For those that attended uValue this last week any guess as to what this is? (Please put guesses as comments on this post, if possible.) Read More
For those that attended uValue this last week any guess as to what this is? (Please put guesses as comments on this post, if possible.) Read More
Just this past week IBM announced their long awaited refresh to the zSeries: zEnterprise or z196. The tech-media and blog-o-sphere will and has focused on the large changes in the system architecture, processor, software, and linkage between BladeCenter and the zSeries: zBX and URM (Unified Resource Management). To be clear this appears to be IBM’s Exadata/VBlock killer, which they call an Ensemble. However IBM’s interesting twist comes from their poly-system combining Mainframe systems, POWER7 systems and xSeries systems into a single managed whole.
A glib title, but none the less I hope it captures the major theme of this week: the formal celebration of Hitachi’s 100th birthday at the Hitachi uValue convention in Japan. Hitachi Data Systems and Hitachi Ltd. jointly hosted industry analysts, industry bloggers, and technology focused international press in Japan this week for uValue and other briefings. Hitachi’s President, Hiroaki Nakanishi, kicked off the event with a keynote speech where he discussed Hitachi’s 100 year history and pointed the company forward towards the next 100 years and beyond — hence the title for the post — where the focus is on applying Hitachi’s capabilities in various sectors towards the betterment of society. After the keynote presentation we were treated to a group interview by a former HDS CEO Shinjiro Iwata. He was extremely candid and open about a variety of subjects. Iwata-san talked about and answered questions surrounding HDS’s global success, where Hitachi overall will push to accelerate globalization, the adoption of startup paced development processes, etc. (Note I’m sure that one of the press or industry bloggers will comment on Iwata-san’s short speech and Q&A session so I will leave the detail to them.) I was particularly happy when after dinner one of the noted industry analysts said that he was happy to hear from Iwata-san and remarked on just how candid and open the discussion was.
If you have not watched the press conference hosted by Apple then I suggest that you take a gander. (You can also see several videos on other smart phones including Apple’s 3GS. Finally there is a video on Apple’s antenna testing facilities.) In my opinion Steve comes off as honest and credible. His presentation, demeanor and tone also show that Apple is indeed listening and trying to do the right thing by their users. Within the discussion Steve many times cites data as the key driver for the conclusions that Apple has arrived at. This is a very powerful statement and the presentation, I’m sure, is a summary of a lot of information and data that Apple has amassed to make the product and the experience better. Until there are real product improvements (iPhone 4.5 anyone) Apple will provide several ways to make users satisfied including:
Next week I, with my colleague Claus, be involved in three things.
If you have not had a chance to read Jason Robert Brown’s blog post with Eleanor I highly suggest that you take the chance to do so. The exchange of email between the artist who makes the music, Jason, and the apparent aspiring artist who uses the music, Eleanor, is quite fascinating. I have to say that I’m coming down on the side of John Robert Brown. I do think that he deserves to be compensated for the work he has done and continues to do. Today I believe that there is a more receptive “audience” to his argument because people finally have easy ways to purchase content, in digital format, from a variety of different sources. While I won’t argue who initially started the efforts to put content for pay on the Internet, I will state that I think that Apple has well executed a real model and is turning it into a money making business — Apple has participation from key media companies like Disney, music labels such as Sony, and book publishers like Harper Collins. (Note I’m sure that some of you will bring up Amazon Kindle and having finally well executed a digital bookstore which Apple is now following, okay I can understand that point. However, I would ask this question would Amazon have been successful if Apple had not executed iTunes first?)
Okay now that I have grabbed your attention, I want to open up the discussion on this topic. Specifically, I’ve been watching as IB has been put into several appliances of late: Oracle Exadata, Clusterix KVS, etc. There are a series of well oiled uses too such as RDMA for HPC, NetApp’s usage for internode communications, SGI’s mapping of NUMAflex on top of IB, XSigo’s use for I/O aggregation, etc. However, these are all niche plays and IB was meant to be the I/O messiah in the datacenter — or solve world hunger, I forget — but alas IB hasn’t really lived up to the hype. With all of that in mind is there a replacement on the horizon? (Mind you by replacement I’m thinking 3+ years out…)
Horizontal-UVM – Step 1: Setup and Copy-less Data Distribution
So it’s been about a month since my last post, sorry 
about that, but I’ve been working on several exciting projects that has me quite booked up as far as time goes. One of these projects I can actually share with you. I shared this concept last week during the version 0.9 Blogger Day at HDS headquarters with several storage industry bloggers from around the world. This concept is Horizontal Universal Volume Manager and this actually isn’t a “concept” as much as it is now a proof-of-concept, proven. That is, this is based on GA products and features but configured in such a way that is different. Actually, in talking with some folks, it always seemed to make sense that UVM could do this, but no one’s try it.
Firstly, I wanted to thank everyone for the time. It was great to meet folks in person and I look forward to the next event: most likely Geek Day 1.0. I think that there is a lot more ground to cover and I believe at future events we will be spending more one on one time togethers. (Hopefully I won’t get another blue foot in the process, for those that heard the story.) I believe that the time spent by the bloggers was resoundingly appreciated by everyone at HDS. (Hey I even caught Roberto here last night till almost 7PM playing with Twitter.)
Generally, I believe that the day went well, and I wanted to thank all of the attendees as well as the HDSers who provided their time. There was a great deal of discourse, debate and Q&A. Two more interesting questions I wanted to highlight: Read More
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