Tag: "blogging"

Top 10 Reasons to Use IBM for VM Deployments


 

IBM @ VMworld 2011

After a full first day at VMworld, I started to think more about IBM and their technology solutions that help customers in a VMware environment.  Here is a top ten list of things to consider when looking at a VMware implementation and how IBM can help.

#1 Integration

VMware is playing Switzerland and ensuring all vendors are on a level playing field, so when other vendors state that they have “better” or “closer” technology integration than other vendors its probably not true.  Some vendors may not choose to integrate with certain things, but rest assured, all of   VMware’s APIs are open to all vendors.  Take a look and see how IBM is providing plug-ins for vSphere, SRM, and VAAI in XIV as well as other storage platforms.

#2 Ease of Use

IBM has seen, firsthand, a number of our customers switch from different competitive platforms to XIV because of the simplicity of the XIV solution.  A large manufacturer is one example of a customer who is provisioning new VMware instances in less than five minutes with XIV. 

Another XIV customer, who is a very experienced storage administrator, saw the XIV GUI and quoted "I don't get it (XIV GUI).  It can't be that easy.  Either I'm missing something or they are not showing me everything."  Well, the reality is, it is that easy and that interface is prolific throughout the IBM storage portfolio including the Storwize V7000 and SVC.

#3 Storage Efficiency

Probably one of the most important topics this year is Storage Efficiency and IBM is a leader in this department.  The N-Series with the Real-time Compression appliance can reduce the VMware storage footprint up to 75%.  Users tell us that by implementing VMware, their storage footprint has grown by as much as 4x.  Therefore their overall IT budgets didn’t get better, the dollars just shifted from servers to storage.  IBM’s Real-time Compression users can save up to 75% without any performance impact.  Additionally, Real-time Compression is the only compression technology that works in conjunction with deduplication, compressing the data before it is dedplicated, giving an added benefit to the technology.

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Aug 30, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Business Outcomes are what Matters


I spent last week in London meeting with IBM Real-time Compression customers and partners and supporting the launch of the new IBM Storwize V7000 (not to be confused with the company IBM purchased a month ago).

While on this trip I met with a great colleague Matthew Yeager.  Matthew is one of the leading technologists working for ComputaCenter in the UK.  We spent a couple of hours discussing how the IT business was changing.  Once revered and dressed in shirt and tie, the IT manager now is plumber / electrician of the company.  The first to get yelled at when systems / applications / devices aren’t working, always lacking resources and always being asked to do more with less.  While the plumbing matters, everyone just expects it to work.  Like plugging in a phone to a phone jack, users expect a dial tone.

The shift in technology within IT is moving from “What does it cost?”, to “What is the business value I can achieve with this technology?”  More and more, especially as we are moving out of this recession, albeit slowly, customers are trying to figure out how to spend less in IT (as a percentage of overall revenue) but increase their business outcome.

If you read the blog post I did last week about Allianz.  The goals set forth in IT were to cut spending by 10% each year but increase overall efficiency.  How do you do that?  New technology is how you do that but it is not sold under the premise of a vendor brining in a new technology that they have developed or acquired, it is about identifying a problem: ‘Our storage growth and management of that growth is costing us too much money’, and then solving that problem with new technology that fits into the business.

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Oct 18, 2010 | 0 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.)

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Aug 30, 2010 | 1 comment View Post

Marketing, FUD and Doing What You Do Best


Rather than leave a lengthy comment on Tom Cook’s blog post from Friday Compression and Dedupe: Business Value and Data Safety (and from a marketing perspective, Friday’s are bad days to post blogs – especially in the summer) – I thought I would respond here (this may get lengthy as Tom made a number of points which I need comment on).

The first thing I do want to say is that when doing technical marketing; the proper strategy would be to not be on defense but rather take an offensive approach.  However, given the amount of FUD that Tom put in his latest blog post, I have to defend compression to some degree.

Now, I think we can all agree that data compression and data deduplication are two technologies that can complement one another very well.  Avamar (EMC) deduplicates the data at the source and then compresses the data before sending it to the Avamar Data Store gaining tremendous efficiency in network utilization.  ProtecTIER (IBM) compresses the data once it is deduplicated at the target device before it stores the data.  Other solutions also combine compression and data deduplication.

I’d like to comment on some key point Tom made in his piece where he is just blatantly wrong:

1)      Compression identifies redundant data across a very small window, usually 64 KB. – While this may be true for other compression technologies, this is not true for Storwize.  Storwize performs compression where the initial window is not fixed in size at all; it is the resultant write that is fixed in size.  This size is also specifically mapped to the I/O patter of the data being written.  The goal is such that in 1 I/O Storwize can do all the work it needs to on a particular file or LUN and it is for this reason Storwize has no performance penalty.

2)      Compression produces data reduction rates at most 2X for most data types. – Seems Tom needs a lesson in the most common answer in IT – “IT DEPENDS”.  Data compression ratios are 100% tied to the data type.  For a true indication of data compression ratios see Figure 1.

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Jun 21, 2010 | 10 comments View Post

C is for CORE and thats Good Enough for Me


In keeping with some traditions I have learned while working for a company who is based in Israel - today, Saturday is the day of Shabbat (Shabbat (Hebrew: שַׁבָּת, Modern Shabbat Tiberian Šabbāṯ, Ashkenazi pronunciation: Shabbos, Yiddish: Shabes, "rest" or "cessation") is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from sundown Friday until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact time, therefore, differs from week to week and from place to place, depending on the time of sunset at each location. In polar areas where there is no sunrise or sunset at certain points of the year, a different set of rules apply.

Shabbat recalls the Biblical Creation account in the Genesis, describing God creating the Heavens and the Earth in six days, and resting on and sanctifying the seventh (Genesis 1:1-2:3).

Shabbat is considered a festive day, when a person is freed from the regular labors of everyday life, can contemplate the spiritual aspects of life, and can spend time with family. Traditionally, on that day three festive meals are eaten—on shabbat eve, at lunch, and as an end-of-shabbat evening meal. The day is also noted for those activities which are prohibited on shabbat prescribed by Rabbinic Judaism. - from Wikipedia)

So while my Jewish colleagues are 'resting' I will blog.

Now, first I want to start this post with a ‘shout out’ to Mark Farley.  In his last post he was headed to the hospital.  I just want to say all the best to Mark.  He is a good friend and has done a great deal for the storage blogging community.

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May 01, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Confessions of an ex-EMC Blogger


It is an interesting time we live in.  In a world where high-tech meets social networking things can run on the hairy edge of information leakage or brand management, especially in a public company.  However, during 2008 and 2009, when big companies were trying to figure out what to do within the ‘social media’ fray, I was working at EMC and EMC did a fantastic job of embracing social media and using it to their advantage to drive a number of very positive initiatives.  So much so that I believe in August of last year they won an award (or were at least publicly recognized) for their use of social media.  I have to commend Polly Pearson for this.  Driving a brand with no less than 20 bloggers (probably more), among them the likes of Chuck Hollis, Barry Burke and StorageZilla, all of whom tweet as well, one would think would take quite a bit of corralling.  Interestingly though, it didn’t.  The main reason, trust.

Each person at the company who blogged took that ‘role’ very seriously.  Each person I knew who blogged wanted to not only be the top EMC blogger, but the top blogger in their respective area of expertise.  EMC bloggers are very smart people and have a desire to be the best at what they do.  EMC bloggers have driven some of the most authentic and original blogs with great thought leadership in the storage industry.  It is because of the desire to deliver great quality content that they lived by a set of rules that anyone who worked for a public company would adhere to.

1)      Don’t divulge any company secrets – which is a part of your employee agreement anyway

2)      Don’t say things that are untrue or could get you in trouble in the future

3)      Deliver great content

And if there was ever a question, there were always folks internally who you could bounce your thoughts and ideas off of before posting.  It was for these reasons, as well as trust that propelled EMC to the top of the high tech social media ladder.

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Mar 17, 2010 | 24 comments View Post
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