The following are my notes from the IBM Fall Storage Launch Analyst Briefing on October 4. In this briefing, Dan Galvan, VP of System storage marketing 7 Strategy of IBM's Systems Technology Group, Dan Rasmussin of the IBM Analyst Team, and several other team members discuss the messages they are receiving from their customers, IBM's philosophy, its product direction, and of course the specific new products and upgrades the company is introducing this fall.
DG: We run a quarterly launch cycle for entire hardware business. Almost to the day this completes my second year on this job. We don't put up a big top and dog & pony show launch. We use launch for a conversation. We are going to take you through some technologies in some detail. It is all about progressing the conversation in the marketplace, leading our clients down a path that we believe will drive IBM as a storage entity. I am most looking forward to this particular launch. We have announced a lot of great technology over the last 24 months. When you think back even 2 yrs ago, I think we're in a very different place in the storage business than we were 2 yrs ago. We can have a conversation that is very different in the marketplace, and we've laid a lot of foundations for the conversation we are going to have.
Some things haven't changed a lot in the last 2 yrs. The economy is still extremely challenging in the west. The US and Europe really challenging. Asia more robust but even in pieces of Asia are pretty challenging. So clients are really pushing and almost begging for greater storage efficiency from our products, reduce cost or at least keep budgets as flat as possible. We started storage efficiency conversation in 2010 & continue to reinforce that in the marketplace.
We also started an initiative with clients that is SIO – storage infrastructure optimization. Working with hundreds of clients worldwide to come in & help them analyze their storage infrastructure for efficiencies. We make a no cost assessment & no obligation recommendation. Talk about how they drive efficiency into the infrastructure. So huge emphasis in storage efficiency, & you will see elements of that this time around. We will pick up on data retention conversaion started in May.
IBM turned 100 this year. Great opportunity to engage with clients in what that means to be in business 100 years. Storage component is straight forward. As we talk to clients about how long they plan to be in business & what it means to keep data for decades. What does it mean to keep data for decades. Really interesting conversations that we kicked off in May around data protection & retention. What does it mean when data has no value, afraid to throw anything away, to your business, to your IT infrastructure to keep data for decades?
I look at what we brought to market in last 24 months:
- V7000 midrange system with high efficiency,
- Easy-Tier technology for auto-tiering,
- Acquisition of StoreWize brought real-time compression into portfolio,
- Enhancements to DS8000.
How will the conversation be different now? Fundamentally we are in a different position than 2 yrs ago. I would argue we are the leader in storage efficiency technologies. The conversation we intend to have is about what you should expect from your storage & your storage vendor. Times are very challenging. Clearly there are areas where we can deliver beyond EMC & other competitors.
Mike Barton: Slide 2: Businesses are under increased strain. All about efficiency & need for speed. If the market then you're trying to grow your business faster. If the market is not growing then efficiency is as good as a sale on bottom line. Demand to make things happen faster, get new revenue growth faster, meet client needs faster.
Slide 3: Agenda: Expect more from your storage vendor. Expect essential storage efficiency technologies built-in – not afterthoughts or add-ons. Expect storage that automatically adapts & improves application performance, and storage that is cloud-ready with features you can use today.
Slide 4: Storage Efficiency Challenge: In general information is doubling, storage growing, but storage budgets are flat = the fundamental equation. Looking at storage budgets on bottom of slide, there is split between money for revenue production & money for data protection & retention. Because value of information increasing & cost of losing data through the roof & even cost of looking for data is growing, clients may be spending more on protection than they might like. So meeting the storage efficiency challenge solves several problems at once. Not only can we deal with rapid growth of information more effectively, we can help companies adjust spend on data protection vs. revenue production. Small changes can have big impact on bottom line & to services available to users.
Slide 5: Pace of innovation in storage efficiency at IBM. This is a timeline of major IBM announcements to primary storage, backup & retention, midrange & enterprise. Can see significant enhancements, record-setting performance, scalability, capability.
Slide 6: First product announcement. Top example of how we improve efficiency. XIV gen 3, component upgrade announced in July adds 3Tbyte drive. The news is what we can do with it. Graph shows MS Exchange published benchmarks. Large-scale MS Exchange work. IOPS per disk times average mailbox size shows difference between XIV, that can run 3 TB drives at 90% utilization, outperforms systems with small, expensive drives or EMC with larger drives that are not half full. You buy 2X the disks from competitors for the same work = less efficient.
Also announcing new iPad client for managing XIV. Now you can see latest activity real time without worrying about when reports were done. Particularly helpful for QoS management for mixed applications.
Slide 7: Ability to analyze, adapt, & improve performance. Three examples: XIV Gen 3 does this, eliminates hot spots with automated data placement & load balancing. Consistent high performance with high capacity drives. Self-tuning & self-healing.
DS 8800 capabilities for analyzing, adapting, & improving performance enhancements from EasyTier the auto-tiering capability. Also QoS management capability introduced for Open Systems earlier in 2011 & now coming to V-enterprise environment.
Storage virtualization is a key technology as server virtualization takes hold. It in XIV Gen 3, Storewize V7000 & SAN volume controller.
Slide 8: DS 8800 and EasyTier: World's best auto-tiering technology. Uses analytics from IBM research, capability to collect metrics without disrupting storage system, better than competitor tools, so our tiering decisions are better for the system. New is 3-tier support for DS 8800 that reduces dependency on high-cost, low-capacity fibre channel drives. Data spreads out across tiers, so hot data moves to flash drives, less active data to near-line storage without needing a separate archive process. Ability to handle 3 TB drives lets it manage less active data more effectively. It can expand to 2+ Pbytes of online storage.
Slide 9: Unique requirements for mainframe apps. DS8800 has requirements that are different from usual open systems environment. With ultra high performance apps & availability, most critical workloads still go on mainframes. Storage requirements are handle massive scalability & performance optimization in massively scaled-out environment. Quality of Service management in the DS 8800. Blue = SAP, blue = reporting app. The sample graph shows peak load in middle for 10 min. which means SAP uses twice the IOs for that time for users, while the reporting application gets 1/4th of normal IOs.
Also improved integration with DB2 v 10 & DS8800 hi-performance Vicom yielding 11X faster query performance & better batch performance. Scalability on DS8800 up beyond 5,800 drives to let you mix and match to match spindles to meet workload.
Slide 10: Virtual server is another unique workload adapted by 90%+ of data centers. They adding most critical apps & large databases. Large numbers of server images – hundreds or thousands. That creates unique storage requirements. Need virtualized storage to get max flexibility & growth capability, avoiding hot spots & managing administration. Without storage optimized for virtual servers you can have an admin nightmare & roadblocks to scalability. Using virtual servers can make companies more successful.
The new capability in SAN volume controller Stretch Cluster supports live migration up to 300 km with VMware or Power VM Vmotion to move data & apps between data centers.
Slide 11: Storewize V7000 upgrades: It is now a year old. Announced as “new standard for midrange storage.” Had significant capabilities new to market: optimized for virtual server so it had virtual storage. Included Easy Tier & VMware API integration for management. Storage is 100% virtualized whether it is storage bought for V7000 or external IBM or third-party external storage using external virtualization option. Has thin provisioning, snapshots, local & remote mirroring to support enterprise-class workloads. Also easy to set up & manage, innovative GUI, non-disruptive data migration.
Slide 12: Announcing Storewize V7000 Unified: Adds clustering, integrated file storage for block 7 file management & ActiveCloud Engine policy-driven tiering for files without changing access to those files.
Slide 13: Clustering improves scalability as you can expand within a cabinet by adding disk, you can also add a second cabinet. Non-disruptive upgrades & ability to manage more storage as a single system.
Slide 14: Graphics are actual screenshots from the administrator GUI. No distinction between file & block – one admin can handle both. And overall system status shows slices of both for management.
Slide 15: Example of a workload managed in unified storage. This is a VDI example with hundreds of VDs to support, where you have moderate activity with peak loads, e.g. when everyone logs in. So storage requirements are unified storage – file for individual user directories & block for virtual disk volumes. Any optimization is helpful. Solution is V7000 Unified with lower-cost SSDs for V7000. EasyTier works with lower-cost SSDs = practical solution for VDIs. Average response time 4X faster and peak time response 20X with small amount of SSD.
Slide 16: Active Cloud Engine: New for V7000. It allows policy driven file administration – i.e., if data created by an executive it goes on fast storage, while an MP3 goes on near-line storage. Can decide to move inactive to lowest cost storage in the pool after a year. Provides better automated information lifecycle management with less disruption & can reduce storage costs by moving inactive files out or move files between pools, promoting files that get more activity.
Slide 17: Active Cloud Engine (ACE) for Scale-Out NAS (SONAS): ACE migrates across platforms – a version for midrange & one for scale-out environments. SONAS is global repository for apps & files, the C-drive for your enterprise. Unlimited capacity & scalability managing billions of files. Can handle large amounts of unstructured data.
Bringing out Active Cloud Engine to do does policy-driven administration on very large scale. Also have new GUI that looks like V7000 Unified that comes from the XIV product. SONAS adds 3 TB drives, up to 21 PB online storage per instance.
Slide 18: Active Cloud Example: 2 SONAS installations on different continents. Spread file system out. Users still get a single view of files, wherever they are. Files flow to users so you don't have to chase them. If you click on a file the system moves the most current version of the file to your location and then opens it, so everyone sees the most recent data. Also supports policy-based file distribution – e.g. with workgroups spread over different locations you can distribute files ahead of time. Enables an Active Cloud to do more than a static cloud can.
Slide 19: Expansion: A statement of direction for Storewize V7000 Unified. The October launch does not have multi-site capability but will have it soon. It will allow global clouds that mix SONAS & midrange storage in one cloud working together with all the file management above. A significant capability for usefulness of file-based global computing for global organizations.
Slide 20: Same view with a cloud instead of a globe behind it. People will think of files living in the cloud rather than on a file server somewhere.
Slide 21: You should expect more, and you will get more from IBM. Summary of announcements.
Slide 22: More than a dozen products to be announced next week. Includes an appendix with one slide for each announcement to show the highlights.
Q & A
Q: Jim Baker, Clipper Group: Great presentation. Like the appendix.
Q: Mike Carp, P Technol: You have a plethora of data reduction technologies. Any upcoming announcements on those soon? Will we see a leveling of technologies & have them all in line or a clearer distinction between different technologies?
A: Don't have an announcement this quarter on ProtectTier, but all of these technologies are on fast track. SAN Volume Controller is a storage efficiency product that improves utilization 30% and thin provisioning improves utilization even more. Storewize V7000 embodies the bulk of our efficiency technologies. EasyTier works with the new file storage capability we have. In May have the world's largest data protection & retention announcement with enhancements to ProtectTier, very large library system, new tape drives, making compressed data environment extremely efficient at 20 cents on the dollar compared to disk.
Q: Joseph Bell, Ideas International: Storewize V7000 Unified storage support: What kind of ?? technologies did you use? Is it something new?
A: Chris ??: The file capability in Storewize V7000 Unified uses an IBM common NAS software stack, also used in SONAS. It also has the same Active Cloud engine technology as SONAS.
Bell: Proven technology goes into new products. Very nice.
Q. Cal Bronstein, Robert Francis Group: Clustering already existed, so what is new on Slide 13?
A: Chris: Just reinforcing it because it didn't get the attention we hoped for in May when we first announced it.
Bronstein: On SSD that's an expensive element at almost $15,000. How much lower is lower?
A: I do have the SSD prices with me. On V7000 the 300 GB SSD went from $15,000 to $13,000. Introducing a 200 GB SSD at $9,000 and 400 GB at $18,000. all 2.5”. we reduced the price of the 300 GB SSD several times in the last yar, so prices of SSDs are coming down at a dramatic rate and we are committed to keeping our pricing remains competitive.
Q: Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group: On SONAS with the new GUI. Has the new GUI incorporated all the technologies in SONAS?
A: The GUI common across the IBM storage portfolio. XIV, storewize V7000 and SONAS now all have it. You also can also use the CLI interface as well. Have all similar capabilities as you have with block.
Will have all the capabilities with fileas with block. Easy drill downs. Can see your copy services, drill down by hovering oer a component. On front end get simple alerts and monitering tasks.
Still have TSM. From the GUI you can easily set up Active Cloud policies, for instance. So moving data among tiers can be set up easily, set migration thresholds. Have pop-up window to modify the script if you wish.
Q: Ian McFarland with McFarland Consulting: I think all your storage products are coalescing around use cases such as rampant virtualization, massive scale-out, so you can lead with use cases rather than products. Wanted to congratulate you on this.
Q: Neil Vesuala from IMEX Research: Any plans to focus on big data?
A: Mike Barton: We didn't do a big data theme for this launch, but it is behind a lot of this activity. There is a lot of marketing in the market. There is a rush to say everything is big data friendly. Behind the scenes, big data is a series of specific architectures & applications that is designed to deliver new meaning from mixes of structured & unstructured data. IBM is funding several big data projects using its storage & servers. SONAS is a big data product. PS 8800 does big data on mainframes.
Q: Henry Balthazar, 451 Group: What is the positioning for Storewize vs the N-series unified platform?
A: The N-series product is based on NetApp systems and is block-over-file and optimized for file. So that will go to clients where most of workload is file based. Storwize is file over block similar to EMC's DNX, and optimized more for block. So where the block is most important we would position Storewize.
Active Cloud Engine will ship at the end of November.
Multisite distribution capability in V7000 Unified is a statement of direction. Everything else is ready to go.