newsroom

When we speak with clients, their top storage priorities are very consistent:

• Storing dramatically more data from novel sources, gaining new business insight and increasing revenue through the use of AI and big data technologies applied to that data.
• Deploying applications in Red Hat OpenShift and other container environments to help improve application and data mobility in hybrid multicloud environments.
• Improving data security and protecting against cyber security threats.

Today, IBM is announcing new storage solutions and significant innovations to existing solutions designed for enterprises of all types and sizes to address these critical priorities.

For AI and big data workloads, IBM Spectrum Scale software is used as the storage for Summit and Sierra, supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, currently the fastest supercomputers on the planet.[1]  Built on the same award-winning NVMe platform as the enterprise-class IBM FlashSystem 9100, the new all-flash IBM Elastic Storage System 3000 (ESS 3000) is the simplest way to deploy the same world-class storage software that powers those systems for your own AI and big data applications, workloads and data science teams. Delivering high performance and outstanding scalability, just three of these systems can deliver a maximum of 120GB/s throughput and almost 1PB of data storage in only 6U of rack space.

Designed to provide insight into unstructured data for AI and Big Data applications and workloads in the hybrid multicloud environment, IBM Spectrum Discover now supports IBM Spectrum Protect as a data source, which provides insight, discoverability and access to files in your backup environments.

The shift to containers and cloud environments is having a profound effect on modern data protection. As containerized apps move into production, they require container-centric backup, recovery and retention services. Virtual environments that once ran mostly on premises now extend to the cloud, and companies want to use the solutions whether they are protecting VMs hosted on premises or in the cloud.

To help clients take advantage of these changes, IBM modern data protection delivers several new enhancements that simplify protection for containerized and cloud-based workloads:

• Tech preview[2] of Red Hat OpenShift Container Backup Support. This exciting program enables developers to test the ability to easily back up, recover and retain containers in a Red Hat OpenShift environment.
• Developers can now back up, recover and retain persistent container volumes with IBM Spectrum Protect Plus using predefined policies, native Kubernetes integration and CSI snapshots. IBM Spectrum Protect Plus takes snapshots of persistent Ceph storage volumes using the Container Storage Interface (CSI) and leverages Kubernetes orchestration for backup scheduling automation.
• VMware administrators can now deploy IBM Spectrum Protect Plus in VMware Cloud on AWS to protect the same workloads that IBM Spectrum Protect Plus supports on premises, providing consistency in data protection between on premises and cloud.

For clients using IBM Z and LinuxONE systems, the new IBM TS7770 Virtual Tape Library (VTL) is designed to provide high performance for active data, while helping reduce the expenses associated with archive, data retention and backup operations.

Last but not least, IBM is enhancing on-premises cloud-like pricing to include options designed to better align capacity growth with business needs. New choices include the IBM Storage Subscription for shorter term, rental-like pricing with no long-term contracts, and, coming soon, the IBM Storage Software Utility Offering featuring IBM Spectrum Protect pay-as-you-grow pricing, both of which complement the existing IBM Storage System Utility Offering for IBM block, file and object storage systems.

More details about these announcements are available in these blog posts:

• Game-changing innovation for AI and analytics from IBM Storage
• Container protection takes center stage
• IBM Storage Utility Offering

[1] TOP500 List – June 2019

[2] Tech preview of Red Hat OpenShift support is planned for 4Q19 with general availability in 1Q20 subject to availability of CSI snapshot support in Red Hat OpenShift.

The post Storage made simple for modern data appeared first on IBM IT Infrastructure Blog.