue.  Sales of course didn’t care for it.  My feeling was, that even though the new Storwize V7000 doesn’t support the new IBM Real-time Compression (which now you have it, our new name – not flashy but does describe exactly what we do), it is the most modular storage architecture designed today and I am quite sure, that because the value in this ‘platform’ is really about storage services (software), IBM Real-time Compression could eventually make it on to this platform.  That being said, the amount of noise IBM is going to make regarding the new Storwize will drive the old Storwize sales team to a number of new opportunities.  Sure, we will have to work harder to vet them as the new V7000 is a block device and IBM Real-time Compression is an appliance for NAS today but that is okay.  We will now have exposure to a great deal of customers to tell our story.

This is a preview of Storwize – What is in a Name, Really?. Read the full post
PDF Creator    Send article as PDF   
Oct 07, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

The Storage Network


With the impending name change to the "Storwize" product, the marketing folks at the old "Storwize" are at it again with their "viral video" campaign.  Not sure how many of you have seen the movie or even the trailer to "The Social Network" that grossed $23M in the US brining it to #1 in the box office last week .  Its a story of a guy that started in college with an idea and turned it into something big.  Much like Storwize - an idea that started with only a few in Israel and has now been acquired by IBM for multi millions of dollars and will become a key part to IBM's overall "Storage Efficiency" strategy.  This new trailer "The Storage Network" highlights too may realities of today's data management issues.  Hope you enjoy it.

Video created by MediaBoss Studios

(BTW: In case you didn't get it Storwize is now IBM Real-time Compression)!

Permanent link to this post (152 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)
Create PDF    Send article as PDF   
Oct 07, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Disk Elasticity and Storage Efficiency


Storage is elastic.  How do I know you ask?  Yesterday I visited a customer who is using the Storwize product to do Real-time Compression on their primary storage.  The customer is Allianz and has been using the product for over a year.  They see 75% compression on their users home directory data.  To give you an idea, Allianz is an insurance company and generates TONS of spreadsheets, 14TB worth of spreadsheets (okay, not all 14TB is spreadsheets but you get the picture).

Prior to Allianz purchasing the Storwize technology, Allianz didn’t have great data management practices.  Users store data in their home directories and there is really no discipline around deleting or cleaning up files so data just grows.  Additionally, storage isn’t really budgeted for.  Overall IT is but at a storage level, they just purchase some when the need some.

Again, prior to the Storwize technology, Allianz had their primary storage and a backup to tape at their local site.  They then replicated the data to their remote site and also performed a backup to tape.

Allianz has an overall IT mission to reduce spend by 10% per year.  The thing to think about is that this 10% could come from a lot of places including data management.

Once the Storwize technology was installed the first things they saw were:

  • 75% capacity optimization
  • Better data management capabilities through Storwize reporting
  • The ability to keep more data on line and available for faster recoveries
  • No change in any of their existing storage processes
This is a preview of Disk Elasticity and Storage Efficiency. Read the full post
PDF Creator    Send article as PDF   
Oct 05, 2010 | 2 comments View Post

IBM Day 1 – It’s Official


Between time off with the family this summer and all the work required to get done between 'signing' a deal to be acquired and 'closing' a deal to get acquired, the blog has been a bit slow.  But I am here now to tell you it is official.  Storwize is now Storwize, an IBM company.

As for myself, I am looking forward to the work of integrating the Storwize Technology into the IBM Storage portfolio.  The Storwize group will live under the STG organization under Brian Truskowski.  There is a new ground swell taking head at IBM these days all around storage efficiency.  To get a better understanding, please have a look at my new colleague, Tony Pearson's blog discussing storage efficiency.  My job will be now to evangelize how IT now needs to take a look at all of the available storage "services" (clones, snapshots, thin provisioning, replication, compression, deduplication, etc...) can help to create an overall storage solution that allows them to reduce their over all $/TB on not only capital expense, but also on operational expense.

Lets face it, data growth isn't slowing down and there is never a one size fits all solution for storage.  The great part about being a part of IBM now is that we have all the tools to pick from to architect a data storage solution, end to end, that allows customers to reduce their overall $/TB for both primary as well as secondary storage and make that storage much more efficient and work for the end user.

This is going to be an exciting time.  I am also anxious to continue the Storage Alchemist blog.  EMC, under the guise of Polly Pearson and Chuck Hollis taught me that social media is great, but social media done right, in a collaborative and thoughtful way can drive influence.  I join some of the best bloggers around from IBM.  (I have added Tony's "Inside System Storage" - It is a great read.)

This is a preview of IBM Day 1 – It’s Official. Read the full post
PDF Download    Send article as PDF   
Aug 30, 2010 | 1 comment View Post
« Previous Page — Next Page »