IBM XIV 11.1.1 Announced

Yesterday IBM announced details of the planned release of IBM XIV Storage System software V11.1.1 on August the 9th. The key enhancements within the software include:

• 1 TB raw capacity per drive support
• XIV USGv6 certification
• SCVMM 2012 integration
• XIV versions 11.1.x and 10.2.x certified for VMWare Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 4.1 and 5.x compliance

SVC and Storwize V7000 Real time Compression

Last month IBM released the 6.4 code for SVC and V7000. The main feature this code release introduced was Real time Compression (RtC). Being over at Storage Bootcamp in IBM Montpellier last week I got the chance to perform some testing on RtC, global mirror with change tracking on SVC & V7000 and creating automated migration policies for file systems on V7000U (Blog posts on global mirror with change tracking and automated migration policies for file systems will be posted up soon)

The impressive IBM Montpellier complex

IBM Storage Virtualization Boot Camp

IBM PSSC Montpellier, France - July 5th & 6th 2012
Agenda:
Introduction on IBM Block storage Virtualization solutions : SVC & Storwize V7000
Introduction on new IBM Storwize V7000 Unified (Block & File)
Virtualization last Advanced features:
                 Low Bandwith Remote Mirroring
                 Real Time Compression integration, …
SVC & VMware integration 
Storage management with TPC
Zoning implementation & configuration for SVC

Really looking forward to the IBM Storage Virtualization Boot Camp coming up this week. If anyone else is making the journey over for the boot camp and fancies a beer on the Wednesday night before feel free to give me a shout before hand

SVC to V7000 Migration

Hello all, for those of you wondering, yes I am still alive! I apologise for going AWOL for 6 months! However I am now back and hope to be regularly updating my blog with all my experiences and findings e.t.c. 

So whats the story? Back in 2010 IBM released the Storwize V7000 and subsequently the Storwize V7000 Unified. The IBM Storwize V7000 is IBMs next generation mid-range storage Virtualization platform. The platform has been built utilising many features from IBMs best of breed solutions including SVC, DS8000 and XIV. The features list is huge and my favourites include Easy Tier, the Dynamic Migration capabilities, the External Storage Subsystem Virtualization capabilities (these are not vendor limited - V6.3 Supported Hardware List, Device Driver, Firmware and Recommended Software Levels for IBM Storwize V7000) VAAI integration, vCenter integration and Clustered Systems. In a sentence it's a solid mid-range storage subsystem containing many features you would only expect to see on an enterprise level storage subsystem.

Data migration from an SVC presenting a DS3k, DS4k & DS5k to a V7000. It looks simple doesn't it? However I recently came across a scenario with an environment running old 4F2 SVC nodes and planned to migrate all data under the SVC on DS3k, DS4k and DS5k storage onto a V7000. This presented a problem in that the V7000 can only be presented as a host to an SVC running 5.1.0.8 and above - V5.1.x - Supported Hardware List, Device Driver and Firmware Levels for IBM SVC A quick check over the Node and UPS Interoperability Matrix for SVC shows that the 4F2s are only compatible with SVC code level 4.3.x.