Summary The conventional approach to analytics involves collecting large amounts of data that can be cleaned, followed by a separate step for analysis and interpretation. Unfortunately this strategy is not viable for handling real-time, real-world use cases such as traffic management or supply chain logistics. In this episode Simon Crosby, CTO of Swim Inc., explains how the SwimOS kernel and the enterprise data fabric built on top of it enable brand new use cases for instant insights. This was an eye opening conversation about how stateful computation of data streams from edge devices can reduce cost and complexity as compared to batch oriented workflows.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management When you’re ready to build your next pipeline, or want to test out the projects you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so check out our friends at Linode. With 200Gbit private networking, scalable shared block storage, and a 40Gbit public network, you’ve got everything you need to run a fast, reliable, and bullet-proof data platform. If you need global distribution, they’ve got that covered too with world-wide datacenters including new ones in Toronto and Mumbai. And for your machine learning workloads, they just announced dedicated CPU instances. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/linode today to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show! Listen, I’m sure you work for a ‘data driven’ company – who doesn’t these days? Does your company use Amazon Redshift? Have you ever groaned over slow queries or are just afraid that Amazon Redshift is gonna fall over at some point? Well, you’ve got to talk to the folks over at intermix.io. They have built the “missing” Amazon Redshift console – it’s an amazing analytics product for data engineers to find and re-write slow queries and gives actionable recommendations to optimize data pipelines. WeWork, Postmates, and Medium are just a few of their customers. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/intermix today and use promo code DEP at sign up to get a $50 discount! You listen to this show to learn and stay up to date with what’s happening in databases, streaming platforms, big data, and everything else you need to know about modern data management.For even more opportunities to meet, listen, and learn from your peers you don’t want to miss out on this year’s conference season. We have partnered with organizations such as O’Reilly Media, Dataversity, Corinium Global Intelligence, and Data Council. Upcoming events include the O’Reilly AI conference, the Strata Data conference, the combined events of the Data Architecture Summit and Graphorum, and Data Council in Barcelona. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/conferences to learn more about these and other events, and take advantage of our partner discounts to save money when you register today. Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Simon Crosby about Swim.ai, a data fabric for the distributed enterprise

Interview

Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? Can you start by explaining what Swim.ai is and how the project and business got started?

Can you explain the differentiating factors between the SwimOS and Data Fabric platforms that you offer?

What are some of the use cases that are enabled by the Swim platform that would otherwise be impractical or intractable? How does Swim help alleviate the challenges of working with sensor oriented applications or edge computing platforms? Can you describe a typical design for an application or system being built on top of the Swim platform?

What does the developer workflow look like?

What kind of tooling do you have for diagnosing and debugging errors in an application built on top of Swim?

Can you describe the internal design for the SwimOS and ho

Did you hear the one about how the AI eliminated cancer? It just wiped out the human race! As machine learning and artificial intelligence are woven more and more into the fabric of our daily lives, we are increasingly seeing that decisions based purely on code require a lot of care to ensure that the code truly behaves as we would like it to. As one high profile example after another demonstrates, this is a tricky challenge. On this episode, Finn Lattimore from Gradient Institute joined the gang to discuss the different dimensions of the challenge! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Summary Data integration is one of the most challenging aspects of any data platform, especially as the variety of data sources and formats grow. Enterprise organizations feel this acutely due to the silos that occur naturally across business units. The CluedIn team experienced this issue first-hand in their previous roles, leading them to build a business aimed at building a managed data fabric for the enterprise. In this episode Tim Ward, CEO of CluedIn, joins me to explain how their platform is architected, how they manage the task of integrating with third-party platforms, automating entity extraction and master data management, and the work of providing multiple views of the same data for different use cases. I highly recommend listening closely to his explanation of how they manage consistency of the data that they process across different storage backends.

Announcements

Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management When you’re ready to build your next pipeline, or want to test out the projects you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so check out our friends at Linode. With 200Gbit private networking, scalable shared block storage, and a 40Gbit public network, you’ve got everything you need to run a fast, reliable, and bullet-proof data platform. If you need global distribution, they’ve got that covered too with world-wide datacenters including new ones in Toronto and Mumbai. And for your machine learning workloads, they just announced dedicated CPU instances. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/linode today to get a $20 credit and launch a new server in under a minute. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show! Managing and auditing access to your servers and databases is a problem that grows in difficulty alongside the growth of your teams. If you are tired of wasting your time cobbling together scripts and workarounds to give your developers, data scientists, and managers the permissions that they need then it’s time to talk to our friends at strongDM. They have built an easy to use platform that lets you leverage your company’s single sign on for your data platform. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/strongdm today to find out how you can simplify your systems. Alluxio is an open source, distributed data orchestration layer that makes it easier to scale your compute and your storage independently. By transparently pulling data from underlying silos, Alluxio unlocks the value of your data and allows for modern computation-intensive workloads to become truly elastic and flexible for the cloud. With Alluxio, companies like Barclays, JD.com, Tencent, and Two Sigma can manage data efficiently, accelerate business analytics, and ease the adoption of any cloud. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/alluxio today to learn more and thank them for their support. You listen to this show to learn and stay up to date with what’s happening in databases, streaming platforms, big data, and everything else you need to know about modern data management. For even more opportunities to meet, listen, and learn from your peers you don’t want to miss out on this year’s conference season. We have partnered with organizations such as O’Reilly Media, Dataversity, and the Open Data Science Conference. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com/conferences to learn more and take advantage of our partner discounts when you register. Go to dataengineeringpodcast.com to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, read the show notes, and get in touch. To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers Join the community in the new Zulip chat workspace at dataengineeringpodcast.com/chat Your host is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Tim Ward about CluedIn, an integration platform for implementing your companies data fabric

Interview

Introduction

How did you get involved in t

This IBM® Redbooks® Product Guide describes the IBM Storage Networking SAN768C-6. IBM Storage Networking SAN768C-6 has the industry's highest port density for a storage area network (SAN) director and features 768 line-rate 32 gigabits per second (Gbps) or 16 Gbps Fibre Channel ports. Designed to support multiprotocol workloads, IBM Storage Networking SAN768C-6 enables SAN consolidation and collapsed-core solutions for large enterprises, which reduces the number of managed switches and leads to easy-to-manage deployments. IBM Storage Networking SAN768C-6 supports the 48-Port 32 Gbps Fibre Channel Switching Module, the 48-Port 16 Gbps Fibre Channel Switching Module, the 48-port 10 Gbps FCoE Switching Module, the 24-port 40 Gbps FCoE switching module, and the 24/10-port SAN Extension Module. By reducing the number of front-panel ports that are used on inter-switch links (ISLs), it also offers room for future growth. IBM Storage Networking SAN768C-6 addresses the mounting storage requirements of today's large virtualized data centers. As a director-class SAN switch, IBM Storage Networking SAN768C-6 uses the same operating system and management interface as other IBM data center switches. It brings intelligent capabilities to a high-performance, protocol-independent switch fabric, and delivers uncompromising availability, security, scalability, simplified management, and the flexibility to integrate new technologies. You can use IBM Storage Networking SAN768C-6 to transparently deploy unified fabrics with Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity to achieve low total cost of ownership (TCO). For mission-critical enterprise storage networks that require secure, robust, cost-effective business-continuance services, the FCIP extension module is designed to deliver outstanding SAN extension performance, reducing latency for disk and tape operations with FCIP acceleration features, including FCIP write acceleration and FCIP tape write and read acceleration.

In this podcast, Erika from Proteus International talks about the state of leadership today. She sheds light on data-driven leaders and leaders leading the organizations to the future. She suggests some key insights, tactical steps, and some stories to help understand today's leaders' fabric leading tomorrow's organizations.

Timeline: 0:28 Erica's journey? 7:15 Advice to emerging leaders. 12:13 Adapting to change. 15:15 Tackling unconscious bias. 17:05 Evolution of leadership. 22:26 Taking the road not taken. 27:30 Expectations of leaders towards his/her business. 32:24 Investing in people or technology? 37:46 Getting the right feedback. 43:40 Example unbiased leadership. 51:20 Women in a leadership role. 57:48 Erica's secret for success.

Erika's Book: Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future by Erika Andersen https://amzn.to/2L2DI01

Erika's Recommended Read: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins https://amzn.to/2JhswYG Dan Pink Books https://amzn.to/2Nc0X5s

Podcast Link: https://futureofdata.org/preparing-the-leaders-for-datadriven-future-erikaandersen/

Erika's BIO: Erika Andersen is the founding partner of Proteus, a coaching, consulting, and training firm that focuses on leader readiness. Over the past 30 years, Erika has developed a reputation for creating approaches to learning and business-building tailored to her clients’ challenges, goals, and culture. She and her colleagues at Proteus focus uniquely on helping leaders at all levels get ready and stay ready to meet whatever the future might bring.

Much of her recent work has focused on organizational visioning and strategy, executive coaching, management, and leadership development. In these capacities, she serves as consultant and advisor to the CEOs and/or top executives of several corporations, including NBCUniversal, Facebook, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, GE, Hulu, and Madison Square Garden.

She also shares her insights about managing people and creating successful businesses by speaking to corporations, non-profit groups, and national associations. Her books and learning guides have been translated into Spanish, Turkish, German, French, Russian, and Chinese. She has contributed to and been quoted in various national publications, including the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and The New York Times. Erika is also one of the most popular leadership bloggers at Forbes.com.

She is the author of Be Bad First—Get Good at Things FAST to Stay Ready for the Future (Bibliomotion, 2016), Leading So People Will Follow (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Being Strategic: Plan for Success; Outthink Your Competitors; Stay Ahead of Change (St. Martin’s Press, May 2009), and Growing Great Employees: Turning Ordinary People into Extraordinary Performers (Portfolio, 2006), and the author and host of the Proteus Leader Show a regular podcast that offers quick, practical support for leaders and managers.

About #Podcast:

FutureOfData podcast is a conversation starter to bring leaders, influencers, and lead practitioners to discuss their journey in creating the data-driven future.

Wanna Join? If you or any you know wants to join in, Register your interest @ http://analyticsweek.com/guest/

Want to sponsor? Email us @ [email protected]

Keywords:

FutureOfData #DataAnalytics #Leadership #Futurist #Podcast #BigData #Strategy

In this podcast, Harsh Tiwari, Former CDO CUNA Mutual Group, sheds light on data science leadership in the financial / risk sector. He shares some key takeaway insights for aspiring leaders to take for managing large enterprise data science practice. He shared the importance of collaborations and a growth mindset via a partnership. He discussed his "So what" approach to problem-solving. This podcast is great for any listener willing to understand some best practices for being a data-driven leader.

Timeline: 0:28 Harsh's journey. 5:44 Harsh's current role. 10:17 Ideal location for a chief data officer. 14:42 Ideal CDO role and placement. 20:15 Capital One's best practices in managing data. 25:28 How are the credit unions and regional banks placed in terms of data management. 31:20 Introducing data to well-performing banks. 38:05 Getting started as a CDO in a bank. 43:21 Checklist for a business to hire a CDO. 48:35 Keeping oneself sane during the technological disruption. 54:13 Harsh's success mantra. 58:51 Harsh's favorite read. 1:02:14 Parting thoughts.

Harsh's Recommended Read: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins https://amzn.to/2I7DHGM

Podcast Link: https://futureofdata.org/harsh-tiwari-talks-about-fabric-of-data-driven-leader-in-financial-sector-futureofdata-podcast/

Harsh's BIO: Harsh Tiwari is the Senior Vice President and Chief Data Officer for CUNA Mutual Group in Madison, Wisconsin. His primary responsibilities include leading enterprise-wide data initiatives providing strategy and policy guidance for data acquisition, usage, and management. He joined the company in July 2015. Before joining CUNA Mutual Group, Harsh spent many years working in information technology, analytics, and data intelligence. He worked at Capital One Financial Group in Plano, Texas, for 17 years, where he most recently focused on creating an effective data and business intelligence environment to manage risks across the company as the Head of Risk Management Data and Business Intelligence. He has also served as the Divisional CIO for Small Business Credit Card and Consumer Lending, Head of Portfolio and Delivery Management, Head of Auto Finance Data and Business Intelligence, Business Information Officer of Capital One Canada, and Analyst –Senior Manager of Small Business Data & System Analysis.

A native of India, Harsh earned a B.S. in Mechanical engineering from Mysore University in Mysore, Karnataka, India, and an M.B.A. in Finance / MIS Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In his spare time, Harsh enjoys golfing and spending time with his wife, Rashmi, and their son, who is 12, and a daughter, who is 8.

About #Podcast:

FutureOfData podcast is a conversation starter to bring leaders, influencers, and lead practitioners to discuss their journey to create the data-driven future.

Wanna Join? If you or any you know wants to join in, Register your interest @ http://play.analyticsweek.com/guest/

Keywords:

FutureOfData #DataAnalytics #Leadership #Podcast #BigData #Strategy

In this podcast, Drew Conway (@DrewConway) from Aluvium talks about his journey to start an IoT startup. He sheds light on the opportunities in the industrial IoT space and shares some insights into the mechanism of running a data science startup in the IoT space. She shared some tactical suggestions for any future leader. This podcast is great for data science startup entrepreneurs and/or Sr. executives in IoT.

Timeline: 0:28 Drew's journey from counter-terrorism to IoT startup. 9:29 Data science in the industrial space. 12:01 Entrepreneurship in the IoT start-up. 18:36 Selling data analysis to executives in the industrial space. 24:14 Automation in the industrial setting. 29:27 What is an IoT ready company? 32:40 Challenges in integrating data tools in the industrial sector. 37:27 Data science talent pool in industrial and manufacturing companies. 41:52 Challenges in IoT adoption for industrial companies. 46:31 Alluvium's interaction with industries. 50:57 Picking the right use case as an IoT start-up. 52:49 Right customers for an IoT start-up. 59:26 Words of wisdom for anyone building a IoT start-up.

Drew's Recommended Listen: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter https://amzn.to/2x0uo7d

Podcast Link: https://futureofdata.org/drewconway-on-fabric-of-an-iot-startup-futureofdata-podcast/

Drew's BIO: Drew Conway, CEO and founder of Alluvium, is a leading expert in the application of computational methods to social and behavioral problems at large-scale. Drew has been writing and speaking about the role of data — and the discipline of data science — in industry, government, and academia for several years.

Drew has advised and consulted companies across many industries, ranging from fledgling start-ups to Fortune 100 companies, as well as academic institutions and government agencies at all levels. Drew started his career in counter-terrorism as a computational social scientist in the U.S. intelligence community.

About #Podcast:

FutureOfData podcast is a conversation starter to bring leaders, influencers, and lead practitioners to discuss their journey to create the data-driven future.

Want to sponsor? Email us @ [email protected]

Keywords:

FutureOfData #DataAnalytics #Leadership #Podcast #BigData #Strategy

This IBM® Redbooks® product guide describes the IBM Storage Networking SAN512B-6 (8961-F08) and SAN256B-6 (8961-F04) directors and the IBM b-type Gen 6 Extension Blade (FC 3892, 3893). Digital transformation is pushing mission-critical storage environments to the limit, with users expecting data to be accessible from anywhere, at any time, on any device. Faced with exponential data growth, the network must evolve to enable businesses to thrive in this new era. A new approach to storage networking is needed to enable databases, virtual servers, desktops, and critical applications, and to unlock the full capabilities of flash. By treating the network as a strategic part of a storage environment, organizations can maximize their productivity and efficiency even as they rapidly scale their environments. IBM Storage Networking SAN512B-6 and SAN256B-6 directors with Fabric Vision technology are modular building blocks that combine innovative hardware, software, and built-in instrumentation to ensure high levels of operational stability and redefine application performance. Fabric Vision technology enhances visibility into the health of storage environments, delivering greater control and insight to quickly identify problems and achieve critical service level agreements (SLAs). Breakthrough 32 Gbps performance shatters application performance barriers and provides support for more than 1 billion input/output operations per second (IOPS) for flash-based storage workloads while 128 Gbps UltraScale inter-chassis links enable simplified, high-bandwidth scalability between directors.

Learn the many design decisions that must be made before starting to build a large Oracle Application Express (APEX) application for the cloud or enterprise. One of APEX's key strengths is the fact that it is a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool. This is also a major weakness when it tempts developers to start coding too soon. Small applications that consist of tens of pages can be coded without a lot of design work because they can be re-factored quickly when design flaws are discovered. Design flaws in large cloud and enterprise applications that consist of hundreds or thousands of pages are not so easy to re-factor due to the time needed to redevelop and retest the application, not to mention the risk of breaking functionality in subtle ways. Designing a large application before coding starts is a profitable exercise because a thoughtful design goes a long way in mitigating cost overruns and schedule slippage while simultaneously enhancing quality. This book takes into account perspectives from other non-developer stakeholders such as maintenance developers, business analysts, testers, technical writers, end users, and business owners. Overlooking these perspectives is one of the chief causes of expensive rework late in the development cycle. Oracle Application Express by Design illustrates APEX design principles by using architecture diagrams, screen shots, and explicit code snippets to guide developers through the many design choices and complex interrelationship issues that must be evaluated before embarking on large APEX projects. This book: Guides you through important, up-front APEX design decisions Helps you to optimize your design by keeping all stakeholders in mind Explicit code examples show how design impacts cost, schedule, and quality What You Will Learn Pick and choose from the list of designs before coding begins Bake optimal quality into the underlying fabric of an APEX application Think and design from outside the developer’s narrow perspective Optimize APEX application designs to satisfy multiple stakeholder groups Evaluate design options through hands-on, explicit code examples Define and measure success for large cloud and enterprise APEX applications Who This Book Is For APEX developers and development teams

Dynamic organizations want to accelerate growth while reducing costs. To do so, they must speed the deployment of business applications and adapt quickly to any changes in priorities. Organizations today require an IT infrastructure that is easy, efficient, and versatile. The VersaStack solution by Cisco and IBM® can help you accelerate the deployment of your data centers. It reduces costs by more efficiently managing information and resources while maintaining your ability to adapt to business change. The VersaStack solution combines the innovation of Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure with the efficiency of the IBM Storwize® storage system. The Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure includes the Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS), Cisco Nexus and Cisco MDS switches, and Cisco UCS Director. The IBM FlashSystem® V9000 enhances virtual environments with its Data Virtualization, IBM Real-time Compression™, and IBM Easy Tier® features. These features deliver extraordinary levels of performance and efficiency. The VersaStack solution is Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) ready. Your IT team can build, deploy, secure, and maintain applications through a more agile framework. Cisco Intercloud Fabric capabilities help enable the creation of open and highly secure solutions for the hybrid cloud. These solutions accelerate your IT transformation while delivering dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and simplicity. Cisco and IBM are global leaders in the IT industry. The VersaStack solution gives you the opportunity to take advantage of integrated infrastructure solutions that are targeted at enterprise applications, analytics, and cloud solutions. The VersaStack solution is backed by Cisco Validated Designs (CVD) to provide faster delivery of applications, greater IT efficiency, and less risk. This IBM Redbooks® publication is aimed at experienced storage administrators who are tasked with deploying a VersaStack solution with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and IBM Spectrum™ Protect.

User experience monitoring is essential for enhancing the usability and performance of your mobile native app. How are your customers using your product? Which features do they prefer? How can you spot trouble before it adversely affects your product? This O’Reilly report provides an overview of several metrics you can apply, based on different use-cases. Author Wolfgang Beer explains the typical instrumentation and publishing process of mobile apps, and takes you through different instrumentation approaches. With screenshots from popular tools such as Google Analytics, Ruxit, Fabric, and Flurry Analytics, this report helps you choose the metrics that will help you improve your product’s performance. Monitor performance to understand your app’s stability and usability Measure app user engagement by identifying active and new users, and determining median session length Determine your app’s current retention and churn rates Gather business intelligence by defining users according to personas and lifetime value Oversee the service and infrastructure dependencies of your app in real time Visually track user behavior with heat maps and navigational paths Add automated or manual instrumentation before you publish your app

The IBM® b-type Gen 5 Fibre Channel directors and switches provide reliable, scalable, and secure high-performance foundations for high-density server virtualization, cloud architectures, and next generation flash and SSD storage. They are designed to meet the demands of highly virtualized private cloud storage and data center environments. This IBM Redbooks® publication helps administrators learn how to implement or migrate to an IBM Gen 5 b-type SAN. It provides an overview of the key hardware and software products and explains how to install, monitor, tune, and troubleshoot your storage area network (SAN). Read this publication to learn about fabric design, managing and monitoring your network, key tools such as IBM Network Advisor and Fabric Vision, and troubleshooting.

Dynamic organizations want to accelerate growth while reducing costs. To do so, they must speed the deployment of business applications and adapt quickly to any changes in priorities. Organizations require an IT infrastructure to be easy, efficient, and versatile. The VersaStack solution by Cisco and IBM® can help you accelerate the deployment of your datacenters. It reduces costs by more efficiently managing information and resources while maintaining your ability to adapt to business change. The VersaStack solution combines the innovation of Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) Integrated Infrastructure with the efficiency of the IBM Storwize® storage system. The Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure includes the Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus and Cisco MDS switches, and Cisco UCS Director. The IBM Storwize V7000 storage system enhances virtual environments with its Data Virtualization, IBM Real-time Compression™, and IBM Easy Tier® features. These features deliver extraordinary levels of performance and efficiency. The VersaStack solution is Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) ready. Your IT team can build, deploy, secure, and maintain applications through a more agile framework. Cisco Intercloud Fabric capabilities help enable the creation of open and highly secure solutions for the hybrid cloud. These solutions accelerate your IT transformation while delivering dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and simplicity. Cisco and IBM are global leaders in the IT industry. The VersaStack solution gives you the opportunity to take advantage of integrated infrastructure solutions that are targeted at enterprise applications, analytics, and cloud solutions. The VersaStack solution is backed by Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) to provide faster delivery of applications, greater IT efficiency, and less risk. This IBM Redbooks® publication is aimed at experienced storage administrators that are tasked with deploying a VersaStack solution with IBM DB2® High Availability (DB2 HA), IBM Spectrum™ Protect, and IBM Spectrum Control™.

Dynamic organizations want to accelerate growth while reducing costs. To do so, they must speed the deployment of business applications and adapt quickly to any changes in priorities. Organizations today require an IT infrastructure to be easy, efficient, and versatile. The VersaStack solution by Cisco and IBM® can help you accelerate the deployment of your data centers. It reduces costs by more efficiently managing information and resources while maintaining your ability to adapt to business change. The VersaStack solution combines the innovation of Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure with the efficiency of the IBM Storwize® storage system. The Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure includes the Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS), Cisco Nexus and Cisco MDS switches, and Cisco UCS Director. The IBM Storwize V7000 enhances virtual environments with its Data Virtualization, IBM Real-time Compression™, and IBM Easy Tier® features. These features deliver extraordinary levels of performance and efficiency. The VersaStack solution is Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) ready. Your IT team can build, deploy, secure, and maintain applications through a more agile framework. Cisco Intercloud Fabric capabilities help enable the creation of open and highly secure solutions for the hybrid cloud. These solutions accelerate your IT transformation while delivering dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and simplicity. Cisco and IBM are global leaders in the IT industry. The VersaStack solution gives you the opportunity to take advantage of integrated infrastructure solutions that are targeted at enterprise applications, analytics, and cloud solutions. The VersaStack solution is backed by Cisco Validated Designs (CVD) to provide faster delivery of applications, greater IT efficiency, and less risk. This IBM Redbooks® publication is aimed at experienced storage administrators that are tasked with deploying a VersaStack solution with Microsoft Sequel (SQL), IBM Spectrum™ Protect, and IBM Spectrum Control™.

IBM® System Storage® Gen 5 fabric backbones are among the industry's most powerful Fibre Channel switching infrastructure offerings. They provide reliable, scalable, and high-performance foundations for mission-critical storage. These fabric backbones also deliver enterprise connectivity options to add support for IBM FICON® connectivity, offering a high-performing and reliable FICON infrastructure with fast and scalable IBM System z® servers. Designed to increase business agility while providing nonstop access to information and reducing infrastructure and administrative costs, Gen 5 Fibre Channel fabric backbones deliver a new level of scalability and advanced capabilities to this robust, reliable, and high-performance technology. Although every network type has unique management requirements, most organizations face similar challenges managing their network environments. These challenges can include minimizing network downtime, reducing operational expenses, managing application service level agreements (SLAs), and providing robust security. Until now, no single tool could address these needs across different network types. To address this issue, the IBM Network Advisor management tool provides comprehensive management for data, storage, and converged networks. This single application can deliver end-to-end visibility and insight across different network types by integrating with Fabric Vision technology; it supports Fibre Channel SANs, including Gen 5 Fibre Channel platforms, IBM FICON, and IBM b-type SAN FCoE networks. In addition, this tool supports comprehensive lifecycle management capabilities across different networks through a simple, seamless user experience. This IBM Redbooks® publication introduces the concepts, architecture, and basic implementation of Gen 5 and IBM Network Advisor. It is aimed at system administrators, and pre- and post-sales support staff.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides information about aspects of performing infrastructure health checks, such as checking the configuration and verifying the functionality of the common subsystems (nodes or servers, switch fabric, parallel file system, job management, problem areas, and so on). This IBM Redbooks publication documents how to monitor the overall health check of the cluster infrastructure, to deliver technical computing clients cost-effective, highly scalable, and robust solutions. This IBM Redbooks publication is targeted toward technical professionals (consultants, technical support staff, IT Architects, and IT Specialists) responsible for delivering cost-effective Technical Computing and IBM High Performance Computing (HPC) solutions to optimize business results, product development, and scientific discoveries. This book provides a broad understanding of a new architecture.

To meet today's complex and ever-changing business demands, you need a solid foundation of server, storage, networking and software resources that is simple to deploy and can quickly and automatically adapt to changing conditions. You also need access to, and the ability to take advantage of, broad expertise and proven best practices in systems management, applications, hardware maintenance and more. IBM® PureFlex™ System, which is a part of the IBM PureSystems™ family of expert integrated systems, combines advanced IBM hardware and software along with patterns of expertise and integrates them into three optimized configurations that are simple to acquire and deploy so you can achieve faster time to value. If you want a pre-configured, pre-integrated infrastructure with integrated management and cloud capabilities, factory tuned from IBM with x86 and Power hybrid solution, IBM PureFlex System is the answer. In this IBM Redbooks® publication, we use EX4500 core switches to demonstrate interoperability with the System Networking switches (RackSwitch™ G8264 top of rack switch and the Flex system fabric EN4093 10Gb scalable switch). We also describe a redundant environment using QFX3500 switches running IBM Virtual-Link Aggregation Group (MC-LAG/vLAG) and Juniper Multi- Chassis-Link Aggregation Group.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes the new features that have been added with the release of the IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and IBM System Storage Storwize® V7000 6.4.0 code, including Replication Family Services. Replication Family Services refers to the various copy services available on the SVC and Storwize V7000 including IBM FlashCopy®, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror, Global Mirror with Change Volumes, Volume Mirroring, and Stretched Cluster Volume Mirroring. The details behind the theory and practice of these services are examined, and SAN design suggestions and troubleshooting tips are provided. Planning requirements, automating copy services processed, and fabric design are explained. Multiple examples including implementation and server integration are included, along with a discussion of software solutions and services that are based on Replication Family Services. This book is intended for use by pre-sales and post-sales support, and storage administrators. Readers are expected to have an advanced knowledge of the SVC, Storwize V7000, and the SAN environment. The following publications are useful resources that provide background information: Implementing the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller V6.3, SG24-7933 Implementing the IBM Storwize V7000 V6.3, SG24-7938 IBM SAN Volume Controller and Brocade Disaster Recovery Solutions for VMware, REDP-4626[ IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller Upgrade Path from Version 4.3.1 to 6.1, REDP-4716[ Real-time Compression in SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000, REDP-4859 SAN Volume Controller: Best Practices and Performance Guidelines, SG24-7521 Implementing the Storwize V7000 and the IBM System Storage SAN32B-E4 Encryption Switch, SG24-7977

IBM Tivoli® Storage Productivity Center is an ideal tool for performing storage management reporting, because it uses industry standards for cross vendor compliance, and it can provide reports based on views from all application servers, all Fibre Channel fabric devices, and storage subsystems from different vendors, both physical and virtual. This IBM® Redbooks® publication is intended for experienced storage managers who want to provide detailed performance reports to satisfy their business requirements. The focus of this book is to use the reports provided by Tivoli Storage Productivity Center for performance management. We do address basic storage architecture in order to set a level playing field for understanding of the terminology that we are using throughout this book. Although this book has been created to cover storage performance management, just as important in the larger picture of Enterprise-wide management are both Asset Management and Capacity Management. Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is an excellent tool to provide all of these reporting and management requirements.

The deployment of server virtualization technologies in data centers requires significant efforts in providing sufficient network I/O bandwidth to satisfy the demand of virtualized applications and services. For example, every virtualized system can host several dozen network applications and services, and each of these services requires certain bandwidth (or speed) to function properly. Furthermore, because of different network traffic patterns relevant to different service types, these traffic flows may interfere with each other, leading to serious network problems including the inability of the service to perform its functions. The IBM® Virtual Fabric solution for IBM BladeCenter addresses these issues. The solution is based on the IBM BladeCenter H chassis with a 10-Gb Converged Enhanced Ethernet infrastructure built on 10-Gb Ethernet switch modules in the chassis and the Emulex or Broadcom Virtual Fabric Adapters in each blade server.