The IBM System Networking SAN24B-5 Switch is designed to provide outstanding price/performance value, combining flexibility, simplicity and enterprise class 16 Gbps Fibre Channel functionality. The SAN24B-5 is configurable in 12 or 24 ports and supports 2, 4, 8, or 16 Gbps speeds in an efficiently designed 1U package. It comes standard with a single power supply or dual power supplies with integrated fans.

A simplified deployment process and a point-and-click user interface make the SAN24B-5 both powerful and easy to use. Moreover, the SAN24B-5 offers low-cost access to industry-leading Storage Area Network (SAN) technology while providing “pay-as-you-grow” scalability to meet the needs of an evolving storage environment.

Learn more about the IBM System Networking SAN24B-5:

IBM recently announced IBM SmartCloud Enterprise Object Storage Cloud service. This new IBM/Nirvanix partnership allows companies to manage unstructured and object data such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, audio files, email and text messages at very cost effective pay-as-used prices. This gives clients the ability to upload a file of any size once, from virtually anywhere in the world and access it from virtually anywhere; with availability from 99.9% to 99.99%.

Are you interested in finding out how can you leverage this powerful capability?

1. Do you have infrequently accessed unstructured content that you need to keep or retain for regulatory compliance?
2. Do you need a storage option that automatically replicates data across multiple geographic locations so it can be accessed locally by the users in other geographies?
3. Do you need a storage option that dynamically scales up (or down), support billions of objects, and has no file size limitations?
4. Do you want to ensure you only pay to for the storage you actually use?
5. Do you have a need for an onsite private or hybrid (public and private) storage cloud?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, you should explore this Enterprise-Grade Storage capability within the IBM Cloud today.

Getting started is easy and just like IBM SmartCloud-Enterprise, you only pay for what you use.

Please contact thinkASG to find out more information.

Breach Trends:

• Security breaches are expensive ($5.5M USD on average) and cause damage to the brand. (2011 Cost of a Data Breach, Ponemon)
• According to the IBM 2011 X-Force Trend & Risk Report released in March 2012, 41 percent of all issues reported were Web application related.
• 39% of executives say their companies do not address security issues in application development, waiting until the launch or post-launch phase. (2012 US Business Case for Data Protection, Ponemon)

Why choose IBM for Application Security:

• IBM is in the leaders’ quadrant in Gartner MQ for both dynamic and static application security testing. (Magic Quadrant for Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST))
• IBM supports integration with your key security systems, such as Network IPS and SIEM
• IBM delivers the most effective application security testing by combining advanced testing techniques, such as Glassbox, with thorough application crawling

Learn More

thinkASG is honored to be an IBM Beacon Award finalist for 2011 in the category of Best Competitive Solution.  Our solution comprised IBM Power System Servers and DS8000 Enterprise Storage to replace a 10+ year Sun and EMC installation in a Fortune 50 company.  The division that installed our competitive take-out solution selected the IBM technology for a number of key factors:

1.  A sister division of the Fortune 50 company, running a scaled down but similar IBM solution, had operated for years with almost no unscheduled downtime and with a materially smaller IT staff than the other divisions running the Sun and EMC solution.

2.  The processing power and ability to optimize workloads on the IBM Power System Servers significantly rivaled the performance of the similarly sized Sun and EMC solution.

3.  thinkASG was able to demonstrate a better initial investment and a far greater efficiency with the IBM solution.

Read the full press release and call thinkASG for complete details on how IBM servers and storage can be implemented to simplify the operations of your IT environment and demonstrate irrefutable ROI through an expertly designed and implemented solution.   This solution can be replicated in businesses of all size.  Whether your business is very small or very large, you need a solution that is rock solid so you can focus on running your business rather than running your IT department.

We thank CRN for the honor of this recognition and renew our commitment to our clients to maintain our extensive certifications and to continue to serve our customers with the best integrated technology solutions the industry has to offer.

Read the full press release.

With our investments in IBM System Storage skills and resources we can more effectively help our clients realize the benefits of leveraging IBM best of breed storage solutions. The specialization validates thinkASG and our capabilities to design and deliver storage solutions based on IBM technologies. This accomplishment is derived from a combined measure of sales and technical certifications, client references, and our annual volume IBM System Storage solutions.

We are now eligible for a variety of benefits we provide directly to our clients, including direct access to IBM’s team of Client Technical Specialists, exclusive IBM Storage Specialty education, priority access to IBM’s Business Partner TechLine support, and additional access to IBM System Storage product pools for use in sales demonstrations, proof-of-concepts, in-house education and training.

Read the full press release

Question:

Do you know of a study of like 2.5” 10K drives against 3.5” 15K drives? (2.5” 10K 600GB vs. 3.5” 15K 600GB drives) I keep getting like answers, but no real documentation to back it up.

Answer:

Before I begin, I would like to point out that the disk drive is not 100% responsible for the performance of a storage subsystem. You cannot predict the performance of a storage subsystem by the drives alone. Meaning that two different subsystems, with the exact same drive type and count will provide different performance levels. The “secret sauce” is in the controller firmware, and how it handles the I/O’s from the host. This is how the DS3500 can get about 308 IOPS/drive on the SPC benchmark (attached). I’m not saying that a system with faster drives will not perform faster, what I’m saying is that there is a lot more that goes into the formula than just the drive.

For the proposed question, I’ve attached a couple of Seagate Product Manuals. I’ll warn you now that they contain a ton of interesting information with respect to the functional operation of the drives (or at least some may find them interesting).

The corresponding web sites are:

Seagate Cheetah  http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st3600857ss-chta-15k.7-sas-fips-600gb-hd&vgnextoid=8ca77f9853dc9210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US&pf=1#tTabContentSpecifications

Seagate Savvio  http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st9600004ss-savvio-10k.4-sas-6gbs-600-gb-fips-hd&vgnextoid=ef4c68da2cdc9210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&locale=en-US&pf=1#tTabContentSpecifications

For a little quick math: The formula I use is IOPS = 1000 (ms in a second)/(avg seek + avg latency). I’ll ignore the transfer time, as IOPS are small.

IOPS Savvio = 1000/(3.8+3.0)=147.

Note, I believe the 2.5”, 300GB, 10Krpm drive is what used for the attached SPC-1 benchmark with 308 IOPS. Yes, that is more than twice the expected average performance on a per drive basis. That is the effect of the controllers “secret sauce” with caching, sorted writes, stripe-aligned volumes, etc.

IOPS Cheetah=1000/(2+3.4)=185.

So, as you can see, for half the power (we all want to be green) and half the footprint, you get about 80% of the performance in this example.The one interesting thing I noticed is that the MBTF for the 3.5” drives is 1.8Million hours, and the 2.5” MBTF is 2Million hours.