A look at IBM Edge 2013 tracks: Storage, PureSystems & more

Nobody ever accused this blogger of being executive caliber but that hasn’t stopped me from rummaging around the Executive Track offerings at IBM Edge 2013 coming up Jun 10-14 in Las Vegas. Called the Executive Edge, the sessions run the first two and a half days and look pretty interesting. (The technical track, which is larger and runs the entire conference, actually looks much more interesting if you are inclined toward serious geekiness; this blogger intends to attend sessions from both tracks.)

Executive Edge is organized into three sections.  The third section seems to have most of the technology product material.  Here you will find sessions on PureSystems, FlashSystems, the eX5 (x86), Storwize, and Enterprise Storage (probably DS8000).  This third section also includes this intriguing topic: How Data Science Will Change the Course of History.  If I reported to an executive, I would steer him to that one, which should be intriguing to say the least.

The first section has some interesting topics.  One looks at customer usage scenarios around big data and storage.  Some of those DancingDinosaur has already covered, like the City of Honolulu.  Another session, titled All-Flash Everywhere, will probably explain to executives how flash storage radically changes several decades of traditional storage thinking. Again, DancingDinosuar covered it a few weeks back here and also on the Storage Community blog.

Another intriguing topic in this group is Storage Futures. This is being described as: The Next Big Thing in Storage is Software Defined Storage – the inclusion of cost effective, highly automated storage in a Software Define Environment. In the session the presenter will describe the value of this approach, the technologies involved, and the adoption roadmap IBM recommends clients to follow.  This is a great topic, a part of what I describe as Software Defined Everything.  This blogger has been briefed on IBM’s plans in this regard but can’t write or talk publicly until—guess when—IBM Edge 20913. This should be an interesting session.

The second section picks up where Storage Futures left off with Software Defined Networking, another part of my Software Defined Everything but one that is gaining traction today. Another session in this section will look at defending against cyber-threats with security-ready infrastructure and security intelligence in a virtualized world.

Security should attract a crowd of executives; whenever DancingDinosaur talks with executives about cloud computing you can see fear sweep over them.  The cloud, to them, is the Wild West filled with bad guys behind every rock. They may be right, but those same bad guys already are feeding on their on-premise systems. Reputable cloud computing vendors intending to survive are highly attuned to the security challenges. With luck this session will reassure them that they aren’t defenseless.

Have you registered for IBM Edge 2013 yet?  Last year this blogger was shocked at how many people–several thousand–showed up, and this year promises to be even bigger. Overall, IBM Edge 2013 will offer over 140 storage sessions, over 50 PureSystems sessions, more than 50 client case studies, and sessions on big data and analytics along with a full cloud track.  Look for me in the Social Media Lounge at the conference and in the sessions.  You can follow this blogger on Twitter for conference updates @Writer1225 and using hashtag #IBMEdge to post live Twitter comments from the conference. And then there is the FREE drink: I’ll buy a drink for the first two people who come up to me and say they read DancingDinosaur.  How’s that for motivation!

IBM FlashSystem Remakes Data Center Economics

Yesterday IBM announced the IBM FlashSystem, to drive Flash technology further into the enterprise. The IBM FlashSystem is a line of all-Flash storage appliances based on technology IBM acquired from Texas Memory Systems.

Flash can shorten the response of servers and storage systems to data requests from milliseconds to microseconds – an order of magnitude improvement. And because it is all electronic—nothing mechanical involved—and being delivered cost-efficiently at even petabyte scale, it can remake data center economics, especially for transaction-intensive and IOPS-intensive situations.

For example, the IBM FlashSystem 820 is the size of a pizza box but 20x faster than spinning hard drives and can store up to 24 TB of data.  At the high end, you can assemble a 1 PB FlashSystem that fits in one rack and delivers 22 million IOs per second (IOPS). IBM calculates you would need 630 racks of high capacity hard disk drives or 315 racks of performance optimized disk to generate an equal amount of IOPS.

Mainframe shops already are familiar with Flash mainly in the form of cache and SSD. The zEnterprise makes extensive use of cache to boost performance and to ensure reliability and availability. The DS8000 storage line has been SSD capable for several years.  The IBM System Storage DS8870, for example, comes equipped with IBM POWER7- based controllers. In a tiered storage environment it can automatically optimize the use of each storage tier, particularly SSD and now Flash, through the free IBM Easy Tier capability.

The IBM FlashSystem changes data center economics. One cloud provider reported deploying 5TB in 3.5 inches of rack space compared to deploying 1300 hard disks to achieve 400k IOPS and it did so at one-tenth the cost.  Overall, Wikibon reports an all Flash approach will lower total system costs by 30%; that’s $4.9 million for all flash compared to $7.1 million for hard disk.  Specifically, it reduced software license costs 38%, required 17% few servers, and lowered environmental costs by 74% and operational support costs by 35%.  At the same time it boosted storage utilization by 50% while reducing maintenance and simplifying management with corresponding labor savings.

For data center managers, this runs counter to everything they learned about the cost of storage. Traditional storage economics starts with the cost of hard disk storage being substantially less than the cost of SSD or Flash on a $/GB basis. Organizations could justify SSD, however, by using it in small amounts to tap its sizeable cost/IOPS advantage for IOPS-intensive workloads.

IBM reversed traditional storage economics with the new FlashSystem storage by adopting a different approach to understanding the storage investment. Forget about cost/GB; even forget about cost/IOPS. Instead, focus on a systems perspective by considering all the costs involved in the total solution, from energy consumption to hard disk failure to labor to the cost of server software licensing. Then factor in the economic benefits of handling more transactions faster, more responsive systems, faster analytics, and more.

As reported in PC World, Steve Mills, IBM Senior Vice President put it this way at the introduction:  Right now, generic hard drives cost about $2 per gigabyte. An enterprise hard drive will cost about $4 per gigabyte, and a high-performance hard drive will run about $6 per gigabyte. If an organization stripes its data across more disks for better performance, the cost goes up to about $10 per gigabyte. In some cases, where performance is critical, hard-drive costs can skyrocket to $30 or $50 per gigabyte. A solid state disk from IBM runs about $10 per gigabyte and can be filled to capacity, so they actually are less expensive in many cases.

And Mills was only talking from the cost/GB perspective; when you take a full systems perspective Flash looks even better. Said Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, Systems Storage, IBM Systems & Technology Group in the announcement: “The economics and performance of Flash are at a point where the technology can have a revolutionary impact on enterprises, especially for transaction-intensive applications.” But this actually goes beyond just transactions. Also look at big data analytics workloads, technical computing, and any other IOPS-intensive work.

As far as z data centers go, the IBM FlashSystem appliances, aimed primarily at open systems, are off in the future. However, mainframe data centers can continue to leverage SSD and Flash as they have and even expand it since it is increasingly easier to justify the investment, especially with an IBM enterprise-class SSD running about $10 per gigabyte.  IBM further extends the value of SSD/Flash through the use of Real-time Compression and thin provisioning, which stretches your bang for the buck.  So, using your workloads as the guide start thinking about cost-effectively working more SSD/Flash into your data center to lower costs.

Oracle’s Tough 3Q and New SPARC Chip

Almost like a good news/bad news joke, Oracle announced dismal financials last week along with the next rev of its SPARC processor. The company clearly is hoping that the new processor will revive its rapidly fading hardware business and pose some sort of challenge to IBM’s zEnterprise and Power Systems.

Hardware systems product revenue was $671 million. That’s sounds good for a quarter until you realize it was down 23% over the previous year. Ouch. Hardware systems support didn’t do much better, falling to $570 million even as Oracle’s hardware maintenance prices continued to climb, noted Timothy Sipples, who writes a blog called Mainframe.  Hardware platforms go through refresh cycles, as DancingDinosaur readers know, but Oracle has been struggling at this with Sun for three years.

Note that these figures include what Oracle calls its engineered systems like Exadata and Exalogic. These types of systems combine Oracle’s Sun hardware with its software in an optimized product. Such systems were expected to provide the synergies necessary to justify the initial Sun acquisition. And maybe they will someday, but Oracle stockholders have to be getting impatient. Along with the engineered systems was Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster.  During that time IBM has been delivering its own highly optimized systems, hybrid systems, a new generation of  HPC systems, and expert-integrated systems.

Oracle’s 3Q report didn’t even mention its storage business, which consists mainly of StorageTek tape products and Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance family.  By comparison, IBM has been advancing its storage offerings with products like Storwize, XIV, Real-time Compression, SSD, and more.

About the only bright spot Oracle could point to was its cloud effort. In the 3Q report it declared: “The Oracle Cloud is the most robust and comprehensive cloud platform available with services at the infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS) and application (SaaS) level. In Q3, our SaaS revenue alone grew well over 100% as lots of new customers adopted our Sales, Service, Marketing and Human Capital Management applications in the Cloud,” according to Oracle President, Mark Hurd. And even here IBM has been busily building out its SmartCloud as-a-service offerings and putting them into a slew of SmarterPlanet initiatives.

From the standpoint of DancingDinosaur readers, who tend to focus on the System z, zEnterprise, and Power Systems, the most interesting part of Oracle’s recent activity is the new SPARC processor, the T5. New T5 servers can have up to eight microprocessors while Oracle’s new M5 system can be configured with up to thirty-two microprocessors. The M5 runs the Oracle database 10 times faster than the M9000 it replaces, according to Oracle. For the record, the top end zEC12 includes 101 cores. The zEC12 chip runs at 5.5 GHz.

Elizabeth Stahl, IBM’s chief technical strategist and benchmark guru, wrote this on her blog about Oracle’s T5 claims: Many of the claims are Oracle’s own benchmarks that are not published and audited. For price claims, Oracle, as they’ve done in the past, only factors in the price of the pizza box – make sure you add in the all-important software and storage. Stahl goes on to directly address Oracle’s benchmark claims here.

DancingDinosaur has been waiting for a rebound of the SPARC platform in the hopes that it might revive the Solaris on z initiative led by David Boyes and others. They actually had it working and at least one serious bank was piloting it. Lack of support from Oracle/Sun and IBM killed it. Solaris on z could have attracted Sun customers to the zEnterprise, mainly those in banking and financial services where Solaris and Sun were strong.  In case you are interested, Oracle still offers Solaris, now Oracle Solaris 11, and touts it as the first cloud OS.

zEC12 Drives Buoyant IBM Results

IBM posted strong 4Q 2012 and full year 2012 financials on Tuesday.  So strong that the results beat Wall Street’s expectations, as did the technology bellwether’s guidance for the current year. The results bumped up IBM’s stock and helped fuel a market rally for a couple of days at least.

DancingDinosaur particularly liked the performance of the System z. Q4 2012 revenues from System z increased 56% compared with the year-ago period, reflecting the contribution of the zEC12 introduced in 3Q 2012. System z revenue in the growth markets increased 68%. Total delivery of System z computing power, as measured in MIPS, increased 66% versus the prior year and represented the largest MIPS shipment quarter in the company’s history, according to IBM.  New workload specialty engines, including the Linux IFL, represented one-half of the MIPS shipped, a further sign that Linux on z is finally gaining real traction after a decade.

Revenues from Power Systems decreased 19% compared with the 2011 period. DancingDinosaur expects that to turn around in 2013 as more Power products using the new Power7+ processor catch on and will get a further boost when machines running the POWER8 processor come out, maybe even in late 2013. DancingDinosaur wrote about Power7+ here back in October.

Let’s let IBM’s top boss, Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and chief executive officer gloat a little: “We achieved record profit, earnings per share and free cash flow in 2012.  Our performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year was driven by our strategic growth initiatives—growth markets, analytics, cloud computing, Smarter Planet solutions—which support our continued shift to higher-value businesses. Looking ahead, we continue to invest to deliver innovations for the enterprise in key areas such as big data, mobile solutions, social business and security, while expanding into new markets and reaching new clients.  We are well on track toward our long-term roadmap for operating EPS of at least $20 in 2015. If you are an IBM fan, it doesn’t get much better than this.

DancingDinosaur was surprised that the System z was driving the bus this quarter. It expected the front position to be taken by services or software, not hardware and certainly not the z, which sometimes comes across as a multi-billion dollar afterthought.

Software was another high point. According to IBM, software rang up $7.9 billion, an increase of 3% (up 4%, adjusting for currency) from 4Q 2011. Of more interest to DancingDinosaur was IBM’s key middleware products, which are key to driving new workloads on the z.

The middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus, and Rational rang up $5.5 billion, an increase of 5% (up 6%, adjusting for currency) versus 4Q 2011. Specifically, revenues from the WebSphere family of software products increased 11% year over year.  Information Management software revenues increased 2% and revenues from Tivoli software increased 4%.  The best performers were Lotus software (including IBM Connections), which increased 9%, and Rational software, up 12%.  It is these products, along with Linux on z and Java that enable the kind of new workloads mainframe shops are likely to run.

So, DancingDinosaur has to conclude that this was a pretty good week for IBM and particularly for those invested in the mainframe.

IBM Technical Computing Tackles Big Data

IBM Technical Computing, also referred to as high performance computing (HPC), bolstered its Platform Computing Symphony product for big data mainly by adding enterprise-ready InfoSphere BigInsights Hadoop capabilities. The Platform Symphony product now includes Apache Hadoop, map/reduce and indexing capabilities, application accelerators, and development tools. IBM’s recommended approach to simplifying and accelerating big data analytics entails the integration of Platform Symphony, General Parallel File System (GPFS), Intelligent Cluster, and DCS3700 storage.

This is not to say that IBM is leaving the traditional supercomputing and HPC market. Its Sequoia supercomputer recently topped the industry by delivering over 16 petaflops of performance.  Earlier this year it also unveiled the new LRZ SuperMUC system, built with IBM System x iDataPlex direct water cooled dx360 M4 servers encompassing more than 150,000 cores to provide a peak performance of up to three petaflops.  SuperMUC, run by Germany’s Bavarian Academy of Science’s Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, will be used to explore the frontiers of medicine, astrophysics, quantum chromodynamics, and other scientific disciplines.

But IBM is intent on broadening the scope of HPC by pushing it into mainstream business. With technical computing no longer just about supercomputers the company wants to extend technical computing to diverse industries. It already has a large presence in the petroleum, life sciences, financial services, automotive, aerospace, defense, and electronics for compute-intensive workloads. Now it is looking for new areas where a business can exploit technical computing for competitive gain.  Business analytics and big data are the first candidates that come to mind.

When it comes to big data, the Platform Symphony product already has posted some serious Hadoop benchmark results:

• Terasort , a big data benchmark that tests the efficiency MapReduce clusters in handling very large datasets—Platform Symphony used 10x less cores
• SWIM, a benchmark developed at UC Berkley that simulates real-world workload patterns on Hadoop clusters—Platform Symphony ran 6x faster
• Sleep, a standard measure to compare core scheduling efficiency of MapReduce workloads—Platform Symphony came out 60x faster.

Technical computing at IBM involves System x, Power, System i, and PureFlex—just about everything except z. And it probably could run on the z too through x or p blades in the zBX.

Earlier this month IBM announced a number of technical computing enhancements including a high-performance, low-latency big data platform encompassing IBM’s Intelligent Cluster, Platform Symphony, IBM GPFS, and System Storage DCS3700. Specifically for Platform Symphony is a new low latency Hadoop multi-cluster capability that scales to 100,000 cores per application and shared memory logic for better big data application performance.

Traditionally, HPC customers coded their own software to handle the nearly mind-boggling complexity of the problems they were trying to solve. To expand technical computing to mainstream business, IBM has lined up a set of ISVs to provide packaged applications covering CAE, Life Science, EDA, and more. These include Rogue Wave, ScaleMP, Ansys, Altair, Accelrys, Cadence, Synopsys, and others.

IBM also introduced the new Flex System HPC Starter Configuration, a hybrid system that can handle both POWER7 and System x.  The starter config includes the Flex Enterprise Chassis, an Infiniband (IB) chassis switch, Power7 compute node, and an IB expansion card for Power or x86 nodes. Platform Computing software handles workload management and optimizes resources. IBM describes it as a high density, price/performance offering but hasn’t publicly provided any pricing. Still, it should speed time to HPC.

As technical computing goes mainstream it will increasingly focus on big data and Hadoop.  Compute-intensive, scientific-oriented companies already do HPC. The newcomers want to use big data techniques to identify fraud, reduce customer churn, make sense of customer sentiment, and similar activities associated with big data. Today that calls for Hadoop which has become the de facto standard for big data, although that may change going forward as a growing set of alternatives to Hadoop gain traction.

IBM Introduces POWER7+ and More

IBM’s Systems and Technology Group (STG) introduced a slew of new products and enhancements, both hardware and software, for the System z and Power. The System z announcements, which DancingDinosaur will take up in subsequent posts, focused mainly on software enhancements, such as new revs of CICS and Omegamon, for the zEC12. The Power announcements covered new capabilities as well as new machines. And all the announcements in one way or another address IBM’s current big themes: Cloud, Analytics, and Security.

Of the new Power announcements, Power7+ certainly is the star.  Other capabilities, such as elastic capacity on demand and dynamic Power system pools, may prove more important in the long run. Another new announcement, the EXP30 Ultra SSD I/O Drawer, may turn out quite useful as organizations appreciate the possibilities of SSD and ramp up usage.

Power7+, with 2 billion transistors, promises to deliver 40% more performance, especially for Java workloads, compared to Power7.  Combined with other enhancements Power announced, it looks particularly good for data and even real-time analytics workloads.  The new processor boasts 4.4 GHz speeds, a 10MB L3 cache per core (8 cores =80 MB), and a random number generator along with improved single precision floating point performance and an enhanced GX system bus. IBM invested the additional transistors primarily in the cache. All of this will aid performance.

The enhanced chip also brings an active memory expansion accelerator and an on-chip encryption accelerator for AIX. Previously this was handled in software; now it is done in hardware for better performance and efficiency.  Power7+ also can handle 20 VMs per core, double the number of Power7 VMs. This allows system administrators to make VM partitions, especially development partitions, quite small (just 5% of the core).  With energy enhancements, it also delivers 5x more performance per watt. New power gating also allows the chip to be configured in a variety of ways. The upshot: more flexibility.

Elastic capacity on demand (CoD) and Power System Pools work hand in hand.  Depending on the server model, you can create what amounts to a huge pool of shared system resources, either permanent or temporary. IBM has offered versions of CoD for years, but they typically entailed elaborate set up and cumbersome activation routines to make the capacity available.  Again, depending on the model IBM is promising more flexible CoD and easier activation, referring to it as instant elasticity.  If it works as described, you should be able to turn multiple Power servers into a massive shared resource. Combine these capabilities to create a private cloud based on these new servers and you could end up with a rapidly expandable private cloud. Usually, it would take a hybrid cloud for that kind of expansion, and even that is not necessarily simple to set up. The payback: greater agility.

There are, however, limitations to elastic CoD and Power Systems Pool. An initial quantity of CoD credits are offered only with new Power 795 and Power 780 (a Power7+ machine). There also is a limit of 10 Power 795 and/or 780 servers in each pool.

Enterprises are just starting to familiarize themselves with SSD, what it can do for them, and how best to deploy. The EXP30 Ultra SSD I/O Drawer, scheduled for general release in November, should make it easier to include SSD in an enterprise infrastructure strategy using the GX++ bus. The 1U drawer can hold up to 30 SSD drives (387 GB) in that small footprint.  That’s a lot of resource in a tight space: 11.6 TB of capacity, 480,000 read IOPS, and 4.5 GB/s of aggregate bandwidth. IBM reports that it can cut batch window processing by up to 50% and reduce the number of HDD by up to 10x. Plus, you can still attach up to 48 HDD downstream for another 43 TB. The result: great scalability and efficiency.

And this just touches on some of what IBM packed into the Oct. 3 announcement. DancingDinosaur will look at other pieces of the Power announcement, from enhancements of PowerVM to PowerSC for security and compliance as well as look at the enhancements made to zEC12 software.

IBM Edge 2013—Next Year in Las Vegas

The IBM storage conference, Edge 2012, stunned this blogger when he walked into the first plenary session and saw over 2000 people.  Pretty impressive for a first-time conference. The sessions were meaty. You can experience some of the best sessions here. This blogger recapped the conference here, on DancingDinosaur’s sister blog, BottomlineIT.

Now IBM has announced plans to do it again next June. IBM Edge 2013 will be at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, June 10-14.  Check the details here. They promise more sessions, more announcements, and more customer presentations.  Expect a dozen or so, maybe more, zEnterprise storage sessions, and more for PureSystems and Power. DancingDinosaur expects to attend but nothing has been firmed up yet.

By now everyone has seen the latest IBM quarterly report (2Q 12), an improvement for sure. Second-quarter net income was $3.9 billion compared with $3.7 billion in the second quarter of 2011, an increase of 6%.

Total revenues for the second quarter of 2012 of $25.8 billion were down 3% (up 1%, adjusting for currency) from the second quarter of 2011.  Said a bullish Ginni Rometty, IBM president and chief executive officer: “Looking ahead, we are well positioned to deliver greater value to a wider range of clients and to our shareholders. Given our performance in the first half and our outlook for the second half, we are raising our full-year operating earnings per share expectations to at least $15.10.” You can check out the IBM 2Q announcement here.

Looking at the hardware and software products, there certainly is reason to expect growth. For hardware revenues from the Systems and Technology segment totaled $4.3 billion for the quarter, down 9% (down 7%, adjusting for currency) from the second quarter of 2011. Total systems revenues decreased 7% (down 5 %, adjusting for currency). Revenues from Power Systems were down 7% compared with the 2011 period but just besting System x where revenues dropped 8%.

Revenues from System z mainframe server products decreased 11% compared with a year earlier. Total delivery of System z computing power, as measured in MIPS, decreased 8%. Revenues from System Storage decreased 4%. The mainframe decline was to be expected. IBM historically refreshes the mainframe every three years so the zEnterprise is due a refresh in 2013, which Jeff Frey confirmed to DancingDinosaur just a few weeks ago.

The new rev, noted Frey, will address some of the current gaps, like partition mobility and live image mobility as well as the usual bigger and faster story. You can see more of DancingDinosaur’s previous discussion with Frey here. At this point, it makes sense for shops to delay refreshing their mainframe hardware unless IBM is offering an incredible deal they cannot refuse.

The picture was better on the software side. Revenues from software were $6.2 billion, flat (up 4%, adjusting for currency) compared with the second quarter of 2011. Revenues from IBM’s key middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus and Rational products—all products mainframe shops typically use—were $3.9 billion, flat (up 4%, adjusting for currency) versus the second quarter of 2011. Operating systems revenues of $628 million were flat (up 3%, adjusting for currency) compared with the prior-year quarter. The two brightest sports were the WebSphere family of software products where revenues increased 3% year over year and Tivoli, which increased 2%. Information Management software revenues decreased 1%. Revenues from Lotus decreased 8%, and Rational revenue dropped 7%.

As IBM’s CFO Mark Loughridge put it in the announcement: IBM gained market share in its high-end server businesses,  which includes the zEnterprise mainframes. The world needs servers even amidst model cycles and economic challenges so winning the market share battle helps assure future success. IBM’s history is replete with examples of its prospering during lean times. And when the new z arrives, DancingDinosuar expects a pickup to follow.

Postscript to DancingDinosaur’s July 10 piece on the HP Itanium future: HP yesterday won its lawsuit against Oracle, which has been ordered by the court to continue to support its software on the Itanium platform. An appeal will surely follow.

System z Finally Comes to SmartCloud

A few weeks ago IBM announced it was bringing the System z to its SmartCloud Enterprise offerings.  This raises a few questions, for starters: what took IBM so long? You could argue that the mainframe, as the original time-shared system, has been doing an early form of cloud computing for decades. More recently, mainframes have been available as hosted services at the company’s data centers.

Maybe a better question is why now? Might it be that Oracle bolstered its cloud offerings earlier this month? Similarly, barely a week ago EMC announced a cloud venture with a Verizon subsidiary. Not to be left out, HP also announced an updated converged cloud strategy last week. In that sense, IBM was ahead of the curve with its latest SmartCloud enterprise announcement, including System z. The industry’s sudden infatuation with big data is driving vendors to bolster their public and private cloud offerings.

IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ for System z, as IBM describes it, is a cloud computing service designed to meet the evolving needs of IBM mainframe organizations. The service provides shared, secure and scalable IBM z/OS mainframe capacity delivered as secured logical partitions (LPARs) within a continually refreshed, managed environment residing in the cloud. IBM suggests companies will adopt this offering to avoid capital outlays for hardware and reduce software expenditures as they move toward a pay-for-use financial model.

In fact, IBM presents what amounts to myriad public, private, and hybrid cloud offerings. The IBM System z Capacity Offering for Cloud allows for partial balancing of incremental capacity growth on IBM zEnterprise 196 or z114 during a twelve month period. The offering enables companies to deal with business change by moving capacity between systems and even between locations.  As to be expected, IBM constrains how much you can rebalance, although the constraints are based on an unusually straightforward formula.

The IBM System z Disaster Recovery Offering for Cloud offers active capacity mobility between IBM zEnterprise 196 or z114 primary servers and disaster recovery servers. As IBM explains: companies need to test their disaster recovery capability by running production at the disaster recovery site over an extended period of time, such as when wanting to ensure, in the event of a disaster, all systems and processes can efficiently run from the disaster recovery site.

To that end, System z Disaster Recovery Offering for Cloud allows active capacity mobility between z196 or z114 primary servers and mirrored disaster recovery servers. With this offering an organization can perform a thorough disaster recovery test longer than a CBU test by moving its primary active workload on z196 or z114 to its disaster recovery server for up to 60 days. Usually this is needed to satisfy stringent audit or compliance requirements.

Again, the product comes with a few constraints.  For example, a workload may be moved up to four times a year, and for each move the maximum time a workload may run on the Disaster Recovery machine is 60 days.

There are more IBM SmartCloud offerings than noted above. And DancingDinosaur expects to see other z offerings in the cloud moving forward. Fully virtualized from the start, the z is a natural for the cloud. Power, another highly virtualized and integrated IBM system that should play well in the cloud, also has a SmartCloud offering now.  It’s about time.

PureSystems Joins zEnterprise Hybrid Family

A few weeks ago, DancingDinosaur noted that IBM’s new PureSystems was a natural fit for the zEnterprise and hybrid computing, click here. In a later briefing, IBM essentially said as much: Clients can connect IBM zEnterprise and IBM PureSystems (via Ethernet) to gain benefits of simplified management and lower IT infrastructure costs for all workloads. That’s the hybrid computing promise.

The zEnterprise with the zBX runs z/OS, AIX, Linux, and Windows. PureSystems runs AIX, i/OS, Linux and Windows. Between the two, you cover IBM’s primary platforms. The question becomes which workload to run where.

IBM’s simple answer: when data or applications exist on System z and you desire zEnterprise governance go with the zEnterprise-zBX environment populated with the appropriate blades. However, when data and applications run on a combination of Power and System x platforms, go with PureSystems.

On its website, IBM explains the choice between zBX or the new IBM PureSystems for hybrid computing: If you have a workload that traditionally ran on a distributed system, and the work spans System z and AIX, Linux, or Windows, then the zEnterprise with zBX is still the best choice. The zBX delivers the value proposition of tight integration for these hybrid workloads using the management functions of the Unified Resource Manager (zManager).

Or you can opt for PureSystems if you find you have a hybrid workload and don’t desire the governance and tight integration with System z. You still can connect the PureSystems device to the zEnterprise via your existing Ethernet network. Tivoli products can provide the integration of business processes.

Of course, if you have the zEnterprise and add PureSystems, you end up with two hybrid management tools, the Unified Resource Manager for zEnterprise and the Flex System Manager with PureSystems, for what should be one hybrid environment. Ooops, this undermines the promised management efficiency of hybrid computing. IBM promises to address this in the future through tighter integration of both systems.

The choice of a hybrid computing environment, given that most z shops already have multiple platforms, is not straightforward.  Pricing and workload performance have to be considered. For example, does a PowerLinux blade as a PureSystems component deliver better price/performance than Linux running as an IFL on z?  Similarly, where should Windows workloads run, on an Hx5 blade in the zBX or on a PureSystems device? At this point, there’s not enough pricing and performance data to decide. It may come down to scalability.

IBM, however, has been steadily improving hybrid computing on the z. It has enabled programmatic access to the zManager, expanded internal network communication between the zEnterprise and the zBX, and added support for virtual storage management.  Looking ahead, IBM already is planning zBX support for the next generation z and promises to more tightly integrate the zEnterprise with PureSystems. The zEnterprise, zBX, and hybrid computing apparently will be around for a while.

Finally, take note: on April 9, DancingDinosaur covered mainframe storage sessions being planned for the upcoming IBM Edge conference (June 4-8, Orlando).  Now there is the chance to win a free pass (value $2000). This giveaway is for one pass and is sponsored by The Storage Community. The giveaway is only open to US residents. State, local and federal government employees are not eligible.  To access the IBM Technical Edge2012 Conference Sweepstakes: click here for a chance to enter the raffle for a free conference pass.

Server Wars: zEnterprise vs. Oracle and HP

In the server market, especially the enterprise server market, IBM’s only serious rivals are HP and Oracle, and the latest Gartner tally shows IBM with z and Power clearly pulling ahead. According to Gartner, IBM was the 2011 market leader in the worldwide server market based on revenue, ending the year with $4.7 billion in revenue in the last quarter of 2011 for a total share of 33.7%.

Among enterprise-class RISC servers the results were problematic, except for IBM. Noted Gartner: Overall, RISC and Itanium UNIX revenue decreased 3.9% in the fourth quarter of 2011, although this top-level figure does not tell the whole story. HP had weak results in this segment, but IBM is benefiting from the difficulties of other vendors and consolidating its lead. IBM grew RISC/Itanium UNIX revenue by 21.4% and ended the fourth quarter with a 48.4% share of revenue in this segment.

The bad decisions HP has made, especially announcements to kill WebOS and its tablet devices and its decision to get out of the PC business, have finally hit home.  The company’s 1Q2012 financials were dismal.  Revenue was down 7% while earning per share dropped 32%.

Compared to the HP results, IBM had a good quarter, announcing fourth-quarter 2011 diluted earnings of $4.62 per share, compared with diluted earnings of $4.18 per share in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 11%. Fourth-quarter net income was $5.5 billion compared with $5.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 4%. Operating (non-GAAP) net income was $5.6 billion compared with $5.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase of 5%.

All this despite a weak quarter for IBM’s hardware group, which reported revenues of $5.8 billion for the quarter, down 8% from the year before. The group’s pre-tax income was $790 million, a decrease of 33% due mainly to unexpectedly weak mainframe sales following a streak of record setting mainframe quarterly gains. Gartner attributes this “largely due to cyclical weakness in its System z product line.” If that’s the case, Gartner must be expecting a new rev of the zEnterprise in 18 months. Let’s hope.

Based on anecdotal evidence from discussions with data center managers, DancingDinosaur is expecting System z sales to pick up before that. Some managers have reported delaying upgrades of their existing z until the economy more clearly rebounds. Others have been sniffing around the zBX, curious to kick the tires of hybrid computing. All they need is a good business case and maybe an incentive. DancingDinosaur would like to see a discounted zBX offer with a little more punch than a couple of free blades, maybe bundled into a Solution Edition package.

In the meantime, IBM continues to compete with HP and Oracle/Sun for high end server sales. That puts the z196 against Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. Oracle describes it as the world’s fastest general purpose engineered system that delivers high performance, availability, scalability and security across a wide range of enterprise applications, including database, middleware, and Oracle and custom applications. The SuperCluster T4-4, according to Oracle, provides a completely optimized package of servers, storage and software that integrates with Oracle Exadata Storage Servers and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud while utilizing the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance, InfiniBand I/O fabric, and Oracle Solaris 11. Sound nice except IBM has been optimizing the System z for multiple workloads for years.

HP offers the Integrity Superdome 2. It is built around a modular, blade design, a fault-tolerant Crossbar fabric, and 64-socket scalability that handles 256 cores (more in a future release.) It promises a low entry price (unspecified—so unable to compare with the $75k z114), but its processors run significantly slower than zEnterprise processors.

Actually, it looks like HP is betting its server future on a new line, the HP ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8). These servers represent an effort to redefine data center economics by automating every aspect of the server life cycle and spawned a new systems architecture, the HP ProActive Insight architecture, which will span the entire HP Converged Infrastructure. The servers will include integrated lifecycle automation that HP estimates can save 30 days of admin time each year per admin; dynamic workload acceleration, which can boost performance 7x; and automated energy optimization, which HP promises will nearly double compute-per-watt capacity, thereby saving an estimated $7 million in energy costs in a typical data center over three years This clearly is where HP expects to compete—against commodity x86-based machines.

DancingDinosaur sees this kind of competition as only good for enterprises that depend on IT.