Europe : 15% increase on all IBM System Storage hardware products

I overlooked this one as it was announced last Thursday instead of the regular Tuesday announcements. Perhaps Friday 13 would've been a better date for this announcement : 'Price changes: IBM System Storage hardware products (ZA15-1104)'. It's a short one, so I can keep it short too as I have no additional information about it either.

"IBM announces a 15% increase on all IBM System Storage hardware products."

This is applicable to Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia and effective as of February 12, 2015.
For the UK it is only 10%.

I haven't found a similar announcement for other parts of the world so I guess it has mainly to do with the dollar - euro rate.

Sampling Techdocs - up to May 2014

Here I am again with an overview of interesting TechDocs documents I came across while browsing through the latest publications. If you're completely unfamiliar to Techdocs, here's an introduction to it.

• FAQ : z/OS 2.1 Frequently Asked Question
  This FAQ is a collection of questions that were raised by customers during several presentations on z/OS 2.1 that have been answered by subject matter experts. Too many diverse topics to sum them all up, so just have a look.

• Technical Document : IBM drives to Storage Systems cheat sheet
  I'm sure I mentioned this one before but here's an update on this one-pager showing the currently offered drive types for current IBM Storage Systems including of course DS8000 and XIV.

• Tool : IBM Storage Tier Advisory Tool Charting Utility
  You surely know about the DS8000 Storage Tier Advisor Tool (STAT). Data from the monitoring process by Easy Tier  is included in a summary report that you can download to a Windows system. The STAT application allows you to view the data when you point your browser to that file. Now - on top of this - the Charting Utility does exactly what its name says. This Utility will format some of the data provided and create charts like
• Skew Chart - Workload activity by percentage of capacity
• Movement Chart - Easy Tier data movement activity
• Workload Chart - Capacity utilization by extent pool 

• Technical Document : IBM System Storage Easy Tier Quick Start
  Ok, ok, I'm cheating a bit here, this one is not on Techdocs but I came across it while following a link on the charting utility. "This publication introduces the IBM® System Storage Easy Tier Quick Start, which helps you get started with Easy Tier functions using the IBM System Storage DS Storage Manager". If you have to set up Easy Tier, this is a document you're surely going to like.

Well that's it for now. And, as I always say : just check them out !

List of withdrawn storage products

I was browsing through the Redbook 'IBM System Storage Solutions Handbook' today. You can download it over here. Well, actually I was kind of reading it and it gives you a really good overview of all IBM storage products. And if you want to know why some one is reading a redbook of about 800 pages. Well, I have to renew my Midrange Storage certificate tomorrow.

And so I stumbled across this interesting list in Appendix C. It's a "list of the most recent System Storage withdrawals (...). This list considers a time period of a year back from the moment of writing this book". And the latest version of the book is from May 2013. So, just to let you know it's a quick find to see if any product has been recently withdrawn from marketing.

And by the way, this redbook IS great if you're looking for any kind of introduction in the IBM storage portfolio, be it hardware or software.

As I always say, just check it out !

IBM Summer Announcements : Storage : StorWize and XIV

This summer there were storage announcements about StorWize and XIV.

About StorWize, as mentioned in announcement 'Hardware withdrawal: Select drive features for IBM Storwize V7000 - Replacements available (ZG12-0187)', effective August 18, 2012, the 300GB 2.5-inch E-MLC SSD drive is replaced by 200GB or 400GB 2.5-inch E-MLC SSD drives. Also 300GB, 450GB, 600GB and 900GB 2.5-inch 10k RPM SAS HDD drives are replaced by 6Gb 2.5-inch 10K RPM SFF HDD drives effective October 27, 2012. You can find out more about these new drives in 'IBM Storwize V7000 introduces new 300 GB, 600 GB, and 900 GB SAS drives (ZG12-0188)'.

About XIV,  the announcement 'Hardware withdrawal: IBM 2810 XIV Storage System Model A14 and IBM 2812 XIV Storage System Model A14 - Replacements available (ZG12-0203)' indicates that from October 26, 2012 Gen2 models can no longer be ordered. Only Gen3 models remain available. Two other announcements (ZG12-0224 and ZP12-0324) offer some new functionalities for Gen3 :

• "1 TB raw capacity per drive option: XIV now supports configurations as small as 27 TB of usable storage making it a viable option for customers with smaller capacity needs.
• XIV USGv6 certification: The enhanced security available with IPv6 is of particular interest to enterprise customers that adopted IPv6., such as federal agencies.
• SCVMM: Microsoft Hyper-V customers using XIV can now manage XIV storage through the standard Hyper-V tools for managing Virtual Machines for increased ease of management".

Then there's one more announcement about the XIV (ZG12-0226) stating that "effective July 24, 2012, new purchases of IBM XIV Storage System machine type 2812 models 114 and A14, will include both a 3-year hardware warranty period and 3-year warranty for XIV Software Maintenance. Customers who desire longer than 3-years software maintenance contracts will be able to purchase the 3-year hardware warranty period with 4- or 5-year software maintenance". I'm not really sure how to interpret this because as far as I know this already was the case in the past. It seems more likely IBM deleted the option of ordering 1 or 2 years of software warranty with this box of 3 years hardware maintenance. Correct me if I'm wrong !

IBM Storage announcements : IBM Smarter Storage

Today, IBM made a whole range of storage announcements around IBM Smarter Storage. It's way too extensive to cover everything so I'll just run you through some that caught my attention.

• Regarding software there's a couple of announcements for the new version 5 of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center : 'IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1 introduces a new user interface to help centralize, simplify, and automate storage tasks (ZP12-0243)' and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for Replication for System z V5.1 (ZP12-0185). Here's a (very!) short resume of the new functionalities
• Integrated web-based user interface 
• Cognos-based custom reporting 
• Storage tiering optimization 
• Support for cloud storage management 
• Consolidated installer  

• There's RealTime Compression for StorWize V7000 and San Volume Controller (SVC) with the following announcements : 'IBM Storwize V7000 software V6.4.0 introduces Real-time Compression (ZP12-0234)' and 'IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller software V6.4.0 improves storage efficiency (ZP12-0235)'. This is compression on active primary data before they are written to disk. So, it operates immediately and unlike other technologies there is no post-processing where data is first written to disk and compressed afterwards on quiet moments. What do you win ?
• Storage purchase costs 
• Rack space 
• Power and cooling 
• Software costs 

• There are some interesting Statements of Direction (SODs) : 'Statement of direction: IBM DS8000 series, SONAS, XIV , and Storwize V7000 Unified (ZG12-0163)'.
  Focusing mainly on the DS8000, some highlights : 
• DS8000 Easy Tier extended to server based storage : Easy Tier will extend smart data placement intelligence to use server resources, communicating with servers to place hot data in server SSD cache to reduce latency and further optimize performance
• DS8000 new high-density flash storage option : DS8000 and other IBM storage systems will use fast, high-density SSD cache modules to enhance performance. As put on another IBM page :  "a new 400GB SSD option provides additional flexibility for performance-intensive applications".
• DS8000 Easy Tier support for application API : Easy Tier will use an API to enable servers to communicate with storage so storage can become aware of application workload needs and use that to optimize data placement

There's also good news for XIV about migrating from one system to another : "IBM intends to support an increased scalability of capacity, performance, and host bandwidth by clustering IBM XIV Gen3 systems together and providing the capability to migrate volumes across the cluster without disrupting applications. Management of the cluster will remain simple with consolidated views and shared configurations across the systems". 

There's more information on other announcements on the IBM Smarter Storage page which you find over here.

2011Q4 IBM Storage announcements

OK, now continuing with the rest of the storage announcements. I Hope I get it right this time because some of you might've received an incomplete feed.

I'll just give you an overview of some announcements and give some brief information on them.

IBM XIV Storage System Gen3 offers new 3 TB SAS drive feature (ZG11-0317) and
IBM XIV Storage System Software Version 11.0.1 (5639-YYB) supports 3 TB SAS drives (ZG11-0506)
IBM XIV now support 3TB SAS drives. This increases the maximum capacity from 161 TB to 243 TB. Some limitations : no intermix with 2 TB and no field upgrades from 2 TB to 3 TB. Drive encryption is not supported on these drives.
And, as I've already mentioned before, there's a new, free of charge, monitoring XIV Mobile Dashboard app for Apple iPad devices.
The datasheet on the XIV IBM page has also already been updated.

StorWize seems to have become IBMs showpiece for midsized clients in just one year. There are four announcements (ZG11-0291, ZG11-0516, ZG11-0525, ZG11,0276) covering all enhancements to the StorWize system.
We have additional drives : 3 TB 3.5-inch 7.2k rpm Nearline SAS HDD, 200 GB 2.5-inch E-MLC SSD and 400 GB 2.5-inch E-MLC SSD.
The most eye-catching however is of course the announcement of the StorWize Unified system. V7000 Unified supports NFS/CIFS/FTP/HTTPS/SCP file protocols in addition to existing block protocols (iSCSI and FCP) and is managed through a unified management GUI.
There are also some mirroring enhancements with Low Bandwidth and Storwize V7000-SVC Mirroring.

IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller V6.3.0 offers enhanced data mobility for high availability and introduces IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Select V4.2.2 (ZP11-0464).
The highlights :

• Lower-bandwidth option for Global Mirror
• Mirroring from SVC to Storwize V7000
• Stretch cluster enhanced from 10km to 300km maximum

Next to that there are some more announcements on storage for open systems I'm less familiar with. I could mention SONAS and Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager V3.1 delivering data protection for VMware vSphere environments and Microsoft Windows NTFS support. But I think those who want to read more about this will surely find their way around the blogosphere for more info on these.

IBM Storage Announcements

Yesterday, IBM made a bunch of storage announcements for practically the entire range of storage products. I know I'm being eclectic, but I think I'll just start by giving you the links to the announcements that seem interesting for the mainframe environment.

IBM System Storage DS8700 and DS8800 (M/T 242x) delivers DS8000 I/O Priority Manager and advanced features to enhance data protection for multi-tenant copy services (ZG11-0130)

IBM System Storage DS8700 and DS8800 (M/T 239x) delivers DS8000 Function Authorization for I/O Priority Manager and other advanced features (ZG11-0131)

IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 is designed to bring efficiency to tape operation and offer versatile models that support attachment to tape libraries (ZG11-0079)

New features for IBM System Storage TS7650 ProtecTIER Deduplication Appliance (3958 AP1) and IBM System Storage TS7650G Gateway Server (3958 DD4) (ZG11-0082)

IBM System Storage ProtecTIER Entry Edition Version 3.1 supports many-to-many, bi-directional data replication (ZP11-0203)

IBM announces many-to-many, bi-directional replication for IBM System Storage ProtecTIER Enterprise Edition V3.1 and ProtecTIER Appliance Edition V3.1 (ZP11-0200)

IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library Connector and TS1140 Tape Drive support for the IBM TS3500 Tape Library (ZG11-0138)

IBM System Storage TS1140 Tape Drive Model E07 delivers higher performance, reliability, and capacity (ZG11-0139)

IBM System Storage Tape Cartridge 3599 models provide enhanced capacity for enterprise tape drives (ZG11-0152)

IBM System Storage Linear Tape File System Library Edition Version 2.1 (ZP11-0215)

I'll come back to some of these in additional posts.