Tag: "vmware"

The Storage Alchemist in Prague


Alright, landed safe in Prague and was picked up by one of my colleagues and whisked away to the IBM office.  There we did an interview with Czech writer Martin Noska from Computerworld for IDG in Czech Republic.  The first Noska informed me was that IBM is the number one in storage sales in Czech Republic (just like Poland!).  He also had some very good questions and he with “What are IBM’s biggest challenges in the storage business”?  I had thought about this for a while and I would have to say it is really about marketing our storage “solutions” to the customer base.  IBM is a double edge sword.  IBM is so big and has so many products it becomes difficult to market or message all of our products without inundating all of our customers and confusing them.  If you think about it, IBM has hundreds of thousands of customers and business partners, if not more.  This is one of our strengths.  When customers have needs or requirements we have very good input into our product portfolio, perhaps the best in the business.  Combine this with the fact that IBM has not only storage solutions but technology across the entire stack from servers to networking.  So when it comes to developing the right technology, that solves real customer problems, I would argue that IBM’s portfolio is the best in the business.  IBM takes an extreme amount of care when developing a solution to ensure that it matches the customer requirements based on the changing needs of IT.  Having an integrated portfolio that works well with our ISV partners, VMware for example, allows us to help customers speed their time to ROI and be very competitive in the market place.  The challenge is, how do we properly message our new solutions to our customers, in a timely manner so that they are well aware of new products without giving them too much information such that it just becomes noise?  It is difficult to say the least.

This is a preview of The Storage Alchemist in Prague. Read the full post
PDF Download    Send article as PDF   
Sep 12, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

5 Most Interesting Things at VMworld 2011


Two solid days at VMworld 2011 and I got to do and see a lot.  Here is a breakdown of the top 5 things I saw at VMworld.

#1 The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube

You couldn’t miss it.  You walk into the show floor and there they were, larger than life.  The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube broadcasting live from VMworld2011.  Guests that were on the cube included, Tom Georgens (NTAP), Pat Gelsinger (EMC), David Scott (HP), Rick Jackson (VMware) as well as many more.  The Cube also had 12 Industry Spotlights.  The most interesting spotlight had to do with Storage Optimization, especially for VMware.

Oh the times they are a changing.  Now that you can deliver HD TV live over the internet, the Cube has broadcast from a number industry shows and user conferences.  The great part about this, it is like the ability to watch a sporting event being covered by ESPN but for tech.  The Cube brings all of the highlights of these events right into your computer screen.  Now if you can’t make an event, no problem, you can catch all the most important messages from the Cube.  The Cube is now the new mechanism for delivering content to users in the way they want to receive the content, TV.  For more, check out www.siliconangle.tv

#2 Storage Optimization – Industry Spotlight

In the Storage Optimization industry spotlight, the first 15 minutes Dave Vellante and his co-host John Furrier tee up the concept.  They discussed storage optimization, where it has come and were it is going, especially in VMware environments.  We are hearing more and more about storage efficiency technologies.  During the next 15 minutes Dave and I discussed the 5 essential storage efficiency technologies including:

  • Tiering
  • Thin Provisioning
  • Virtualization
  • Compression
  • Deduplication

We also discussed the fact that the IBM Real-time Compression technology is not only the most efficient and effective compression technology in the industry; we also learned that IBM really acquired not just a real-time “compression” technology but a platform that can do a number of things in real time.  In fact, the 5 IBM storage efficiency technologies all operate in real time which is the most effective for customers.

This is a preview of 5 Most Interesting Things at VMworld 2011. Read the full post
PDF Creator    Send article as PDF   
Sep 06, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

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.

This is a preview of Top 10 Reasons to Use IBM for VM Deployments. Read the full post
Create PDF    Send article as PDF   
Aug 30, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Storage Efficiency Spotlight at VMworld


VMworld Live 2011
Via: Wikibon

Permanent link to this post (4 words, 1 image, estimated 1 secs reading time)
PDF Printer    Send article as PDF   
Aug 29, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Virtual Disk Storage


History truly does repeat itself.  We are talking about the history of data storage.  Every once and a while a new technology comes along that requires a new way to think about infrastructure.  Notice I said “infrastructure”.  I’d like to paint two analogies:

Analogy 1: RAID – Prior to RAID users stored their data on disk and if they could afford it, they backed that data up to have a protected copy of their data.  When RAID came out, users were able to store their data on multiple disks appearing as one device.  The benefits to this were, increased data reliability, better performance.  This new technology however, fundamentally changed how disk was sold, but the questions were the same:

  1. How much capacity do you need?
  2. What type of performance does your application require?

The sales reps point of view changed.  There were a number of new considerations that needed to be taken into account.  First, the age old question, “Will I sell less storage “stuff?”  Remember the person, at the time, selling the disk was probably also selling the backup tape and software to protect that information.  If the disks are more reliable, maybe the customer won’t need as much tape?  Second, when the capacity question came up, the seller also needed to know what type of RAID the customer wanted to ensure they sold them enough drives.  It was no longer as simple as asking the capacity requirements and dividing it by the drive capacity at the time.  Now depending upon RAID levels there was a new set of math that needed to be done.  Third was the notion of performance and more spindles meant more performance so now that the capacity equation was solved for, you also needed to know the I/O requirements in order to make sure the right number of drives were sold to solve for the capacity as well as the performance.

This is a preview of Virtual Disk Storage. Read the full post
PDF Creator    Send article as PDF   
Jul 06, 2011 | 3 comments View Post

Sever + Storage Optimization = Datacenter Utopia


Matt Prigge had a really great article on his InfoWorld Data Explosion blog called "VMware vSphere raises the bar -- again".  In the piece Matt makes two really important points.

1.  VMware has taken the world by storm over the past few years.  A technology that can lower both CapEx and OpEx costs and ease the burden of administration is a great thing for the data center.  And,

2.  With all the advantages of virtual server optimization, storage administration, is a big issue.

VSphere has done a lot to help the issues of storage administration (specifically storage performance for virtual servers) but that is only a part of the challenge.  Customers consistently tell us that by developing a virtualized server environment, their storage requirements have grown by as much as 4x.  The savings that have been realized by server virtualization are soon eclipsed by the need for more storage.  This  is one of the reasons it has taken a while for server virtualization to really take off in production.  In talking to customers, virtualizing a lab or test environment where data can be deleted once it is 'used' without worry is one thing, but in production, where the production data needs to be kept for a long time starts to cause issues.

Now, with all the hype around primary storage optimization, end users can couple the benefits of server virtualization with primary storage optimization to maximize their ROI in the datacenter.  The important thing to remember, just like server virtualization didn't force customers to sacrifice anything in terms of performance, availability, process and supportability, you need to look for the same thing from a storage optimization solution.

The valuable features added to vSphere around SIOC combined with the optimization capabilities from Storwize can allow IT to maximize storage performance, maximize their existing storage resources and not affect data integrity or data availability.  There is a new white paper on the combined solution of VMware and Storwize that outlines how VMware and Storwize can provide customers with the maximum ROI in the datacenter.

This is a preview of Sever + Storage Optimization = Datacenter Utopia. Read the full post
Free PDF    Send article as PDF   
Jul 22, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

The Side Effects of Backup on Server Virtualization


Server virtualization has changed the IT landscape dramatically.  It has become a magic potion curing a number of ills in the physical server world such as low individual CPU utilization and excess use of space, power and cooling in the data center.  However, like all potions that cure what ails you, there can be side effects.  You need to be careful of what the Witch Doctor orders.

When I speak with customers who have aggressively implemented a virtual server infrastructure, 9 out of 10 will tell me that they underestimated the affect that virtualization would have on their backups and backup process and how backup might actually make virtualization less of the magic potion they had hoped, when not considered during the virtual server assessment and planning process.  So what is the issue?  Backup is a virtualization bottleneck, and without addressing it, you may not be able to obtain the server consolidation ratios you had been expecting which can have a negative effect on your virtual server TCO and ROI.

This is a timely discussion as VMworld has just concluded.  VMware users flocked to VMworld looking for best practices when it comes to implementing virtual server technology.  Because virtualization allows IT to reduce the overall physical hardware infrastructure, users will be looking at how to maximize their server consolidation ratios (get as many virtual servers on a physical server as they can and still provide good application performance).

I often hear that companies assess their environments by looking at the production applications on their physical server environment, identify their work loads and translating that into some consolidation ratio of physical servers to virtual servers.  I also hear, from these same customers, that backup was never taken into consideration during the assessment phase when trying to identify the best possible consolidation ratios.  These customers implement their new virtual server environments, install the backup agent they had previously been using for physical server backups and attempt to backup their virtual servers and they find that they would only be able to protect 50% to 60% of the new environment.  Why?

This is a preview of The Side Effects of Backup on Server Virtualization. Read the full post
PDF Printer    Send article as PDF   
Sep 14, 2009 | 2 comments View Post