Nobody ever seems to talk about IBM storage, its just boring right?

The above comment was arguably true, until IBM acquired the XIV Nextra product just over two years ago.  This acquisition seems to have propelled the IBM storage portfolio back in to the mainstream. People are actually talking about an IBM storage product!

In fact its probably fair to say that XIV is one of the most intruiging, most misunderstood and most talked about storage platforms on the market.  There's certainly not shortage of claims being made from both sides of the fence – from IBM, and from the competition.  As a result its hard to know who to believe.

In order to try and shed some light, I pulled together some of the most respected independent voices I could find, and got us all together on a call to openly discuss the pro’s and con’s of XIV.  The result is 50 minutes of XIV technical talk – definitely one for your MP3 player.

People joining me on this edition of the show -

NOTE: Apologies up front for the poor sound quality when Alan speaks – he was a late addition to the show and didnt have a good skype headset.  But his experience and contribution is hopefully worth it.

Enjoy the show – thoughts and comments welcome!

On the topic of I/O Virtualisation, we look into a product that takes I/O adapters (NIC and HBA) out of physical servers and places them into a Top of Rack switch and extends PCIe out of the server chassis to the ToR switch.  The notion of extending PCIe out of the server and plumbing a rack with PCIe is very interesting.

• Dennis Martin (@demartek)
• Dave Graham (@davegraham)
• Stu Miniman (@stu)

For an hour solid, we talked FCoE and the realities of deploying the technology.

As well the the recording of the call, which I recommend listening to, there will be several short resultant articles posted on Wikibon covering topics such as -

• CIO Considerations
• CTO considerations
• Operation and organisational considerations
• Getting Rid of Stuff – what can FCoE help me throw out.

This was the first ever Peer Incite call to hit the 200 maximum participants limit.  Proof that FCoE and network convergence are hot topics in the Data Center.

If you’re considering deploying FCoE, then I recommend you and take a listen.

I can be contacted via the Contact Me page or on Twitter at (@nigelpoulton)

Nigel

In this inaugural episode of the Technical Deep Dive Podcast I'm joined by Greg Ferro from Etherealmind.com and Camden Ford from Xsigo Systems.  Cam talks to us about Xsigo Systems and the technologies and solutions they offer.

This is available as a two-parter due to length.  Part 1 is about 30 minutes long and Part 2 is about 40.  What can I say, you cant dive deep in 20 minutes!

Comments welcome!