Consolidate to a high-performance, scalable storage solution: IBM System Storage DS8000 series with IBM Power Systems and IBM System z. Click http://ibm.co/POtDhj to know more about IBM DS8000 series.

1. IBM Systems and Technology
Solution Brief
Consolidate to a
high-performance,
scalable storage solution
IBM System Storage DS8000 series with
IBM Power Systems and IBM System z
As data growth continues to place unprecedented storage demands on
Highlights organizations, organizations are increasingly looking at consolidation as a
smarter alternative to managing multiple storage systems. Consolidation
●● ● ●
Consolidate storage for disparate applica- allows organizations to use fewer resources to store and manage increas-
tion environments to a single storage
system with self-optimizing performance
ing amounts of data from a variety of disparate application environments.
and quality of service capabilities Helping to facilitate and accelerate this effort, the IBM System Storage®
DS8000® series provides a single system on which to consolidate
●● ● ●
Support a wide variety of server platforms
including IBM Power Systems™ with workloads from a wide variety of distributed and mainframe server
IBM AIX® and IBM i operating systems environments.
and IBM System z®
●● ● ●
Provide high-end performance, reliability The DS8000 series offers a solution that embodies smarter storage.
and scalability to achieve both efficient It supports a wide range of server platforms and operating systems and
and effective storage consolidation provides an ideal storage system for IBM Power Systems and
IBM System z mainframe systems because it provides an extraordinary
level of synergy with these platforms. Using the DS8000 for data and
workload consolidation is an especially attractive option for organizations
already using DS8000 storage with System z because they can leverage
a solution already in place and take advantage of its enterprise-class
reliability, versatility and scalability.

2. IBM Systems and Technology
Solution Brief
Optimizing performance and availability
to maintain quality of service
While the ability to support a variety of workloads with one
storage system represents an efficient way to meet growing
Entry storage
storage demands, storage administrators may have concerns
about maintaining the same performance, quality of service Midrange storage
(QoS) and high availability they enjoyed when workloads were
spread across separate systems. To address these performance High-end storage
concerns, DS8000 storage delivers advanced self-optimizing
performance capabilities, such as automated tiering, dynamic
workload prioritization and intelligent caching algorithms.
Additionally, the DS8000 provides unique performance and
business continuity capabilities for IBM Power Systems
and System z server environments, enabling organizations to
optimize their IT infrastructures for applications running on
these enterprise server platforms.
IBM System Storage Easy Tier for
automated tiering IBM System Storage DS8000
DS8000 storage includes automated tiering capabilities that
constantly monitor data throughput activity and move perfor-
mance-intensive workloads to faster drives as needed in order to The IBM System Storage DS8000 is ideal for consolidating data and work-
loads from multiple storage systems, enabling organizations to manage more
maintain optimal price/performance levels. IBM System data with fewer resources.
Storage Easy Tier® can recognize disk “hot spots”—areas on a
disk system that have high activity or long wait times—and can
rebalance data across multiple tiers or within a single tier. Easy Tier can help optimize the use of higher-cost SSDs by
Easy Tier can support up to three classes of drives—solid state relocating only the most frequently accessed data on this tier.
drives (SSDs), enterprise Fibre Channel or serial attached Based on the results of one industry standard benchmark,
SCSI (SAS) drives, and serial ATA (SATA) or nearline SAS using Easy Tier to relocate just five percent of data to SSDs
drives—to address the specific performance and cost from traditional hard disk drives dramatically reduced average
requirements for disparate workloads. input/output (I/O) response time from 9 milliseconds to
2 milliseconds.1 This demonstrates that moving even a small
portion of data to SSDs can satisfy performance-intensive
workloads without incurring the high cost of putting entire data
2

3. IBM Systems and Technology
Solution Brief
sets on SSDs or spreading the data sets over a large number of
under-utilized spinning disks, a technique known as drive
“short-stroking.” Easy Tier also has the intelligence to address IBM System Storage
regularly-scheduled peak workloads—such as end-of-week or DS8000
end-of-month batch processing—by storing and analyzing I/O
history patterns and automatically moving data to the right tier
at the appropriate times. SSD
Easy Tier includes a Storage Tier Advisor Tool to analyze
actual workload performance across the system’s existing vol- Tier 1
umes, helping users easily determine how much each volume
would benefit from an optimal mix of drive tiering. This insight
allows administrators to focus on performance trends and Tier 2
capacity requirements, rather than estimating the best way to
manually and regularly tune the system. One of the main bene-
fits of using Easy Tier is that it requires virtually no ongoing
management once it is deployed, since it dynamically adapts to
the system’s ever-changing workload activity.
Self-optimizing storage—Easy Tier automatically rebalances data across
German IT services leader benefits from Easy Tier drive tiers to help optimize performance and costs by moving the right data to
the right tier.
IHK-Gfl, which provides IT services to 80 chambers of commerce
and industry in Germany, relies on DS8700 storage with Easy Tier
to manage storage in an IBM System x® environment. For organizations that want the flexibility to manually place
specific application volumes on a specific drive tier or in a
Using Easy Tier, the DS8700 automatically moves the company’s
most frequently accessed data to SSDs for maximum performance,
specific storage pool, the Easy Tier manual volume migration
and moves less frequently accessed data to slower, lower-cost disks. feature can move full volumes around the system nondisrup-
As a result, IHK-Gfl has been able to achieve its performance target tively. This feature has the ability to include or remove specific
of no more than 2 milliseconds access time for databases at all times. volumes from an Easy Tier pool when there is a need to isolate
a volume in a specific tier or storage pool. This extensive f lexi-
“Our ERP system database access times improved ten times, from
bility helps accelerate effective storage consolidation with the
20 to 25 milliseconds to under 2 milliseconds, with IBM Easy Tier
ability to support a variety of distinct application requirements
flash optimization,” notes Dr. Andreas Himmelreich, CEO of IHK-Gfl.
throughout the system.
To ensure continuous availability, the company replicates data on its
production storage environment using IBM Global Mirror software to
I/O Priority Manager workload
another IBM System Storage DS8000 series system at a secondary
location.
prioritization
The DS8000 I/O Priority Manager is another self-optimizing
feature that enables effective storage consolidation and
performance management. It is designed to constantly monitor
system resources and align QoS levels to separate workloads in
the system.
3

4. IBM Systems and Technology
Solution Brief
I/O Priority Manager dynamically aligns DS8000 resources to impact of such a failure—when consolidating systems. The
each volume according the volume’s relative priority, which is DS8000 series includes a variety of high-availability features
defined by the administrator. When the performance of a high- designed to keep mission-critical applications online.
priority application begins to suffer because other applications
are competing for access to the same drives, this intelligent QoS The DS8000 is well known for its bullet-proof reliability with
feature automatically delays the I/O of the lower-priority appli- sophisticated data integrity features, full hardware redundancy,
cations. This happens automatically and only when there is RAID striping and support for nondisruptive logical and
contention for the same drives by multiple application volumes. physical configuration changes. Other data protection functions
When the volumes are no longer contending for the same include the IBM FlashCopy® and Global Copy features, which
resources, I/O Priority Manager allows the system to resume provide important point-in-time copy abilities. More advanced
normal I/O operations without delaying any I/O activity. local and long-distance mirroring solutions are available with
the Metro Mirror and Global Mirror family offerings that are
While it supports any server platform, I/O Priority Manager designed to ensure that critical applications remain online all
provides specialized synergy with System z and the the time.
IBM z/OS® operating system. In a tightly integrated process,
the z/OS Workload Manager feature in System z can direct Additional high-availability solutions integrating the
I/O Priority Manager on the DS8000 to prioritize workloads DS8000 and IBM server platforms include the Geographically
based on specific application performance goals managed by Dispersed Parallel Sysplex™ (GDPS®) HyperSwap®
the System z server. This is yet another unique benefit only Manager and Open HyperSwap. These advanced solutions are
available through IBM. another testament to the tight integration and synergy between
IBM servers and the DS8000 that allows the server to switch
High-availability features for instantly from a primary DS8000 system to a standby DS8000
consolidated workloads system that has a mirror image of the data. This unique integra-
As organizations consolidate storage in fewer disk systems, the tion provides a superior level of business continuity and data
impact of a system failure has the potential to disrupt more integrity for mission-critical applications running on
applications. It is therefore more important than ever to take IBM servers. Initially available for System z environments,
steps to reduce the risk of such a failure—or minimize the HyperSwap now also supports IBM Power Systems running AIX.
4

5. IBM Systems and Technology
Solution Brief
DS8000 storage also offers a policy-based resource group The IBM three-part vision for optimized
management feature that offers enhanced data protection for storage and service levels
multi-tenancy environments. This feature helps administrators IBM Smarter Storage is a leading-edge portfolio of solutions
protect volumes in copy services relationships from interfering and essential technologies designed to help organizations take
with each other and allows administrators to limit the actions control of their storage so they can focus on gaining more
that can be performed on each volume. This advanced data valuable insights from their data and delivering more value to
protection capability is important for consolidated and their business. IBM Smarter Storage systems are:
multi-tenant environments where organizations need to
separate, for example, their open volumes from their mainframe ●● ●
Efficient by design. Efficiency features are designed into
volumes, or where cloud service providers need to isolate the IBM storage systems from the beginning. Advanced features
volumes of different customers from each other. are pre-installed, ready to deploy and operate consistently.
●● ●
Self-optimizing. Self-optimizing storage operates at the
Supporting high scalability for massive speed of business—much faster and more accurately than
amounts of data manual performance tuning. It is used to increase throughput
The DS8000 series offers tremendous scalability and flexibility. for critical applications and support new workloads.
The physical capacity of the DS8000 series can range from less ●● ●
Cloud agile. IBM Smarter Storage has virtualization built in,
than 5 terabytes (TB) to more than 2 petabytes (PB) on a single enabling agility by enabling online data migration and
system. It can support a combination of traditional spinning automated storage provisioning. Storage virtualization
drives of varying rotational speeds and ultra-fast SSDs. In improves cloud economics by enabling higher utilization,
addition, to help simplify management and accommodate automating storage administration tasks and improving
changing application requirements, administrators can easily flexibility for managing unpredictable workloads.
and nondisruptively add and expand storage capacity with
dynamic volume expansion. Thin provisioning is another Why IBM?
feature that can significantly reduce the time administrators For environments using IBM Power Systems with IBM AIX
spend provisioning new storage while keeping applications or IBM System z, IBM System Storage DS8000 is an ideal
online. Thin provisioning allows easy allocation of capacity to choice for consolidating data and workloads. Powerful DS8000
servers on a “just-enough” and “just-in-time” basis, which is a features, such as Easy Tier, I/O Priority Manager, HyperSwap
key requirement for effectively managing capacity in a consoli- and additional business continuity solutions, can help to
dated environment. improve performance and availability. With comprehensive
functionality for consolidation and performance optimization,
the DS8000 enables organizations to derive the most value
possible from their storage infrastructure.
5

6. For more information
To learn more about consolidating multiple workload environ-
ments to the IBM System Storage DS8000 series, contact
your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit:
ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ds8000/
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This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be
changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every
country in which IBM operates.
The performance data discussed herein is presented as derived under
specific operating conditions. Actual results may vary.
THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED
“AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF
NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the
terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.
Actual available storage capacity may be reported for both uncompressed
and compressed data and will vary and may be less than stated.
1 Storage Performance Council, “SPC-1 and SPC-1/E Benchmark Results,”
April 2010. http://www.storageperformance.org/results/
benchmark_results_spc1#a00092
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