Mainframe tape lock-in ended Why doesn't IBM supply its LTO systems to its mainframe customers? If you put streaming (LTO) tape in the mainframe start:stop environment it can't handle the back-hitch. An LTO drive would probably be slower-performing than an enterprise-class tape drive and not as efficient in space usage. (Mar. 2005 TechWorld)

DFSMShsm Basics: Migration Control Data Set Records One of the mysteries of DFSMShsm is how it manages CDS records internally to keep track of data. The CDS is key to the internal management of these records. However, many DFSMShsm users aren't familiar with the records within them and their relationship to each other. (Dec. 2004 z/Journal)

Data Lifecycle Management and the Mainframe Mindset To to many tenured (that is, mainframe savvy) IT professionals it was the movement of business applications onto distributed computing platforms that is to blame for everything we now confront. They interpret all of the infighting among open systems storage vendors and the complaints over ineffective data management as indicators of the same thing: the absence of the sanity provided by mainframes. (Nov. 2004 Enterprise Systems Journal)

The Perils of Long-Term Storage Twenty years ago, the IBM 3480 cartridge was introduced, and if you had written the data from an IBM mainframe running MVS, you would likely still be able to read it today. But what if you had waited two to five years and then written it on a VAX running VMS or a Cray-XMP, or something else? Do you think you'd be able to read it today? In one sense, I am making a case for mainframes. (Sep. 2004 Enterprise Storage Forum)

The Value of Good DASD Response Time Today, storage processors typically contain cache areas in the tens of gigabytes in size. These cache areas allow frequently referenced data to be accessed electronically without mechanical delays. So when found in cache, DASD I/O for a single block of data can now be typically retrieved within 1 to 3 ns. (Jul. 2004 zJournal)

New Frontiers for Tape For systems with a Nearline system, the ratio of the amount of tape data to disk data is between 8 to 12. This ratio results from effectively migrating less active data to Nearline storage. If the first 90 days of the life cycle belongs on disk, the next 90 years of the data's life cycle belongs on tape. (Jun. 2004 z/Journal)

EMC woos mainframe users Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS) is something that is used in very high-level data centers and mainframe clusters that lets you do one of two things: fail over from Sites A to B, and load sharing. IBM offers this, but it's very expensive. EMC introduced a thin layer of software that runs on the mainframe as a cost-effective alternative to GPS. (Mar. 2004 search390)

The great divide: mainframe and open-systems storage Vendors say they see more risk than reward involved in merging mainframe and open-systems storage management. And with a few notable exceptions, vendors aren't investing much time and energy to creating products and interfaces needed to manage the worlds of mainframe and open-systems storage as one. There's not a large user demand for tools that would actively manage both from the same console. (Feb. 2004 Storage)

Cisco Flaunts Fancy SAN Features New in this version are support for Ficon, a mainframe storage networking protocol. Ficon is an area where both Cisco and Brocade have been trailing McData. Cisco says it's now providing an unprecedented ability to intermix multiple protocols -- Ficon, Ficon Control Unit Port (CUP), Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and FCIP -- on the same switch. (Nov. 2003 Byte and Switch)

Warring tape library giants Who do you go to when you need a really large tape library -- a library that is not fussy about OSes and supports concurrent requests from mainframe and open systems? With a capacity range of up to 200,000 media slots, the StorageTek Streamline 8500 will be the largest library ever, and offer a swift, five seconds cartridge access time and a quick inventory time -- less than 10 minutes to sniff over 6,600 slots. (Nov. 2003 InfoWorld)

Storing smarter in legacy IT environments with active archiving The accumulation of legacy data and stricter storage requirements are challenging the largest relational database environments. For example, IMS databases today support thousands of applications performing over 50 million transactions per day, storing petabytes of data. Ongoing active archiving maintains databases at a size that fits comfortably within the desired processing windows. (Oct. 2003 Storage Networking World)

IBM and EMC bury the hatchet Big Blue has now licensed its proprietary APIs for the Shark array to EMC in order for the latter's flagship Symmetrix DMX to support IBM's Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy, Extended Remote Copy and FlashCopy software. The deal, which is specific to mainframe environments, will enable users to replicate between Shark and DMX arrays. (Oct. 2003 VNUnet)

The key to avoiding common backup nightmares Beads of sweat form on your forehead. Your heart begins to pound. You can't find this volume in last night's backup list. You search through the backup history, only to discover that the most recent backup of this volume is more than two months old. You seriously consider your resignation as you ponder explaining this to executive management tomorrow. (Sep. 2003 Storage)

IBM Claims Tape Drive Supremacy The new TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592 has a native capacity of 300GB and a native drive data transfer rate of 40MB per second. The drive is designed to work with the IBM's 3494 tape library, STK silo tape libraries, or function as a standalone rack solution. (Sep. 2003 EnterpriseStorageForum)

Two decades of policy-based storage management for the IBM mainframe computer In the middle 1980s, IBM introduced DFSMS as a policy-based storage management solution for large mainframe computer systems. As an integral part of the operating systems OS/390® and z/OS, DFSMS continues to be enhanced. This paper provides an overview of DFSMS and describes a few of its recent enhancements. (Jul. 2003 IBM Systems Journal)

zSeries Speaks SCSI IBM's rational for providing SCSI support is to enable Linux for zSeries to access distributed storage in open SAN configurations. The goal is to facilitate Linux and Unix server consolidation by hosting multiple Linux systems on a single zSeries server while protecting the investment in existing SCSI storage. (Jul. 2003 zJournal)

Survey: Security cuts both ways on IT plans The most common reason companies expect to need greater storage capacity is for consolidation of storage resources. Pennsylvania State University invested in IBM's high-end Enterprise Storage Server this year to consolidate its mainframe and open systems storage. Stand-alone storage pools are being phased out. (Jun. 2003 Network World Fusion)

Users must change attitude to storage Storage users are going to hit big problems if they don't fundamentally change their attitude to storage, and to what gets stored and where. One German telco had eight copies of its mainframe database, all on high speed storage. (Jun. 2003 TechWorld)

IT Sense: Enterprise Storage – Back to DASD? Mainframe storage administrators can manage up to 45TB of storage per person compared to 400 to 600GB per Windows or UNIX administrator. The use of a mainframe as a virtualization and management server for a unified back-end storage pool holds the potential to rectify many of the problems plaguing contemporary SANs. (May 2003 z/Journal)

Storage Management Issues Still Driving Us Crazy IBM did not develop SMS because of some earnest desire to improve quality of life for those who labored in the glass house of the corporate data center. They did it to sell more hardware. In 1979 the average storage administrator could manage all of 11 gigabytes — gigabytes! — of storage. (Apr. 2003 Enterprise Systems Journal)

Magnetic Tape's Data-Storage Edge In factories that manufacture magnetic tape, rotating blades cut large sheets of plastic into strips. Normally, microscopic tears would not matter -- but over time, they could damage the coating of magnetic material near the tape edges, destroying any data stored there. (Apr. 2003 Newsfactor Network)

Is storage management software worth it? It's not that vendors are getting fat off of you -- most complain they're not making any money in storage management, sales take too long and development costs are too high. So what gives with storage management software? Is it too expensive? Is it too hard to buy? Or is it too complicated? (Apr. 2003 Storage Magazine)

New contender for storage management Measuring by the mean number of terabytes hosted, IBM OS/400 systems hosted 66TB on average, Windows NT/2000 servers connected to 43TB and Unix servers were right behind at 41TB. IBM OS/390 and NetWare nearly tied at 19TB. Linux and other OSes tied at almost 11.5TB, with Apple Computer bringing up the rear with 9TB connected on average. (Apr. 2003 ComputerWorld)

The Fuss Over iSCSI If iSCSI is to eventually penetrate mainframe environments, it’ll probably do so in the context of Big Blue’s zSeries or S/390 mainframes running instances of Linux in z/VM or on IFLs. Because of its IP-based underpinnings, iSCSI is not constrained by the distance limitations of fibre channel (10 KM) or even of IBM’s comparatively robust ESCON and FICON channel interfaces (approximately 40-60 KM). (Mar. 2003 Enterprise Systems Journal)

IBM RVA (Not Shark) Downs Danish Bank IT operations were crippled for more than 24 hours after an IBM disk subsystem failure caused 90 databases to freeze up. When the bank attempted to restart DB2 from its last backup, a bug in the database software caused inconsistencies to occur in the data. (Mar. 2003 Byte and Switch)

IT Execs Flying Blind According to the study, 52 percent of U.S. IT executives say they are unsure of their hardware utilization, whereas in EMEA, only 7 percent are. In the U.S., 71 percent of the IT heads are not sure what an acceptable hardware utilization rate should be, compared with only 9 percent who are unsure in EMEA. (Mar. 2003 Byte and Switch)

IBM, HDS Attempt To Steal EMC's Thunder IBM plans to add industry-standard "Bluefin" compatibility to its Shark arrays to make them more compatible with multivendor storage networks. The new Sharks will also be enhanced with 73-Gbyte, 15,000-rpm hard drives, and extended Linux support for zSeries and S/390 mainframes such as open-systems advanced copy and disaster-recovery functions. (Jan. 2003 CRN)

Your storage area networking needs Interoperability is the greatest challenge in building a storage area network. It's hard to get Unix, mainframe and Windows NT apps working together on the same SAN, and any vendor which can do this easily, could find the world beating a path to its door (or a takeover offer from EMC). (Dec. 2002 The Register)

What we can learn from the mainframe world In terms of storage connectivity efficiency, ESCON, the original mainframe SAN technology developed in the 1990s, has given way to FICON. The continued reliance on big iron has occurred because many of the "dinosaurs," like those thunder lizards of old, have evolved. (Nov. 2002 Network World Fusion)

Your worst nightmares ... and how to avoid them Frequent nightmares in adults, however, are considered abnormal, except in the cases of persons who take certain drugs or manage enterprise storage for a living. Storage managers commonly manifest stress levels that are at least on par with those of dentists, Middle East peace negotiators or sleep-deprived parents of newborn children. (Aug. 2002 Storage Magazine)

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