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Market Roundup August 31, 2007 IBM Announces System Storage DS3300 |
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IBM Announces System Storage DS3300
IBM earlier this week announced the System Storage DS3300, a
new entry-level disk array featuring integrated management software targeted at
SMBs, especially those seeking to consolidate storage for a variety of users.
Using iSCSI interfaces, next-generation SAS back-end technology, and DS3000
management software, the DS3300 offers robust, reliable, cost-effective shared
storage even for organizations of modest scale. The DS330 enables organizations
to transition from DAS configurations to an IP SAN with considerably less
effort than required of past solutions. The installation wizards guide
administrators through setup and configuration so that organizations with
minimal or no IT staff experienced in storage solutions can successfully
install a DS3300. The DS3300 is positioned as an easy-to-use IP SAN for SMB
customers seeking an alternative to a traditional Fibre
Channel SAN as part of their transition from a DAS environment. The DS3300
features SAS hard drives with expansion capability through the IBM System
Storage EXP3000 Expansion Unit for up to 14.4TB of raw capacity with scale up
to forty-eight hard disk drives. Customers can elect to include enhanced data
protection features such as FlashCopy for point-in-time, full-volume copies of
data, and VolumeCopy for full logical drive replication. In addition, IBM has
announced two new Express models based on the DS3400 (FC array) that have
achieved designation as Microsoft Simple SAN Solutions. The DS3400 solutions
incorporate IBM SAN16B-2 Switches and IBM Emulex 4 GBps FC 1-port PCI-E
Enterprise Host Bus Adapters (HBA). IBM is working with Emulex to deliver its
EZPilot software to configure the various components of the DS3400 Express Kit
and tie together the DS3400, Brocade Switch, and the Emulex HBAs
in a straightforward manner. The IBM System Storage DS3300 will be generally
available September 7, 2007 with a beginning list price of $5,000.
This announcement illustrates a larger movement that we have
seen afoot in the industry overall, namely, the availability of multiple
interconnect technologies within a given product line. Gone are the days where
only high-end arrays featured FC and moderately priced disks were only found in
the most basic product offerings. With the DS3300, the DS3000 series now
provides customers with a range of host interface connectivity including, SAS,
FC, and iSCSI. For end users this means greater choice and hence flexibility in
their purchase decisions as they can choose the connectivity that best meets
their needs without necessarily placing themselves within with a price bracket
or being forced to purchase unwanted capabilities in order to gain the
preferred connectivity. Further, scalability that is reasonable for the target
SMB customer base is ensured through the expansion unit. While 14TB may not
seem a huge amount of storage, for departmental usage or for organizations of
more modest scale, this is more than likely well within the need at hand. Of
course, given the SAN nature of the storage, this is by no means a hard limit.
The new Express models of the DS3400 are also interesting for their attention to making storage easier to deploy by non-storage professionals. In line with its overall Express product methodology, IBM has sought to mitigate the skill set issue by simplifying the deployment process through the inclusion of the EZPilot software along with the installation wizards. This approach is well positioned to meet the needs of midsized organizations that could benefit from a FC SAN but lack the internal skill sets commonly associated with such deployments. This again illustrates the crossover of what was once considered a high-end approach into the broader marketplace. Notably absent from this announcement was any mention of services. Although services are important not only for customers but also for the operating margins of vendors, in this case we believe the fact that services were not mentioned further exemplifies the potentially wide-ranging appeal of this solution. If organizations are likely to be able to deploy DS3300 without external assistance, this bodes well not only for the Express moniker specifically, but more importantly for SMBs who could now take advantage of the relative simplicity and ease use afforded by a SAN, with the commensurate improvement in operational efficiency and expense. For many SMBs, we expect this may just prove to be a combination that reignites the strategic discussion of SAN vs. DAS to most any organization’s benefit.
McAfee to Package PCI Compliance Products
McAfee, Inc. has announced the Easy PCI Plan, designed to
help companies achieve compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standard in advance of government deadlines. The New McAfee Easy PCI Plan
includes integrated protection and compliance solutions, along with certified
PCI consulting and audit services provided by Foundstone Professional Services.
The offering includes products such as McAfee Total Protection, McAfee
Foundstone, and McAfee IntruShield. All three solutions map directly to PCI
standard requirements to help companies pass critical PCI audits and achieve
sustainable compliance. McAfee Foundstone Professional Services is a
PCI-certified Qualified Security Assessor.
At the heart of the McAfee Easy PCI Plan are solutions that
directly map to well over half of the twelve distinct requirements of the
latest PCI DSS standard (v1.1). When combined with certified McAfee consulting
and audit services, the Easy PCI plan provides a prescriptive approach for
addressing the primary PCI pain points such as passing the PCI audit and
meeting the September 30 deadline, selecting and deploying a layered security
model that sustains compliance, proactively protecting sensitive credit card
data—including the systems that store it—with good industry practices for protection
and prevention. The combination of products and services provide coverage for
system passwords and other security, antivirus software or programs, secure
systems and applications, the use of unique IDs for persons with computer
access, access to network resources and cardholder data, and regular testing of
security systems and processes.
McAfee IntruShield provides network intrusion prevention
that monitors networks in realtime to prevent attacks and intrusions on
unmanaged or vulnerable systems. For example, IntruShield can protect unpatched
Point of Sale terminals or prevent malicious attempts to steal sensitive PCI
data. Built-in features include integrated Network Access Control,
anti-spoofing, internal firewall, and encrypted threat protection. McAfee
Foundstone provides a network-based vulnerability management appliance to run
regular vulnerability scans on systems and other critical assets, while helping
to keep system patch levels up to date. Integration with IntruShield allows
highly vulnerable systems or hosts to be prioritized as high risk so that
remediation can be triggered. McAfee Total Protection Enterprise provides
agent-based software that delivers critical protection, including antivirus,
anti-spyware, personal firewall, host intrusion prevention, and NAC. In
addition, McAfee Host Data Loss Prevention can be a critical element of
establishing good industry practices for preventing the loss of sensitive
credit card data.
There are a couple of very positive attributes of this
announcement. First of all McAfee is clearly demonstrating that it identifies
with the customer’s issues, showing how its products and services combine to
address specific pieces of what can be some very complicated requirements.
McAfee has also been clever enough to cobble together security products that
address top-of-mind issues such as Network Access Control and Data Loss
Prevention. The icing on the product cake is the availability of professional
services purported to help customers scope their needs and implement the
appropriate McAfee products in a cost-effective manner. These are not
vendor-neutral services, these are services to help maximize the vendor’s
revenue and hopefully help customers get the most out of their purchase.
However, there are some aspects of the announcement that pose key questions. For example, what size entity are these services aimed at? If McAfee is aiming for the bottom end of the elusive middle market, we wonder whether that size organization is sophisticated enough to handle this much technology. There is also the issue of one-size-does-not-fit-all. Large end users in particular like to employ a number of security products from different vendors, and these McAfee products might not be right for all those organizations interested in PCI compliance. Last but not least, there is the crucial conundrum of partners. No software vendor can exist without a partner ecosystem. Many McAfee VARs may feel that Foundstone is taking food out of their children’s mouths and some might consider defecting to crosstown rival Symantec. An alternative view is that organizations already working with security-oriented VARs are likely to maintain that relationship in spite of the option of using Foundstone. However, overall we believe other vendors with combinations of products should consider this approach as a way to help their customers understand how products work together and, of course, to increase top-line revenue.
IBM has introduced a new version of the IBM BladeCenter QS21
based on the Cell Broadband Engine as well as the IBM SDK for Multicore
Acceleration Version 3.0, which is the cornerstone of the CellBE software
ecosystem and developer enablement program. The IBM BladeCenter QS21 is a standard-width
blade allowing customers to outfit a BladeCenter chassis with a maximum of fourteen
QS21’s, twice the density of the previous version which was limited to seven
blades per chassis, and offers an additional 2GB of I/O buffer memory and
support for sixteen lanes of single data rate Infiniband connectivity. These
latest offerings are targeted at organizations in a range of industries that
create and run visual, graphic, and immersive, realtime applications such as 3D
rendering, compression, and encryption. According to IBM, The BladeCenter QS21
is one of the most power-efficient computing platforms to date, generating a
measured 1.05GigaFLOPS/watt.
With its peak performance of approximately 460GFLOPS, clients can
achieve 6.4TeraFLOPS in a single BladeCenter chassis and over 25.8TeraFLOPS in
a standard 42U rack. The IBM BladeCenter QS21 will be generally available
October 26, 2007.
The IBM SDK for Multicore Acceleration Version 3.0 includes
industry standard libraries that provide system services and programming model
support, as well as a systematic tutorial with example code, demonstration
programs, compliance tests, and extensive documentation to enhance productivity
in CellBE development. The SDK also features debugging tools as well as
performance analysis and tuning tools and includes early release features such
as libraries that support a hybrid computing methodology. The Accelerated
Library Framework for Hybrid-x86 and the Data Communication and Synchronization
Library for Hybrid-x86 programming models allow automatic partitioning of an
application across a hybrid platform consisting of an x86-based system and one
or more CellBE processor-based BladeCenter QS21. The IBM SDK for Multicore
Acceleration Version 3.0 will be generally available October 19, 2007.
The Cell-BE is an interesting processor, and it is finding
itself taking up residence in many different places including gaming consoles,
specialty engines for mainframes, super computers, and server blades, among
others. With this next generation of the CellBE-equipped blade, we see some
improvements that may help broaden the applicability of this processor beyond
that of its historically vertically focused applications, such as HPC, or
gaming for that matter. By bringing the performance of the CellBE into a
single-width blade, with the requisite connectivity speedway through sixteen
InfiniBand lanes, we see the QS21 having the potential to cause organizations
to rethink some of their approaches to computing workloads, especially those
that could benefit from access to high-speed dynamic graphic rendering or
number crunching but that have not previously done so. This might include
simply using the CellBE processor as a driver of next-generation interactive
visual information display scenarios or it could include leveraging the
processor for offloading cryptographic or other similar intensive workloads.
Echoing our thoughts on the CellBE + mainframe combination,
we can think of scenarios where the combination of CellBE with other platforms
such as x86 or POWER would be well suited, for example, genomics research, DNA
sequencing, and other scientific applications where there is a combination of
intensive data processing combined with rich graphical representations. This
would be a hybrid of realtime and “static” data processing workloads (perhaps
large amounts of static data such as test/lab results) whose values are an
input to a dynamic computational element or rendering, or perhaps using the
capabilities of the QS21 to render realtime graphical representations of
business or operational efficacy across the enterprise. Log files and reporting
provide a textual understanding of discrete events, but it is difficult to
“see” the overall health of an organization or infrastructure from discrete
facts. But in a graphical approach, these may be very different, yet ultimately
useful. Of course, with all the focus on security in today’s marketplace,
cryptographic offload could be another function supported by CellBE, especially
given the SDK delivered that supports the hybrid approach to application
deployment.
Overall, we are intrigued by the potential whenever technologies are leveraged in new and interesting ways. To our way of thinking, this is announcement is much more than simply creating a new blade or providing a new SDK, rather it is marrying a variety of workloads including back-end processing, rich graphical rendering, and general-purpose infrastructure, and with it exposing new ways to address application workloads while creatively taking advantage of the versatility of the blade chassis platform.