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In this episode, we talk with Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer and VP of WorldWide Channels for IBM Storage about the FlashSystem 9100 storage series. This is the 2nd time we have had Eric on the show (see Violin podcast) and the 2nd time we have had a guest from IBM on our show (see CryptoCurrency talk). However, it’s the first time we have had IBM as a sponsor for a podcast.
Eric’s a 32 year storage industry veteran who’s worked for many major storage companies, including Seagate, EMC and IBM and 7 startups over his carreer. He’s been predominantly in marketing but was CFO at one company.
New IBM FlashSystem 9100
IBM is introducing a new FlashSystem 9100 storage series, using new NVMe FlashCore Modules (FCM) that have been re-designed to fit a small form factor (SFF, 2.5″) drive slot but also supports standard, NVMe SFF SSDs in a 2U appliance package. The new storage has dual active-active RAID controllers running the latest generation IBM Spectrum Virtualize software that’s running over 100K storage systems in the field today.
FlashSystem 9100 supports up to 24 NVMe FCMs or SSDs, which can be intermixed. The FCMs offer up to 19.2TB of usable flash and have onboard hardware compression and encryption.
With FCM media, the FlashSystem 9100 can sustain 2.5M IOPS at 100µsec response times with 34GB/sec of data throughput. Spectrum Virtualize is a clustered storage system, so one could cluster together up to 4 FlashSystem 9100s into a single storage system and support 10M IOPS and 136GB/sec of throughput.
Spectrum Virtualize just introduced block data deduplication within a data reduction pool. With thin provisioning, data deduplication, pattern matching, SCSI Unmap support, and data compression, the FlashSystem 9100 can offer up to 5:1 effective capacity:useable flash capacity. That means with 24 19.2TB FCMs, a single FlashSystem 9100 offers over 2PB of effective capacity.
In addition to the appliances 24 NVMe FCMs or NVMe SSDS, FlashSystem 9100 storage can also attach up to 20 SAS SSD drive shelves for additional capacity. Moreover, Spectrum Virtualize offers storage virtualization, so customers can attach external storage arrays behind a FlashSystem 9100 solution.
With FlashSystem 9100, IBM has bundled additional Spectrum software, including
- Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud – which allows customers to migrate data and workloads from on premises to the cloud and back again. Today this only works for IBM Cloud, but plans are to support other public clouds soon.
- Spectrum Copy Data Management – which offers a simple way to create and manage copies of data while enabling controlled self-service for test/dev and other users to use snapshots for secondary use cases.
- Spectrum Protect Plus – which provides data backup and recovery for FlashSystem 9100 storage, tailor made for smaller, virtualized data centers.
- Spectrum Connect – which allows Docker and Kubernetes container apps to access persistent storage on FlashSystem 9100.
To learn more about the IBM FlashSystem 9100, join the virtual launch experience July 24, 2018 here.
The podcast runs ~43 minutes. Eric has always been knowledgeable on the enterprise storage market, past, present and future. He had a lot to talk about on the FlashSystem 9100 and seems to have mellowed lately. His grey mustache is forcing the GreyBeards to consider a name change – GreyHairsOnStorage anyone, Listen to the podcast to learn more.
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Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Worldwide Channels for IBM Storage
Eric’s responsibilities include worldwide product marketing and management for IBM’s award-winning family of storage solutions, software defined storage, integrated infrastructure, and software defined computing, as well as responsibility for global storage channels.
Herzog has over 32 years of product management, marketing, business development, alliances, sales, and channels experience in the storage software, storage systems, and storage solutions markets, managing all aspects of marketing, product management, sales, alliances, channels, and business development in both Fortune 500 and start-up storage companies.
Prior to joining IBM, Herzog was Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Alliances for all-flash storage provider Violin Memory. Herzog was also Senior Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing for EMC’s Enterprise & Mid-range Systems Division, where he held global responsibility for product management, product marketing, evangelism, solutions marketing, communications, and technical marketing with a P&L over $10B. Before joining EMC, he was vice president of marketing and sales at Tarmin Technologies. Herzog has also held vice president business line management and vice president of marketing positions at IBM’s Storage Technology Division, where he had P&L responsibility for the over $300M OEM RAID and storage subsystems business, and Maxtor (acquired by Seagate).
Herzog has held vice president positions in marketing, sales, operations, and acting-CFO roles at Asempra (acquired by BakBone Software), ArioData Networks (acquired by Xyratex), Topio (acquired by Network Appliance), Zambeel, and Streamlogic.
Herzog holds a B.A. degree in history from the University of California, Davis, where he graduated cum laude, studied towards a M.A. degree in Chinese history, and was a member of the Phi Alpha Theta honor society.