Directly attaching mainframe to tape drives is entering its last phase

What did I tell you in my last post : all's quiet on the aunnouncement front, time to take some holiday . . . just until I turned my back on my screen. Some End of Marketings, some price changes and of course also the LinuxOne announcement. I hadn't seen that one coming. So, Ive got a lot of catching up to do now.

Let me start with the End of Marketing of the 3592 C07 controller which you need to attach your mainframe environment directly to the tape drives : 'Hardware withdrawal: IBM 3592 Tape Controller Model C07 and select features - Some replacements available (ZG15-0177)'.

First of all, let's make it clear from the beginning : this only indicates that effective November 13, 2015 you will no longer be able to buy any additional 3592 C07 Tape Controllers. This certainly does not mean they are no longer supported. For the moment no End of Support date has been announced.

So what's the alternative :

"Available options to replace Tape Controller Model C07 for connectivity in mainframe environments are TS7720 and ProtecTIER® Mainframe Edition (ME). TS7720 offers the flexibility of tape-less and tape-attach configurations. For very small mainframe environments, ProtecTIER ME is a premiere solution, delivering the best performance to price ratio with a reduction in storage costs".

Well, I think you can forget about the ProtecTIER ME solution, because as far as I know that one went End of Marketing somewhere in 2012 (ZG12-0339), unless I missed something . . .
Of course, as we know the lifespan of tape libraries, it's very likely that you can go on with your current configuration as long as you want, if you don't need newer generations of tape drives.
But the alternative is a TS7700 virtual tape library so you can either go tapeless or you can still write to tape for e.g. off site tape storage.

The TS7700 has the advantage that it also support the TS1150 from now on : 'IBM TS7700 R3.3 introduces support for the TS1150 tape drive and for external key management of disk-based encryption (ZG15-0174)'. The 3592 C07 does not support the TS1150 as there are no plans to enhance z/OS to support more than 4TB. This would require quite some modifications and besides, IBM claims that a TS7720 configuration for small clients will turn out to be less expensive than a 3592 C07 configuration with some native tape drives.

Flash Alert : TS7700 Potential Performance Issue with R3.0 code and 3957 VEA/V06 models

For those who are in this situation, you might have a look at this before upgrading to the R3.0 (8.30.x.x) release level. I'm taking over the info from the alert you can also find over here.

Abstract

TS7700 8.30.x.x levels may cause a performance degradation when installed on the TS7720 (3957-VEA) or the TS7740 (3957-V06) hardware model base.

Content

MachineType/Model affected: TS7720 (3957-VEA), TS7740 (3957-V06).

It has been determined by IBM that TS7700 3.0 Release levels (8.30.x.x) may cause a performance degradation when installed on the TS7720 (3957-VEA) and the TS7740 (3957-V06) hardware model base. Customers considering an upgrade to the R3.0 (8.30.x.x) release level on these models, or installing a TS7720 expansion frame, 3952-F05 w/ FC 7332, are strongly advised to have a SCORE request submitted, allowing IBM to assess current performance requirements and to provide a recommended upgrade path. Environments that run performance-sensitive, or high-throughput workloads on VEA or V06 hardware platforms will require special consideration. Customers should contact their IBM sales team for assistance submitting the SCORE request so that the appropriate technical reviews can be completed.

This does not apply to customers with TS7720 (3957-VEB) and/or TS7740 (3957-V07), who may upgrade to R3.0 without restriction.

TS7740 and TS7720 Virtualization Engine enhancements

Last week, there were also some announcements on the Virtualization Engine with the release of Version 1.7. The announcements were on enhancements on the TS7740 (ZG10-0183), enhancements on the TS7720 (ZG10-0178) and the withdrawal of the replaced generation of cache controllers and cache drawers on the TS7740 and TS7720 (ZG10-0182).

The TS7740 Virtualization Engine has been around for some time now and was first announced with a capacity of 6TB (one cache controller (CC6) and three cache drawers (CX6) each with a capacity of 1.5TB with 16x146GB drives). By the end of 2008 these were replaced by one cache controller (CC7) and a maximum of 3 cache drawers (CX7) each with a usable capacity of 3,5TB (16x300GB drives) giving a total capacity of 14TB.
Now these features are also withdrawn from marketing and they're replaced by one new cache controller (CC8) and an optional 1 or 3 cache drawers (CX8). As the new 600GB drives are used each can have a usable capacity of approximately 7TB giving a maximum capacity of 28TB.

The TS7720 Virtualization Engine (the driveless one) started out in 2008 with one cache controller (CS7) and 3 or 6 additonal cache drawers (XS7). They used 1TB drives, each with a usable capacity of 10TB and a maximum capacity of 70TB. They could of course also be put into a grid adding up to 210TB.
Now we see a new cache controller (CS8) and an upgrade of the cache drawers (XS7). We are now using 2TB drives doubling the raw capacity and bringing the usable capacity to just under 24TB for the drawers and about 19TB for the controller. You can add the drawers one by one with a maximum of 6. This gives you a maximum capacity of 163TB.
But there's more. You can now also add an additonal Expansion Frame to the TS7720. This frame consists of minimally 2 cache controllers and an optional additonal 10 cache drawers. This gives the frame a maximum capacity of 278TB. Combined with the base frame, a single TS7720 may now have a maximum of 441TB.

Check out the announcements for more details and possible intermixing with existing configurations.
One more thing : the new TS7700 Virtualization Engines now ship with 16GB of physical memory instead of 8GB.

Planned availability : June 4, 2010

Sampling Techdocs : December 2008 - January 2009

Hello, here we go again for another round of interesting material from TechDocs.

• Technical Document : z/OS Positioning Software for the z10 EC and z10 BC Servers
  This is kind of a classic. It gives you lots of information on supported Operating Systems, migration, new functions like zHPF, PSP Buckets. It also indicates what's supported by which z/OS release plus a lot of other information.
  
  
• White Paper : IBM® Virtualization Engine TS7700 Series Best Practices - Cache Management in the TS7720 V1.1
  The disk-only Virtualization Engine (TS7720) was announced last year and here's a document that "details the monitoring of cache usage, messages and attentions presented as the cache approaches the full state, consequences of reaching the full state and the methods used for managing the amount of data stored in the cache".
  
  
• White Paper : Energy Management and Performance Analysis on the IBM System z10 BC
  "This paper will demonstrate the new IBM System z10 Business Class (z10 BC) as an excellent system for power efficiency and performance, discuss energy management strategies, highlight the Active Energy Manager tool, and provide an analysis of energy and performance on the IBM System z10 BC". It also talks about the Power Estimation Tool and the System Activity Display.
  
  
• White Paper : OSA-Express3 Multi-ports per CHPID Definitions
  Here's a useful document on how to define your OSA-Express3 cards.
  
  
• Technical Document : IBM Supported Platforms for Oracle Database
  This might save you some searching : System z is included. Or you may want to take a look over here too.
  
  
• FAQ : zHPF FAQ Frequently Asked Question
  The document first lines out the diference between ESCON and FICON, then explains MIDAW but the focus is of course on zHPF.
  
  
• FAQ : Virtualization Engine TS7700 Frequently Asked Question
  This document describes "Which TS7700 Virtualization Engine functions became available in which Code Releases and which LM code is co-reqed?"

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

October 2008 Announcements : Tape Storage

This week we also had our share of Storage Announcements. Some are in line with the expectations, others are completely new. I’ll start by giving you the information on the Tape Storage announcements in this post. They focus on the TS7700 Virtualization Engine.
Here are the two announcements :

• IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 is designed to bring efficiency to tape operation and offer versatile models that support attachment to tape libraries (ZG08-0851)
• Hardware Withdrawal: Selected TS7700 Models and Features and Selected TS3500 Features - Replacements Available (ZG08-0883)

The Virtualization Engine (TS7740) does no longer need the separate 3953 Tape Library frame with the Library Manager, the System Console and the switches to connect the Virtualization engine with the drives. There is now an ‘Integrated Library Manager’. It’s integrated into the TS7700 frame along with its associated components. You still need the 3953 Tape Library frame when you want to connect drives natively to the mainframe via a 3592-C06 controller.

The current Virtualization Engine gets a cache expansion with 2 additional CX6 cache expansion drawers. You can now have one cache controller (CC6) and 5 cache drawers (CX6) of 1,5TB giving you a maximum capacity of 9TB. This will be available in 2009Q1.
However when you order a new Virtualization Engine, it will come with new models of cache. The new cache controller (3956 Model CC7) and the new Cache Expansions (3956 Model CX7) have 16 300GB 15k rpm fiber channel Hard Drives. This gives us approximately 3.43TB usable capacity (after RAID and spares). For the moment you can have one controller and three expansions providing a maximum capacity of nearly 14TB. These new models cannot be intermixed with the current CC6 controller.

The first announcement (ZG08-0851) also adds a completely new storage component to the IBM System Storage offerings. It’s the TS7720 Disk-Only Virtualization Engine for mainframe. The TS7720 Virtualization Engine gives you the same functionalities and benefits as the TS7740 Virtualization Engine, but without the attachment to physical tapes. The setup and configuration are the same as with the TS7740 and there’s support for z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE and z/TPF.
As nothing is written to physical tape, this asks for a larger cache. So you can have 40TB or 70TB of usable, non-compressed capacity. The disks are 1TB Raid-6 SATA drives.

Other features

• Four 4Gbps FICON interfaces
• 256 virtual tape devices
• Maximum of 1.000.000 logical volumes
• Logical volume sizes up to 4.000MB
• Stand-alone or Grid configuration (two and three site configurations)
• Intermix "of full TS7740s with TS7720s is not supported at this time".
  

IBM Press Room : Next-Generation Mainframe (z10 BC) and Storage Offerings

Starting with the press releases IBM is announcing new storage offerings (IBM Unveils Next-Generation Storage Offerings To Help Mainframe Clients) and of course the new z10 BC (IBM Launches Next-Generation Mainframe for Midsize Customers).

Regarding the storage : highlights according to the press release are first some enhancements to the DS8000 like High Performance FICON for System z and z/OS Metro/Global Mirror Incremental Resync. But the second is perhaps even more interesting : the new TS7720 Virtualization engine. "The TS7720 provides the benefits of the TS7700 Virtualization Engine with the additional flexabilbity of storing up to 70 Terabytes (TB) of data on a disk".

And then there's of course the z10 BC. There's not much technical detail in the Press Announcement, but don't worry, you'll get plenty of them as soon as the announcements come out. Accents are on server consolidation, performance, energy costs, security ...

Here's a picture of the new z10 BC from the IBM Press Room :



In my next posts I'll come back with a lot more details on all announcements that are made today.