Logicalis Power Systems Forum: Wroxall Abbey, 7/8 July: External Storage for System i, led by Dave Painter, Senior IT Specialist, IBM Europe

Given IBM's major change of strategic direction in this area, we have decided to focus on External Storage for System i at our next Logicalis Power Systems Forum meeting on Wednesday 8 July at Wroxall Abbey (near Solihull).

Dave Painter, IBM Europe's top specialist in this area, will be leading the session.

The agenda is as follows:

• System i storage: present and future
  
• External storage attach fundamentals
  
• Hardware options and connectivity
  
• Migration
  
• High availability and disaster recovery with external storage (to include coverage of Power HA/Toolkit)
  
• External storage with AIX and Linux partitions and Virtual I/O Server
  
• Planning and sizing for external storage attach
  
• Hints, tips and examples
  

We will also be taking the opportunity to discuss IBM's new XIV Information Systems product. This revolutionary architecture is specifically designed to mitigate the impact of hardware failures while supporting high levels of scalability. It maximizes storage utilization with data spread across all drives, allowing for easier management and configuration, reduced energy consumption and autonomic performance tuning, all while presenting a simple user interface. This additional session will be led by John Brooker of IBM.

If you are interested in attending, please let me know (mandy.shaw@iperimeter.co.uk or 01225 436302).

If you haven't come across the Logicalis Power Systems Forum (IT Forum) before, here's some information about it:

Logicalis' Power Systems Forum is a community of large-scale System i users interested in the application of the i operating system on the Power Systems platform from both business and technical perspectives.

The Power Systems Forum is enabled by Logicalis' strong relationships within IBM's Rochester, Minnesota i development labs and has been in existence since 1995 to address a wide range of issues relevant to the UK's largest System i users and to provide the opportunity to exchange views and ideas with other people running similar large i installations.

We aim to give members the information they need for budgeting and to provide a direct and regular conduit to the Rochester labs, influencing development strategies and giving the labs important feedback on the issues facing large users.

The Forum, which is subscription based, meets four times a year, annually visiting IBM Rochester. Each member organisation signs a confidential disclosure agreement with IBM Rochester, allowing our speakers to share future plans.

A few recent topics:
April 2009: SOA and enterprise Web 2.0 Development Options for System i, Kurt Rump, Executive Briefing Center, IBM Rochester, and Jon Mell of Headshift.
July 2008: To DBA or not to DBA: that is the question, Barry Thorn, BI Spectrum.
April 2008: Regulatory compliance in a System i environment, Thomas Barlen, Consulting IT Specialist, System i Security, IBM Europe, and Lewis Honour, Security Practice Manager, Logicalis UK.
December 2007: Business Applications of Unified Communications, Mark Adams, Unified Communications Practice Manager, Logicalis UK.
April 2007: IBM's strategy for System i, Mike Smith, System i Software Chief Engineering Manager, IBM Rochester.