thinkASG

Team thinkASG just concluded the first 6 of 12 Over the Hump (OTH) mountain bike races on June 29th!   Congratulations to the team for finishing 6 races so far and is still injury free!  For a month and a half we’ve been convening every Tuesday nite to join 700 or so of our closest dirt eating Orange County friends and associates to race circuits around Irvine Lake. 

The team includes Mike Soursby from Kawasaki, John Engel, Tom Orr and David Browning  from thinkASG.  We’re a great blend of customer and employees and a variety of riding styles that share a passion and dedication to moutain biking together all over O.C. multiple days each week.  

Big John Engel keeps rolling like a freight train along with Seatpost Tom Orr and Mikey ”Mr. Sour” Soursby (sub team Kawasaki!). They have joined forces in the beginner 4 class and are steadily moving up in their ranks while challenging each other.  Yours truly, David Browning, is holding his own in the sport 3 group.  The events have been great fun, excellent exercise and invoked varying degrees of humility. The course has changed three times now, forwards, backwards, climbs, singletrack, even a lake crossing on a dock. We’ve enjoyed watching the pros fly by, seeing the families riding together and an occasional thinkASG fan on the sideline to cheer us on (we can always use more!).

We’ll take a break for the next few weeks as OTH scheduled most of July off then back at it for the latter part of the series…and with our new sponsor, Two Wheels, One Planet (www.twowheelsoneplanet.com).

We look forward to our newest team member, Rich de Michele from thinkASG, joining us in July.  We welcome anyone that shares our passion and wants to take a spin around the lake!  Take a Tuesday evening, come on out and see the thinkASG black and white and always present red thought bubble in full representation, and enjoy a BBQ and relaxation with us afterwards!”

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 11:55 am by David Browning.

Perhaps it was the lineup of speakers, the passion for storage, or maybe the opportunity to play golf and get out of the office before the big Memorial Day Weekend. Either way, the day was packed with customers, speakers, and seasoned architects to continue the ongoing discussion of SAN vs NAS.

David Browning, thinkASG’s CEO, kicked off the event with introductions, review of the days agenda, and the instructions on how to use the Plain and Peanut M&M’s to cast the vote for SAN or NAS. During the morning session the participants were encouraged to drop an M&M for every time something tipped the scale of either technology. The goal was to determine which break out session would best meet the participants to storage requirements. I think I saw more M&M’s eaten than dropped in the cup. Who could blame them?

David Howard, thinkASG’s Storage Architect, presented a high level overview of both SAN and NAS solutions discussing the pros and cons.  During his presentation customers were encouraged to voice their opinions, and a few of them were not shy.

Lee Graham, from Fresh n Easy, was passionate and provided a great argument why he would not use anything but traditional FC SAN for both performance and availability.  Ed Young, from Qlogic, raved about his NAS and that he couldn’t imagine backing up all his data without one. Ed noted how easy their NAS was to use and support. The one thing that both Ed and Lee agreed upon, was how critical it is to maintain proper discipline in managing the network fabric.

We took a look at yesterday’s SAN and NAS pros and cons.

We discussed the trends and improvements in both technologies as they continue to tip the scales back and forth.

At the end of the opening sessions all participants counted their M&M’s (what was left of them) to determine which breakout session to attend.

Aaron Hoobler, thinkASG’s Solution Architect, lead the discussion on NAS solutions and demonstrated the various hardware and software offerings of the IBM N series storage. Dispelling the common stereotype that NAS solutions cannot scale.

Sudheesh Vadakkedath, IBM’s XIV Sr Solution Architect lead the discussion on IBM’s exciting XIV Grid Storage Solution. Discussed XIV’s unique value proposition “Tier 1 performance at Tier 2 price” as well as demonstrated the simplicity and ease of use of SAN based storage. Sudheesh easily dispelled the stereotype that SAN’s are too complex and expensive.  

David Howard, thinkASG’s Storage Architect, presented the value of IBM’s Storage Volume Controller (SVC) and demonstrated why SVC is the number one storage virtualization product in the market.

Lunch was served but the conversations didn’t stop then. The battle of SAN vs. NAS continued on throughout lunch and onto the golf course. Of course once the golf event began the focus became who will have the longest drive, closest to the pin, and lowest team score. Ed Young was the big hitter of the day winning the two longest drive awards. Tim Nguyen, from thinkASG and his customer team consisting of Bob Howard, Cheng Yeh and Steve You, won the lowest score.  Cheng Yeh was a big winner a 2^nd time with a closest to the pin, along with Dru Murphy, our own thinkASG Account Executive.  Congratulations for a great game of golf to all!

As we wrapped the day the ultimate question was still left to be answered.

SAN vs NAS – “Which one is right for me?”

There must have been a politician in the room when the answer came back “It depends”

Obviously, there is no single answer. Each customer has unique challenges and different business needs.

So, the correct answer is to contact “The Human Drive” at thinkASG to help you build a solution to meet your needs.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 4:16 pm by DHo.

Our CEO, David Browning, has answers to 3 key questions you should ask yourself before you embark on a new ERP selection and implementation project.  Check out the questions and his answers in the attached link.

3 Questions…

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 1:45 pm by TheHumanDrive.

If you haven’t already gone through one, you will soon enough. IBM randomly chooses clients for Software Compliance Audits throughout the year. In most cases they come to you in the form of a workbook that is to be filled out and returned in 2 weeks – no exceptions.

These workbooks will be populated with all IBM software that IBM believes you own and are using. This audit is to ensure that you are not over-deployed or abusing the license honor system in which IBM entrusts you with.

Tips for Completing the Audit Workbook:

1) Be Honest

- The IBM Compliance team is stern but reasonable. They want to work with you to fix the problem.

2) Start Early

- This is not a simple task. It takes time. Use the two weeks you are given.

3) Be Thorough

- Don’t turn in an incomplete workbook, this will only cause the audit team to ask additional questions and do more digging.

4) Know What You Have

- One of the first things you will need to do is pull a list of servers that are running any IBM software based on PVUs (you will need to know server name, type, physical CPU counts, physical core counts as well as virtual core counts)

5) Ask thinkASG for HELP

- We have assisted a number of customers through their audit. It is very beneficial to have someone on your side who understands the audit process and what the compliance team is looking for.

Above all, don’t panic if you receive an Audit Workbook. All customers go through them at some point. We are here to help – don’t hesitate to ask.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 12:00 am by Megan.

When advising my clients as to why they should upgrade to P7, the following aways applies as immediate benefits to the customer:

1. P7 delivers better performance and depending if you’re replacing P5 or P6 you see between 3:1 and 4:1 increase

2. P7 will allow you to do more with less processors therefore cutting your software lics cost. In some cases, the savings of software lics will pay for the hardware

3. P7 uses less energy consumption and takes up less space

4. P7 will lower your maintenance cost. In some cases the cost of maintenance on older boxes can pay for new hardware and ROI is less then 3 years.

I hope this helps.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 at 12:31 pm by Tim.

thinkASG, IBM and Bramasol/SAP joined forces and gathered their valued clients and prospects for a fun evening of hockey at the Staples Center. After all, everybody enjoys the inter-county rivalry of the Anaheim Ducks vs the Los Angeles Kings!

We met at the VIP entrance to be escorted by the Kings Ice Girls and straight to the arena floor.  The, straight out to Center Ice for a perspective few but the athletes get to enjoy – where we took a picture of our winning team!  We marched back inside to find the Ducks playing a little soccer/volleyball as warm-up in the hallways of the Staples Center…it was all our crew could do not to stop for a George Parros autograph! 

Our group broke into  two groups representing those interested in IBM/Intel EX5 offerings and those interested in SAP ERP & related offerings from Bramasol. Brian Houlihan from IBM discussed IBM’s eX5 technolgoy and our ability to do more with less with highly scaleable virtualized server consolidation tactics.  Kathryn Brandt from Bramasol discussed cost efficencies via enterprise integrated best of breed application suites.  The dialogue was lively and lots of great Q&A resulted….so much so that we found ourselves rushing back to our suites for the National Anthem and puck drop.  As King’s and Duck’s hockey fans know, from there we saw a 1-0 become a 2-1 that was recalled to a 1-1 at end of regulation. The local teams went thru full overtime play and it wasn’t until the sixth shot in the shoot out that the outcome was determined – the Ducks were the victors! 

thinkASG thanks our clients and prospects for joining us at the Staples Center for a fun night of hockey!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 9:12 pm by David Browning.

Too many times I have seen customers fully thinking that they have their Disaster Recovery (DR) taken care of due to the fact that they have successfully been backing up their environment and have it on tape at the vaulting company.

 If you are one of these people raise your hand…

I’ll pause for a second while you ponder your response wondering why I just made that statement.

I’ll ask a few other questions now:

    Do you have a disaster recovery plan?

    Have you tested your disaster recovery plan?

    Have you tested a server recovery?

    Where are you going to perform DR?

    Who is going to be available to perform the DR?

    What level of expertise is going to be required to get things rolling again?

    What kind of hardware is going to be readily available for DR?

    Do you have a copy of all installed media at the vaulting company?

    Is there a written DR plan or is it all in someone’s head?

    Are you required to maintain data by law?

    How long can you be down with server X before it starts to impact company function?

    How long can server group Y be down before it impacts the company’s bottom line? 

Now are you ready for a Disaster?

My next question would be what do you consider a disaster (DISASTER)? Is it the CEO deleted a file and we need it back now, or is it the datacenter just flooded and ruined all my servers. Either way it is a disaster in someone’s life and you need to be prepared to handle it and know the amount of time and expense it is going to cost you in manpower and cold hard cash in these times of doing more with a lot less. 

I’ll ask another couple of questions:

    Have you ever stated “we never need to do restores” or “we have not needed to restore a file in 2 years, so our backups are not critical”?

    Have the number of servers and the amount of data being backed up exploded in the past couple of years?

    Have you been faced with the need to continuously buy more tapes?

    Do you need to expand your tape solution so that your backups fit within the backup window?

Many companies these days are cutting back on one of the most critical, but often the most ignored pieces of their data center. Backup solutions are never the most glamorous part the infrastructure and almost always delegated to the junior member of the staff to manage. However the backup solution is always expected to work when needed, no matter how little time or money has been spent to ensure its success. The backup solution is always the recipient of everyone’s wrath when it doesn’t provide the data that “should have been there”. Often it is ignored or will be addressed later due to other “more pressing” issues. 

What would be the outcome if half as much attention was paid to your DR solution as your email server, that 1 SQL database, or the newest application on the market that makes coffee and writes its own code, would you be able to sleep easier each night?

Backups are not sexy, nor are they the focus of most IT departments. There is typically a small budget set aside for purchasing tapes, but no major changes are usually planned. Most IT staffs do not want to be tasked with owning the backup solution so that the finger is not pointed at them when all fails. Most of the time backups fail due to very few reasons; configuration issues of the software are the most common. The second most common reason is the data grew too large for the backup solution to handle.

Over the past couple of years many new solutions have been introduced to be the magic pill for all backup issues. Some companies proclaim that disk based backups are the only way to go ignoring the need to get at least a backup copy of the data offsite. Many boutique backup solutions have been offered to handle specific applications, these solutions though typically do not integrate easily into most enterprise backup solutions. Electronic vaulting of data at remote location has been discussed and made a reality over the last few years as long as the pockets of the company are deep, purchasing the needed network bandwidth. I could go on and on with the various offerings that are available.

Having assisted many companies in the past 20+ years with their backup solutions, companies usually stop spending money and quit implementing at the “backups are running” point. Most intend to get the rest done when they can afford to spend the resources both physical and financial. Often Disaster Recovery looks like an unnecessary expense from the CFO’s perspective because many think that the backup is all that is needed for DR.

In these days of tight budgets, it’s a good idea to include additional funds for DR in new projects since it is going to be called upon to handle the additional load. Few companies include the price of DR into the cost of the newest application but place additional requirements on their backup solution to protect it. Many companies are implementing BI or data warehousing projects both of which are extremely taxing on backup solutions without including the cost of upgrading the backup solution to handle the additional load in the project.

For me the best solution is the one that I can count on to be there with the data I need to recover when I request it. There are no substitutes to good planning, solid implementation, great documentation and repeated testing. Did I say repeated testing? Yep!

So what’s it going to be — restful sleep each night or maintaining your resume?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 10:31 am by Hoobie.

Wow!  That is the word that comes to mind from our announcement event.  From Intel’s newest saleable Nehalem EX processors to IBM’s incorporation of these processors into fully redesigned and MASSIVELY scaleable SystemX servers.  You want a Terabyte of memory for those virtual servers?  No problem.  You want a shared memory pool for two servers?  No problem.  Want to scale, start off with a 2S system and take it to 4S as your environment grows?  No problem.  These are just some of the new and exciting developments of IBM’s Intel based SystemX servers. Call me and I’ll find the right solution to solve your problems.

So, if the new technologies from Intel and IBM weren’t enough, we followed that up with an afternoon of racing at K1 Speed.

12 laps of practice, followed by 14 laps of qualifying which placed you on the grid based on time for the 18 lap final race.

1st Place – Darrin Tovtin from Intel with the fastest lap time of the month.

2nd Place – Yours truly, Dru Murphy from thinkASG

3rd Place – Robert Lozano from Buy.com

Darrin showed some super consistent driving and really we never had a chance.  I think he has one of these tracks in his backyard.  All of the Buy.com guys raced well…I think it’s in their blood.  Not making the podium were Joe Martinez and Gavin Miyasaki from Buy.com…how they weren’t up there amazes me.  Both qualified in the top 3 for the final race but somehow were too fast for the track and their tires.  The best part was everyone that participated got better with every lap in the cart.  From Lamont Nash with Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital being dead last in the beginning to finishing in the top 6 at the end shows determination.  His colleague Chris Skaling enjoyed just about every square inch of the track, from all angles.  Our fearless leader, David Browning was also Mr. Consistent…always in the middle of it all.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 9:16 pm by Dru.

On a brisk and windy day in Southern California, several customers took the time to attend our Tivoli Table Topics (T3) event at the Irvine office.

A quick poll of the participants showed that our agenda seemed to well match what customers wanted to hear. Topics included:

• TSM v6.1 News – Modernization and Upgrade Steps
• Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack
• Key Lifecycle Manager – Encryption
• Dedupe technologies
• General Support and maintenance issues

Dave Howard, thinkASG’s Storage Architect, started the day with a good presentation on one of the latest Tivoli software offerings, Tivoli FlashCopy Manager. As IBM and other vendors have expended much R&D on FlashCopy, we find that fewer than 50% of customers take advantage of the technology. Customers cite difficulties with scripting and a general lack of automation as the leading causes. Dave showed how FlashCopy Manager automates the handling and scripting of FlashCopy volumes.

Michelle Caldwell, from IBM,  presented the features/functions of Tivoli Key Lifecycle manager (TKLM). In the room, no one really knew the purpose of this product, but once mentioned, heads nodded in approval that it was a pending topic that will be required in the very near future. Her presentation took away much of the mystery surrounding tape encryption.

Aaron Hoobler, thinkASG TSM practice lead,  kicked off the post-lunch discussions with detailed information on TSM FastBack 6.1. Everyone was curious about this, and needed the information. Much effort was put into data protection methods for Microsoft Exchange.

Round-table discussions wrapped the day.

Here at thinkASG we enjoy presenting the T3 and the chance to meet with fellow Tivoli users in an informal and non-marketing-driven way. If you’ve not been to a meeting and would like more information, please contact your thinkASG Account Executive or Megan Murry, thinkASG’s Software Practice Lead, at mmurry@thinkasg.com.

Click here for access to the presentation materials from T3.  You’ll be asked to enter the userid/password provided to you by thinkASG.  If you don’t know it, contact us today and we’ll get you access.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 11:59 am by Rusty.

A timeline of continued xSeries innovation, investment and differentiation:

In 2001 IBM introduced their first generation in the Enterprise X-Architecture (EXA) systems. The x440 was the first scalable 16 Socket x 86 platform available in a form factor smaller than Unisys’ entire rack. Its small form factor was not its only draw, there was the fault-tolerant memory and the “pay-as-you-grow” option to expand past the initial investment (and capabilities) of a single system.

In 2003 the x445 was announced as IBM’s successor to their first generation EXA system. The x445 allowed for increased performance and unparalleled expansion. Like the previous generation the systems was able to scale past a single node, with the new x445 being able to scale to up to 32 Intel Xeon processors in a single logical system.

2005 saw the introduction of IBM’s x460 (which would later be rebranded as the x3950) which supported new features such as Hot-Swappable Memory. In keeping with their prior systems the x460 was also capable of expansion

IBM announced the x3850 M2 and x3950 M2 servers in 2008. The fourth generation IBM X-Architecture chipset design touted performance enhancements that included a 60% front-side bus speed improvement, and up to 60% faster memory speed than the previous generation. The introduction of efficient snoop filtering helped to reduce latency and improve the performance of the systems which offered leadership performance for databases, enterprise applications and virtualized server workloads.

On March 2nd 2010 IBM once again demonstrated they that they will continue to invest and  differentiate themselves from their competitors. The eX5 systems, the fifth generation of IBM’s Enterprise X-Architecture, include the new x3690 X5 (high-end scalable 2 socket system), the x3850 X5 (high-end Scalable 4 socket system), and the HX5 (high-end scalable 2 socket blade).

Do More With Less:

The introduction of the new MAX5 external memory chassis for the new eX5 systems allows for unprecedented memory expansion and density per socket on the x86 platform. IBM’s new systems allow for a greater consolidation of workloads for memory bound platforms and applications. Companies can now realize even greater consolidation ratios for workloads (including Databases and Virtual Machines) and this increased consolidation translates directly to reduced costs on software licensing and support that is based on the number of Sockets or Cores being used. In the case of Oracle environments IBM has claimed the ability to reduce the cost of running the environment by up to 66%. IBM also claims that the x3960 X5 can support up to 100% more Virtual Machines than a 2 Socket MP system without eX5.

You can see the full IBM announcement here:  http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/ex5/?sa_campaign=message/leaf3/stg/announcement/ex5

 Optimizing your Infrastructure with IBM eX5 and VMware vSphere:  http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-4523

 IBM eX5 and VMware Virtualization Solutions:  http://www.vmworld.com/docs/DOC-4524

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 6:59 pm by TheHumanDrive.