IBM Expands Spectrum Storage in the Cloud with Spectrum Protect

IBM is targeting storage for hybrid clouds with Spectrum Protect. Specifically, it brings new cloud backup and a new management dashboard aimed to help businesses back up data to on-premises object storage or the cloud without the expense of cloud-gateway appliances. It also enables advanced data placement across all storage types to maximize performance, availability, and cost efficiency. Spectrum Protect represents the latest part of the IBM Spectrum storage family; which provides advanced software defined storage (SDS) storage capabilities and flexible storage either as software, an appliance, or a cloud service.  IBM announced Spectrum Protect at the end of August.

Courtesy IBM: Spectrum Protect dashboard (click to enlarge)

Introduced early this year, IBM Spectrum brings a family of optimized SDS solutions designed to work together. It offers SDS file, object, and block storage with common management and a consistent user and administrator experience.  Although it is based on IBM’s existing storage hardware products like XIV, Storwize, IBM FlashSystem, and SVC you can deploy it as software on some non IBM hardware too. It also offers support for VMware environments and includes VMware API support for VASA, VAAI, and VMware SRM. With Spectrum, IBM appears to have come up with a winner; over the last six months, IBM reports more than 1,000 new clients have chosen products from the IBM Spectrum Storage portfolio.

Specifically, IBM Spectrum Protect supports IBM Cloud infrastructure today with plans to expand to other public clouds in future. IBM Spectrum Accelerate (XIV block storage) also can be accessed as a service by IBM Cloud customers via the SoftLayer cloud infrastructure. There it allows companies to deploy block storage on SoftLayer without having to buy new storage hardware or manage appliance farm.

In competitive analysis, IBM found that a single IBM Spectrum Protect server performs the work of up to 15 CommVault servers. This means that large enterprises can consolidate backup servers to reduce cost and complexity while managing data growth from mobile, social, and Internet of Things environments.  Furthermore, SMBs can eliminate the need for a slew of infrastructure devices, including additional backup servers, media servers, and deduplication appliances, thereby reducing complexity and cost. Cost analysis with several beta customers, reports IBM, indicates that the enhanced IBM Spectrum Protect software can help clients reduce backup infrastructure costs on average by up to 53 percent.

IBM reports that the Spectrum Storage portfolio can centrally manage more than 300 different storage devices and yottabytes (yotta=10²⁴ bytes) of data.  Its device interoperability is the broadest in the industry – incorporating both IBM and non-IBM hardware and tape systems.  IBM Spectrum Storage can help reduce storage costs up to 90 percent in certain environments by automatically moving data onto the most economical storage device – either from IBM or non-IBM flash, disk, and tape systems.

IBM Spectrum Storage portfolio packages key storage software from conventional IBM storage products. These include IBM Spectrum Accelerate (IBM XIV), Spectrum Virtualize (IBM SAN Volume Controller along with IBM Storwize), Spectrum Scale (IBM General Parallel File System or GPFS technology, previously referred to as Elastic Storage), Spectrum Control (IBM Virtual Storage Center and IBM Storage Insights), Spectrum Protect (Tivoli Storage Manager family) and Spectrum Archive (various IBM tape backup products).

The portfolio is presented as a software-only product and, presumably, you can run it on IBM and some non-IBM storage hardware if you chose. You will have to compare the cost of the software license with the cost of the IBM and non-IBM hardware to decide which gets you the best deal.  It may turn out that running Spectrum Accelerate (XIV) on low cost, generic disks rather than buying a rack of XIV disk to go with it may be the lowest price. But keep in mind that the lowest cost generic disk may not meet your performance or reliability specifications.

IBM reports it also is enhancing the software-only version of IBM Spectrum Accelerate to reduce costs by consolidating storage and compute resources on the same servers. In effect, IBM is making XIV software available with portable licensing across XIV systems, on- premises servers, and cloud environments to offer greater operational flexibility. Bottom line: Possibly a good deal but be prepared to do some detailed comparative cost analysis to identify the best mix of SDS, cloud storage, and hardware at the best price for your particular needs.

In general, however, DancingDinosaur favors almost anything that increases data center configuration and pricing flexibility. With that in mind consider the IBM Spectrum options the next time you plan storage changes. (BTW, DancingDinosaur also does storage and server cost assessments should you want help.)

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran IT analyst and writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.

 

 

IBM Redefines Software Defined Storage

On Feb. 17 IBM unveiled IBM Spectrum Storage, a new storage software portfolio designed to address data storage inefficiencies by changing the economics of storage with a layer of intelligent software; in short, a software defined storage (SDS) initiative.  IBM’s new software creates an efficient data footprint that dynamically stores every bit of data at the optimal cost, helping maximize performance and ensuring security, according to the IBM announcement here.

Courtesy of IBM: IBM Storage GM demonstrates new Spectrum storage management dashboard

To accelerate the development of next-generation storage software, IBM included plans to invest more than $1 billion in its storage software portfolio over the next five years. The objective: extend its storage technology leadership, having recently been ranked #1 in SDS platforms for the first three quarters of 2014 by leading industry analyst firm IDC. The investment will focus on R&D of new cloud storage software, object storage, and open standard technologies including OpenStack.

“Traditional storage is inefficient in today’s world where the value of each piece of data is changing all the time,” according to Tom Rosamilia, Senior Vice President, IBM Systems, in the announcement. He went on: “IBM is revolutionizing storage with our Spectrum Storage software that helps clients to more efficiently leverage their hardware investments to extract the full business value of data.”

Two days later IBM announced another storage initiative, flash products aimed directly at, EMC. The announcement focused on two new all-flash enterprise storage solutions, FlashSystem V9000 and FlashSystem 900. Each promises industry-leading performance and efficiency, along with outstanding reliability to help lower costs and accelerate data-intensive applications. The new solutions can provide real-time analytical insights with up to 50x better performance than traditional enterprise storage, and up to 4x better capacity in less rack space than EMC XtremIO flash technology.

Driving interest in IBM Spectrum storage is research suggesting that less than 50% of storage is effectively utilized. Storage silos continue to be rampant throughout the enterprise as companies recreate islands of Hadoop-based data along with more islands of storage to support ad hoc cloud usage. Developers create yet more data silos for dev, testing, and deployment.

IBM Storage Spectrum addresses these issues and more through a SDS approach that separates storage capabilities and intelligence from the physical devices. The resulting storage is self-tuning and leverages analytics for efficiency, automation, and optimization. By capitalizing on its automatic data placement capabilities IBM reports it can meet services levels while reducing storage costs by as much as 90%.

Specifically, IBM Spectrum consists of six storage software elements:

1. IBM Spectrum Control—analytics-driven data management to reduce costs by up to 50%
2. IBM Spectrum Protect—optimize data protection to reduce backup costs by up to 38%
3. IBM Spectrum Archive—fast data retention that reduces TCO for archive data by up to 90%
4. IBM Spectrum Virtualize—virtualization of mixed environment to store up to 5x more data
5. IBM Spectrum Accelerate—enterprise storage for cloud, which can be deployed in minutes instead of months
6. IBM Spectrum Scale—high-performance, highly scalable storage for unstructured data

Each of these elements can be mapped back to existing IBM storage solutions.  Spectrum Accelerate, for example, uses IBM’s XIV capabilities. Spectrum virtualization is based on IBM’s San Volume Controller (SVC) technology. Spectrum Scale is based on GPFS, now called Elastic Storage, to handle file and object storage at massive scale yet within a single global name space.  Spectrum Archive, based on IBM’s LTFS, allows an organization to treat tape as a low cost, fully active tier.  In effect, with IBM Spectrum, an organization can go from flash cache to tape, all synced worldwide within a single name space.

A big part of what IBM is doing amounts to repackaging the capabilities it has built into its storage systems and proven in various products like XIV or GPFS or SVC as software components to be used as part of an SDS deployment. This raises some interesting possibilities. For instance, is it cheaper to use Spectrum Accelerate with a commodity storage array or buy the conventional XIV storage product?  The same probably could be asked of Spectrum Virtualize with SVC or Spectrum Archive with LTFS.

DancingDinosaur asked the Spectrum marketing team exactly that question.  Their response: With Accelerate you have the flexibility to size the server to the performance needs of the solution, so while the software cost remains the same regardless of the server you select. The cost of the server will vary depending on what the client needs. We will make available a sizing guide soon so each client’s situation can be modeled based on the solution requirements. In all cases it really depends on the hardware chosen vs. the (IBM) appliance. If the hardware closely matches the hardware of the appliance then costs differences will be minimal. It all depends on the price the client gets, so yes, in theory, a white box may be lower cost.

With Spectrum Accelerate (XIV), IBM continues, the client can also deploy the software on a cluster of just 3 servers (minimum) and leverage existing Ethernet networking.  This minimum configuration will be much lower cost than the minimum XIV system configuration cost. Spectrum Accelerate can also be licensed on a monthly basis, so those clients with variable needs or deploying to the cloud the client can deploy and pay for only what they need when they need it.

It is a little different for the other Spectrum offerings. DancingDinosaur will continue chasing down those details. Stay tuned. DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran IT analyst and writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. Follow more of his IT writing on Technologywriter.com and here.