User manual IBM XIV STORAGE SYSTEM OVERVIEW

[. . . ] IBM XIV® Storage System Optimizing Enterprise Storage Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with IBM XIV White Paper | June 2009 TCO Reinvented Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm. com, System Storage, XIV, and the XIV logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. These and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with the appropriate symbol (® or TM), indicating US registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ibm. com/legal/copytrade. shtml. [. . . ] This translates to less spending on physical capacity and fewer related costs by virtue of a system that operates without hotspots and without system down-time or performance degradation during maintenance or scaling. Self-management Core to the XIV system's optimization of capacity use is its self-management of data. XIV's automated volume distribution mechanism optimizes the use of capacity across all system disks at all times, including at peak times and regardless of IT activities, application size, or user demand. Its automated approach to volume distribution, including automated load balancing, avoids onerous and error-prone manual allocation tasks. The system also automatically performs space reclamation (details below), further maximizing capacity use on a per terabyte basis. A global leader in media and entertainment: "Replicating our production was taking a week. With XIV, it takes us 150 minutes. " Differential snapshots (full backup volumes) XIV's snapshot technology uses a differential implementation that copies only the data that differs between source and snapshot ­ dramatically and efficiently minimizing the space otherwise consumed by copies and keeping system performance unaffected. In addition, XIV's snapshot and replication mechanisms take the required storage space from a single, general pool. Traditional systems typically require the allocation of separate storage pools for snapshots and replication. The downside to this approach is that when the pools are from different tiers, spare space is taken from all over the system, increasing the overhead needed to track where the data resides. Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 8 TCO Reinvented Hotspot-free As described, the XIV system is fully virtualized, distributing data automatically and maintaining perfect load balance at all times, without hotspots. The lack of hotspots eliminates the need to pre-allocate volumes to achieve specific performance requirements. Hands-free scaling Whenever new physical capacity is added, the XIV system automatically integrates the new capacity across all the disks and modules and swiftly redistributes the load to maintain perfect balance. For more information on IBM XIV volume distribution and load balancing, see the IBM XIV Performance Reinvented white paper. Space reclamation XIV performs space reclamation automatically and offers easy management tools for leveraging this capability to the fullest. The XIV system recognizes "zeroed out" space as not being in use; it releases any space marked by zeros into the general pool, thus reclaiming it. XIV management tools enable administrators to easily zero out space no longer in use so that the XIV system can automatically reclaim it and allow its reuse. Traditional system have a different approach to space reclamation; yet, most of these approaches are not currently functioning and will not be available for a number of years. This lack in traditional systems is one of the sources for inflated capacity requirements. Simple pricing, with all-inclusive features Simplicity is a key virtue of the XIV system; this simplicity applies to purchasing, as well. Buying an XIV system is a simple matter of specifying the desired gross/net capacity, with no other costs involved. The XIV system takes an all-inclusive approach to features: every XIV rack comes with all software built-in, as itemized below, at no extra cost and with no license fees whatsoever: Snapshots Consistency groups Remote mirroring Storage management Performance monitoring Thin provisioning Self-tuning Host connectivity packages Data migration Special host features, like MS VSS support Native multi-path support of the host operating system Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 9 TCO Reinvented The lack of software license fees differentiates the XIV system from the vast majority of systems on the market. Most traditional tier-1 storage systems have complex pricing models that, by nature, inflate system cost and complicate attempts to assess true TCO. Such enterprise storage pricing schemes commonly involve: itemized hardware and infrastructure costs, itemized license fees for software features, including for their initial purchase, upon capacity increase, and annual license renewals, as well as other software fees, such as for version compatibility. [. . . ] In contrast to the high rates of unused space in legacy systems, the XIV approach greatly reduces the time and space that backups require and, consequently, the costs involved. In addition, the XIV storage system offers logical backup and low-cost recovery through differential snapshots. This innovative mechanism allows organizations to expand and fortify their backup practices without necessarily increasing their physical capacity needs. IBM XIV offers up to 16, 000 differential snapshots, on demand, with no administrative overhead or perceptible degradation in system performance. [. . . ]