Life in the Fast Lane

I recently wrote about a college visit — Big Data, Performance, and Coconut Smoothies might as well be titled Big Data at the Big Ten. And the ability to collect, measure, and analyze this massive flood of data for meaningful insights requires important non-functional IT requirements like reliability, availability, security, and of course performance.

The IBM announcement of new products and offerings today leverages cloud to improve efficiency, focuses on data to deliver more actionable insight, and secures this critical data to protect and reduce risk. It’s Cloud Ready, Data Ready, Security Ready. And, of course, Performance Ready with:

• New #1 Power Systems benchmarks for the new POWER7+ systems across a wide portfolio of applications including SAP, Java, and Technical Computing. Read about them here.
• All the benchmarks and rPerf data in the performance report here.
• Proof points like this one: The new 48-core IBM Power 760 with DB2 10 achieved the best 48-core two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark result, surpassing the 80-core HP DL980. (1)
• Performance details on the new POWER7+ systems including Power 730, Power 740, Power 750, Power 760, PowerLinux 7R2.
• Leadership Storage performance including performance enhancements to IBM XIV. New caching algorithms increase performance compared to previous models up to 4.5 times for random and 5 times for sequential database workloads.

One thing that struck me on this college visit (besides how young everyone looks) is how college truly is an exciting new beginning. Everything is shining, brand spanking new. But this doesn’t only have to happen in college. There are frequently new beginnings throughout life.

Years ago, when social media was a relatively new concept for many of us, my manager at the time (who was always a source of exciting, new, and crazy ideas) “suggested” that I consider writing something called a blog. A downright scary idea, I implemented it anyway.

This week, this esteemed manager, colleague, mentor, associate is retiring after a very successful career of exciting ideas. To start a new beginning in the fast lane. And I will miss his inspiration. And his crazy ideas. Like a blog.

************************************************

(1)The 48-core IBM Power 760 (3.41 GHz) achieved the best 48-core two-tier SAP SD standard application benchmark result running SAP enhancement package 5 for the SAP ERP 6.0 application; 8 processors / 48 cores / 192 threads, POWER7+, 1024 GB memory, 25,488 SD benchmark users, running AIX® 7.1 and DB2® 10, dialog resp.: 0.99s, line items/hour: 2,784,330, Dialog steps/hour: 8,353,000 SAPS: 139,220, DB time (dialog/ update): .009s/.015s, CPU utilization: 99%, Certification #2013004. vs. HP DL980 G7, Xeon, SQL Server 2008, 25,160 users, 8 processors/80 cores/160 threads, SAP enhancement package 4 for SAP ERP 6.0, Certification # 2011021. http://www.sap.com. Results current as of 2/5/13.

SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SPEC, SPECint, SPECfp, SPECjbb, SPECweb, SPECjAppServer, SPECjEnterprise, SPECjvm, SPECvirt, SPECompM, SPECompL, SPECsfs, SPECpower, SPEC MPI and SPECpower_ssj are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC).

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance,SAP,SD,SPEC,SPECjbb,Linpack,SPECfp,POWER7+,

SPECint,760,DB2,740,730,750,Power,benchmark,storage,benchmarking

Performance in a Flash: New IBM XIV SSD Caching

3 ways that caching can help performance:

Caching is a type of animal behavior where an animal will store food in times of surplus for times when food is less plentiful. The place where the food is stored is called a cache and it is hidden from competing individuals. Caching can be on a long-term basis – cached on a seasonal cycle, with food to be consumed months down the line. Think acorns and squirrels. Where I live, caching is what gets a squirrel through the long cold snowy winter. So you see, caching helps performance.

Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity, hiding and seeking containers, called “caches.” This “game of high-tech hide and seek” can involve toys and Tupperware. I helped an 8 year old find this treasure long before one relied on a GPS to tell you exactly where the cache was. The best part of this activity, in my opinion, was the extremely long walks on mid summer evenings, sometimes in gigantic mile-wide circles, to find what was hidden. I was never so fit. So you see, caching helps performance.

IBM has just announced XIV with SSD Caching. High capacity SSDs are used as secondary cache (400GB SSD device can be added to each module, 6TB of cache per rack, scales with the system – 6 to 15 SSD drives). No tuning necessary.

And the very best part — nearly 3X IOPS increase for OLTP workloads. And other amazingly impressive performance feats.

So you really see, caching helps performance.

************************************************

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance, SSD, XIV,cache,caching,OLTP,volume,controller,benchmark,storage,IOPS,SPC,ASU,storage,flash,benchmarking

Big Day, Big Data, Big Announcements

This past weekend began with a movie late Friday night. Then on to a day at the beach and another day picking blueberries and paddling seven miles in a canoe on the river. It was hot and sunny every minute and all I can think is how blessed to live here and now with the opportunity to have this jam-packed weekend.

Lately, IBM has consolidated announcements into many on the same day — in a jam-packed extravaganza. And we are fortunate to have these announcements today brimming with excitement and new technologies.

When data around the world reaches 35 zettabytes by 2020, that’s big data. You need to efficiently process, analyze and store the massive and growing types and amounts of data you’re collecting. IBM has announced today new solutions that do just this.

The IBM XIV family, with Gen2 and Gen3, is proven, high-end disk storage, designed for growth with unmatched ease of use. New IBM XIV models incorporate serial attached SCSI (SAS) HDDs, increased cache and InfiniBand system internal connectivity. IBM XIV increases performance by up to 4x throughput over the previous generation to boost business intelligence processing as well as speeding up backup and archiving processes. Response time is increased by up to 3x in OLTP, database, and email applications.

And we’re not just talking legacy storage read and write raw performance here — but true application performance using tests in the lab that incorporate such diverse applications as SAS business analytics, Microsoft Exchange mailboxes, and Oracle data warehouses.

See the new ITG paper comparing XIV and EMC. See why tape is the new black. And of course, don’t miss all the awesome announcements including the IBM z114, with up to 18% performance improvement per core and up to 12% more capacity within the same energy footprint as a z10 BC — what a way to consolidate hundreds of distributed servers. And let’s not leave out the Power running Linux new benchmark results.

Jam-packed announcements, jam-packed weekend. Oh and I also made blueberry jam.

************************************************

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance, storage, strategy,XIV,tape,zettabyte,archive,Gen3,TS1140,zEnterprise,controller,Gen2,z114,application,EMC,benchmark,benchmarking

XIV, Storwize, and Jane Eyre for 200

Some books are so good that they make you forget what century you are living in. And who you are and what you do. You forget to make dinner. You forget to feed the dog.

This week I’ve been rereading one of my all time favorite novels — Jane Eyre. It is an amazing book for me because not only do I forget everything else but the emotional ups and downs of the passionate unconventional heroine are truly tremendous.

And that’s exactly how I felt last night watching Watson on Jeopardy!. Oh wow, the Yorktown IBM building looks so good. Oh great, Watson is doing so well. Oh no, Watson missed that one. Do I really want humans to lose?

As you saw last night, efficiency is important for Watson. And the same is true for today’s IBM storage announcements. Storage efficiency is the goal – store less, move data to the right place, get more from what’s on the floor. The announcements include ability to:

Speed deployment with IBM® Storwize® Rapid Application Storage solution

Compress data in real time and store up to 5 times more data on the same disk without performance degradation with IBM Real-Time Compression

Improve application performance with IBM XIV® Storage Systems support for VMware

Reduce risk with IBM FastBack for Storwize V7000, an IP-based solution for disaster recovery and business continuity

Read here for all the exciting news about IBM systems announcements today.

I’ve read that some viewers thought the IBM Jeopardy! challenge was wonderful, others thought it was more of an infomercial. But I think that everyone agrees that one of the most entertaining parts is when Watson gets it wrong. And you realize that even 90 POWER7 systems can miss a nuance. But then again, how many humans actually learn from their mistakes?

************************************************

The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management.

technorati tags: IBM, systems, performance, VMware, Watson,Jeopardy,POWER7,750,analytics,compression,benchmark,XIV,#ibmwatson,Storwize,V7000,benchmarking