IBM XIV Storage: Engineered for Business Continuity

IBM Systems and Technology August 2011
IBM XIV Storage System: Engineered for business continuity

IBM XIV Storage System:
Engineered for business
continuity

Objective
Contents This paper describes the vision for business continuity across industries,
and the essential elements of a successful business continuity strategy. For
1 Objective enterprise decision-makers—both IT and line-of-business—this paper
discusses planning for an organization’s ideal business continuity position,
1 Executive summary
as well as approaches to accelerate disaster readiness. For managers mak-
2 Business continuity: the critical ing system and storage decisions, this paper deﬁnes the factors to consider
business success factor and the evaluations needed to make informed technology and solution
decisions to minimize downtime, prevent technological mishaps, and
8 Data protection compensate for natural or man-made disasters.
10 Disaster recovery
After reading this paper, you will have a high-level perspective of continu-
11 Business continuance ity planning as well as a framework for expressing the importance of
information and system assets to business operations and ﬁnancial success.
12 IBM XIV Storage: a value-
You will have a clear understanding of business continuity objectives;
added solution
namely, protecting against and recovering from system outages and
14 Select IBM XIV business externally caused disasters, as well as maintaining business-as-usual. You
continuity references will be aware of the essential elements of business continuity solutions
and know how the IBM® XIV® Storage System promotes continuity
14 Conclusion objectives—to succeed even during a crisis.
15 Appendices
Executive summary
Regardless of the industry, organizations are critically dependent on their
information systems and data. As technology continues to become more
entrenched in business operations, planning for business continuity is a
lifeline for success. For some organizations, even a brief downtime can
cost millions of dollars in lost revenue or unplanned costs, risk customer
loyalty, or impede growth. Therefore, it is essential for organizations to
formulate, implement, and update a plan that will support system
resilience and protect data storage.


The goal of business continuity is to protect critical business Beyond lost revenue and potential loss of customers to
data and systems from loss and downtime, make key applica- competitors, regulatory fines for noncompliance can be
tions available continuously, and enable operations to resume imposed on organizations such as utilities that cannot recover
quickly after a system outage—large or small. Organizations of immediately—even in a matter of minutes. Similarly, severe
all types have found that downtime prevention and expedited penalties for service contract breaches such as a credit card
business resumption are not only essential business practices, company’s inability to approve transactions can also be
but offer a major competitive advantage. demanded. With near-instant recovery, replication, clustering,
and restoration solutions offered by the XIV system, customers
The XIV Storage System, engineered specifically for business recovering from outages can focus on revenue generation and
continuity, is a radically different enterprise data storage system. growth instead of data salvage efforts.
The XIV system helps deliver the highest levels of availability,
reliability, performance, scalability, and functionality at very The simplicity of the XIV system means that operations run
low overall cost, while eliminating complexity and greatly more smoothly with fewer resources, and that human errors are
simplifying storage management. prevented—especially during high-pressure system outages,
when it counts the most.
XIV storage fully exploits all key system resources with
unprecedented out-of-the-box data protection, recovery, and While previously considered unattainable, true business
business continuance functionality. continuity is not only achievable with the XIV system, but is
remarkably cost effective and straightforward. With visionary
The first order of business in a solid business continuity strat- XIV storage technology, as well as effective planning, infrastruc-
egy is preventing downtime and data unavailability. The highly ture, and responsiveness, organizations can emerge from a
reliable active-active N+1 grid architecture, revolutionary disaster empowered—with their financial position intact, cus-
redundancy, and self-healing approach of the XIV system help tomer base secure, and a strong leg up over the competition.
ensure that systems don’t skip a beat during a hardware failure.
Business continuity: the critical business
In the event of an outage, getting applications back online is success factor
the top priority; however, without solid simultaneous data In today’s dynamic, global environment, maintaining business
recovery, organizations face a serious liability. In fact, for many operations without system downtime or mission-diverting
organizations—such as cloud computing providers and online activities is key to success. XIV business continuity solutions
retailers—downtime is simply not an option. The XIV system infuse essential value to organizations, by helping:
eliminates the tradeoff between downtime and data loss, helping
ensure that enterprises can both bring the system back up and G Protect the revenue stream. In many business environments,
fully recover data immediately. even an hour of downtime can cost millions of dollars and
threaten the loss of dedicated clients who are the source of
When system performance degrades, there is often a direct future revenues.
impact on profit, particularly for organizations such as financial G Champion customer service and loyalty. Continuity solutions
institutions, for which systems are the means for revenue gener- ensure that organizations can maintain service commitments,
ation. The hotspot-free design and nondisruptive maintenance such as adhering to service level agreements, providing
of the XIV system promote consistent high performance so that customer support, and maintaining online customer service
organizations can always operate at their peak. channels that shield customers from outages and emergencies.

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G Maintain an organization’s reputation. Avoiding negative pub- G Reduce overall organizational risk. Organizations exposed to
licity for outages, poor service, or lost data can be even more lower risk are healthier and better positioned to succeed.
important than actively promoting brand image. G Create a smarter planet. Proactive business resilience
G Boost competitive edge. A solid resilience plan is a strategic planning and intelligent storage decision-making can have
enabler, helping enterprises surpass the competition and a profound impact on an enterprise—not just in terms of
proactively leverage power in compromised situations and supporting environmental friendliness, lowering resource uti-
sudden changes in the business climate. It provides the agility lization, and decreasing the overall technology footprint, but
and confidence to maneuver adeptly in a dynamic market. also in terms of creating a more efficient, focused, and agile
G Drive business growth. The ability to maintain continuous organization.
operations under any circumstance positions organizations for
expansion and profitability, helping promote innovation in Cost of downtime
products and services without barriers or limitations. While the cost of downtime in terms of revenue and productiv-
Organizations with a foolproof business continuity infrastruc- ity varies widely by industry, organization, location, season, and
ture in place can remain future-oriented, leading, and driving time of day, typically, the higher an organization’s dependence
emerging business trends, instead of constantly reacting to on technology, the greater the impact of downtime. A study by
market changes. the Robert Frances Group puts the average hourly cost to an
G Ensure safety. In industries such as healthcare, military, and organization of system unavailability at between $990,000 for
law enforcement, continuous system access can be a matter of consumer products companies and $8.2 million for financial
life or death. institutions.1 A single outage lasting several hours ratchets up
G Promote data recovery, not just disaster recovery. Disaster these costs even further. The magnitude of these losses helps
recovery is planned for low-odds catastrophic events, but data drive home the need for strategic investment in business conti-
recovery incidents are much more prevalent and can be just as nuity solutions.
damaging.
G Maintain company commitment to business partnerships. In Readiness in all situations
codependent partnerships, such as supply chains, each player In addition to ensuring continuous uptime and minimizing or
is crucial to success or failure. eliminating planned downtime, XIV business continuity solu-
G Comply with protection required by law. Public companies, tions are tailored for the complete range of potential outages:
financial institutions, utilities, health care organizations, and
government agencies are mandated to conform to stringent G Hardware failure
data protection regulations. G Software errors
G Eliminate missed opportunities. In competitive environments, G Data corruption
missed opportunities could mean losing out on a strategic G Human errors
sales break or forfeiting a potentially profitable partnership. G Power outages
G Sabotage
G Natural or manmade disasters

1
Robert Frances Group, “Picking up the value of PKI,” 2007

3


The XIV system addresses a broad range of downtime situa- Business continuity as an operational continuum
tions deﬁned by the Standish Group study, outlined below. Business continuity is the ability to plan for and respond to
risks, as well as opportunities, in order to maintain continuous
business operations. It is measured along a continuum, from
Corporate Computer Down Incidents basic to the most comprehensive. Each organization needs to
decide where it ﬁts along this scale and match its business conti-
Environmental Conditions
Other
Hardware Failure
nuity strategy to the role that IT plays in its operations.
11% 4%
21%
13%
System Software Bugs G High availability: The basic level of support provides a
19%

15%
17% resilient IT infrastructure that masks failures, ensuring no sin-
Planned Maintenance gle point-of-failure within the system or its components. This
support level promotes high uptime with negligible service
Application System Bugs
Operator Error
interruption from system failures. Fault-tolerant architectures
help minimize application outages due to hardware failures.
Source: Standish Group Research
Security is embedded in the hardware to help protect against
unauthorized access.
G Continuous operations: The ability to keep operations run-
ning when the systems are functioning properly. This level
For detailed information on how XIV storage supports each adds nondisruptive maintenance, eliminating downtime for
type of outage, see Appendix A. scheduled backups or planned maintenance.
G Disaster recovery: The ability to recover a data center at a
different site if a disaster hits the primary site or renders it
inoperable. Processing resumes at an alternate site, on
High availability Continuous operations Disaster recovery
different hardware.

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Organization
Critical to
IT-generate can function
organizational IT is regulated
revenue with manual
success
operations

• IT as a service • Manufacturing • Government • Non-essential
(hosting, cloud • Energy and • Life sciences services
computing) utilities • Agriculture
• Media and • Insurance
entertainment • Education
• Online services • Professional
• Telecommunications services
• Finance • Healthcare
• Emergency
services
• Military

An industry view of business continuity G Governmental and life science organizations are regulated to
Every industry and organization has a different threshold for ensure data retention and service. Over time and with the
tolerating system downtime and disasters. Based on observa- availability and proliferation of technology solutions, regula-
tions in multiple industries, the diagram below outlines a sam- tions are likely to become stricter and more extensive.
ple model of reliance that organizations have for systems and G Agriculture is one of the few industries in the “can function
online data, including examples of industries in each category. with manual operations” category, in which operations could
continue for a day or more with extensive manual processes.
The value that organizations place on their data directly
correlates with the necessity of online operations and data for Within organizations, each department has its own level
success. For example: of demand for system availability. Departments that operate
9-to-5 do not require round-the-clock uptime. Some depart-
G Financial institutions and entertainment companies are ments can back up their data once a day and tolerate the loss of
organizations for which technology is the medium that pro- a day’s work; other operations function day and night, and even
vides revenue. Without system availability, these organizations a few minutes of lost data can have heavy impact on mission-
cannot make money, can lose money, or risk legal action for critical objectives.
noncompliance with service level agreements. There is zero
tolerance for data availability interruption. The degree of implemented support and infrastructure invest-
G Manufacturers and utilities fall into the largest category— ment incurs costs to an organization, which is why careful
industries that rely on data as critical to success. Workarounds planning is required.
are an essential element of the business, but extended outages
are likely to expose organizations to intolerable risk.

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Measuring system and data resilience The RPO describes the acceptable amount of data loss meas-
To develop and implement a business continuity plan, organiza- ured in time. The RPO is the point in time to which one must
tions rate their system and data needs using recovery time recover data. This is generally a definition of what an organiza-
objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) measures: tion determines is an “acceptable loss” in a disaster situation.
The RPO allows an organization to define a window of time
The RTO is the duration of time within which a business before a disaster during which data may be lost. The value of
process service level must be restored after a disaster or the data in this window can then be weighed against the cost of
disruption in order to avoid unacceptable consequences. RTO additional disaster prevention or loss-prevention measures that
includes the time for recovery of data and application profiles, would be necessary to close the window.
testing, and notification to the users.
Defining strategy using the 7-level business continuity
The business continuity timeline usually runs in parallel with model
an incident management timeline and may start at the same or The 7-level business continuity model helps organizations
different points. In accepted business continuity planning define the level of business continuity needed according to a
methodologies, the RTO is established by the owner of a simple business continuity approach, as diagrammed below.
process during the business impact analysis (BIA). Each level in this incremental model builds upon the functional-
ity in the preceding level.
In its Worldwide Business Continuity Taxonomy, 2011, IDC
observed that “recovery objectives that were once measured in The horizontal axis measures the amount of time an organiza-
days or hours are now measured in seconds. This is motivated tion can tolerate a system or data outage—from minutes to
by increased business reliance on IT infrastructure and by a days. The more value an organization puts on system availabil-
diminishing tolerance for downtime of any duration, and its ity, as defined in the vertical axis, the quicker the required
financial impact.”2 recovery. Accelerated recovery with high data currency brings
more value to an organization, demanding a more sophisticated
In a 2010 research publication, Gartner considered “best-in- continuity and recovery solution, which can necessitate a larger
class availability levels to be at 99.95 percent, or fewer than investment.
five hours downtime per year per IT service (assuming a
24×7 scheduled operation).”3 2
IDC, “IDC’s Worldwide Business Continuity Taxonomy: New Approaches to
Ensuring Availability of IT Systems”, January 2011, IDC #226627, Volume: 1
3
Gartner, “How to Calculate the Cost of Continuously Available IT Services,”
November 18, 2010

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Recovery from a disk image Recovery from tape copy

7 Storage replication with end-to-end automated server recovery
Cost / Value

6 Real-time continuous data replication, cluster management

5 Application-consistent backup/restore

4 Point in time replication

Disk copies, Deduplication, Remote vault
3
2 Tape libraries + Automation
1 Tape restore
15 Min. 1-4 Hr.. 4 -8 Hr.. 8-12 Hr.. 12-16 Hr.. 24 Hr.. Days

Recovery Time Objective

Key
IT- Critical to IT is Organization
generated organizational regulated can function
revenue success with manual
operations

Full command of business continuity and systems to the organization. Business continuity is a trade-
levels with XIV Storage off between resource investment and risk. Given unlimited
The XIV Storage System offers powerful out-of-the-box financial and human resources, organizations would select a
support for all business continuity levels, from the most basic to 100 percent failsafe program of complete real-time data redun-
the most demanding continuity requirements. The system’s dancy and a technologically-loaded, fully-staffed, remote hot
enterprise-level strength and value are maximized in levels four site. In reality, organizations must select the solution and con-
through seven, in which local or remote business resumption is figuration within their budget that best mitigates relative risk.
expedited, data must be recovered quickly, and replicated data
must have a high level of currency. For detailed information on Since service interruptions can have ramifications for every
XIV system support for each business continuity level, please aspect of operations, organizations must be ready to use alter-
see Appendix B. nate processes, introduce human intervention, and rely on
alternate facilities in the event of downtime or a disaster.
Business continuity planning
Business continuity planning enables organizations to evaluate
their business continuity and recovery requirements, develop a
plan, and implement a solution to match the criticality of data

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IBM business continuity services distributed, XIV storage can tolerate a single disk or a complete
IBM offers a range of expert business continuity and contin- module failure. Furthermore, during a failure, XIV technology
gency services with measurable high value results, including. redistributes and rebalances data across the remaining spindles
in the involved module as well as in all other modules in the
G Resilience planning. IBM Global Technology Services system. Since every disk in the system participates, this happens
offers business continuity planning for a solid strategy and with negligible impact on system performance and orders of
reduced risk. The scope can include broad strategy definition, magnitude faster than traditional RAID arrays, significantly
program development, procedures, staffing, management, closing the window of risk. The system typically rebuilds
training, and facility planning—or targeted services for a 1 TB drives in 30 minutes or less and 2 TB drives in less than
specific need. 60 minutes.
G Strategic outsourcing. IBM and IBM Business Partners
throughout the world offer cold, warm, and hot-site recovery The XIV system exploits total transparent self-healing in
facility management as well as other services. the event of a hardware failure—without human intervention.
G Implementation assistance. IBM supports implementations at The distributed redundancy approach dramatically increases
all levels, from turnkey setup to tactical guidance throughout data availability during an outage, significantly reducing
a project. business risk.

For more information on a basic business continuity planning One important note regarding recovery from primary data
methodology, please see Appendix C. corruption: in order to recover from data corruption, a com-
plete static point-in-time copy of the clean data (full volume
Data protection: multilevel redundancy snapshot)—prior to the data corruption—must be available.
for optimized recovery Depending on when the corruption occurred, data managers
The XIV Storage System offers intelligent, cost-effective may need to iteratively examine prior snapshots to find a clean
backup and replication solutions to protect and preserve data copy of the data. Self-healing and replication do not repair
for recovery should data or hardware become unavailable. A corrupted data.
hallmark of XIV-engineered replication solutions is the strategic
support of consistently high system performance and applica- The following outlines the robust offering of XIV data protec-
tion availability service levels. tion options.

Sophisticated built-in data redundancy Backups
The XIV system is a revolutionary active-active N+1 architec- The XIV system provides GUI-based industry-standard disk
ture with data distributed pseudo-randomly across volumes. and tape backup utilities.
The XIV architecture leverages controlling logic within the
Snapshot backups
XIV interface modules to randomly distribute each mirrored
The XIV architecture delivers a best-in-class snapshot design
data “chunk” across data modules, making sure that no
with differential snapshots being created nearly instantly with
mirrored copy of a chunk exists within the same module as
virtually no impact on performance—regardless of the size of
the original. This enables the XIV system to achieve extreme
the source volumes. This feature is beneficial particularly for
fault tolerance and mitigate the typical challenges associated
large enterprise applications.
with recovering from failures. Since every block of data is

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The ability to create and manage snapshots of existing volumes Synchronous XIV mirroring offers total data currency, even
is among the most fundamental features commonly offered by for geographically dispersed distances of up to 60 miles
enterprise-class storage systems today to protect data profiles. (100 kilometers) in metropolitan and regional areas, with
The XIV system has taken this concept one step further, offer- absolute minimum impact on application performance. From a
ing a completely innovative approach to snapshot creation and data preservation perspective, synchronous mirroring offers the
management. It offers clear advantages over alternative optimal RPO recovery alternative because the replicated version
approaches currently available in the industry, including: is a mirror of the source data.

G Redirect-on-write space-efficient snapshots (more efficient Asynchronous mirroring enables wide-area, long-distance
than copy-on-write). replication that optimizes available bandwidth through tunable
G Instant subsecond restore of source volume contents from a RPO settings. This is an essential Quality of Storage service
snapshot, independent of volume size and the number of feature unique to the XIV system that allows businesses to
snapshots. prioritize WAN bandwidth around the most critical systems.
G Snap-on-snap for flexible system development and testing. XIV system customers have implemented remote asynchronous
G Robust consistency-group snapshot support. sites to distances as far as 14,000 miles (22,500 kilometers).
G Ability to restore repeatedly from any snapshot. XIV mirroring features include:
G Ability to define snapshot save priority to ensure proper
preservation. G Volume-level and consistency-group-level replication.
G Writable snapshots with all the above properties. G Operating system independence, not requiring server proces-
sor cycle usage.
The XIV differential snapshot methodology offers tremendous G Independent RPO settings and intervals between asynchro-
efficiency and space savings by capturing only the incremental nous mirrors.
changes since the previous snapshot, eliminating the waste G Flexible configurations (bidirectional, 1-1, 1-many, many-1,
of replicating large amounts of unchanged data and empty and hybrid).
provisioned volumes. G Fibre Channel and iSCSI support.
G Highly efficient bandwidth utilization that can be customized
The XIV system integrates with a wide variety of application for a broad range of environments.
agents and data protection software, such as IBM Tivoli® G Up to eight target mirroring systems per XIV system.
Storage Manager, Tivoli® FlashCopy® Manager, CommVault, G Data stored in industry-standard file format.
and Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). G Simultaneous support for synchronous and asynchronous
mirroring couplings.
With near-instant recovery from logical backups, XIV snapshot G Simplicity of implementation, testing and management using
restoration promotes return-to-operations in a heartbeat. a powerful interface.
G Effectiveness on communication lines as low as 10 megabits
Synchronous and asynchronous mirroring per second.
The XIV Storage System offers flexible asynchronous and G Network-friendly dynamic synchronization rates.
synchronous mirroring solutions providing outstanding total
data protection with best in class ROI and TCO, even against Data deduplication for highly efficient data storage
complete site failure situations. IBM ProtecTIER® integrates with the XIV system to exponen-
tially reduce the amount of data stored on backups.

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Disaster recovery: accelerating return to G Assisted failover for recovery requiring human intervention
operation and monitoring, such as “one button” failover.
The XIV Storage System offers best-in-class recovery, incorpo-
G Automatic failover for immediate transparent recovery requir-
rating hardware, software, and data considerations, with ing no human initiation or intervention and no reboot, which
optimized data currency and accelerated return to operations makes resilience seamless, enables hands-off recovery, and
while minimizing user impact. complies with labor laws and contracts.

Maximized data recovery: optimized data currency
The system supports all levels of resilience—from system
and performance
disaster prevention to highly responsive, automatic recovery—
The XIV Storage System mirroring solutions support full data
ensuring predictable results and minimizing risk in a range of
currency as well as long-distance minimal-RPO mirroring with
“disaster” situations. These include:
imperceptible impact on system response time.

G Preemptive replacement that swaps faulty hardware before it Rich replication and restoration options
fails or impacts the system through early notification systems. The XIV Storage System resilience solution supports robust
G Self-healing capabilities for hands-off recovery from data cor- replication and recovery point objectives to accommodate the
ruption or minor hardware failure. This fully resilient “gold criticality of each system and optimize the cost-benefit of the
standard” solution requires no human intervention and no mirror/restore configuration, without the overkill that costs disk
downtime, with no perceptible impact on performance. space and processing power. RPO can be set by application,
G Hardware recovery to replace faulty hardware and firmware. volume, consistency group, and multi-volume consistency
XIV hot-swapping—nondisruptively replacing hardware group.
without system impact—is the industry benchmark.
G Standard data recovery from online or offline media with Flexible staged RTO
30-minute or less 1 TB rebuild time and less than 60-minute Return to operations with the XIV system can be performed
2 TB rebuild time. incrementally by application to facilitate priority-based
G Targeted data recovery to deliver simple pinpoint application recovery.
data recovery, such as restoring individual mailbox items,
often performed nondisruptively. End-to-end
G Local failover for recovery to a local or clustered storage The XIV system supports end-to-end automatic or “one
system not requiring a change in location, workstations, or button” failover to minimize manual error and accelerate
personnel. recovery, integrating server, storage, and applications.
G Disaster recovery to provide failover recovery to an alternate
facility, requiring different storage hardware and possibly an The XIV business continuity solution offers powerful integra-
alternate work environment, including workstations, human tion with site recovery and cluster management systems,
resources, and other infrastructure. including: VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager,
Microsoft Cluster Service, Symantec Veritas Cluster Server,
and IBM PowerHA®.

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Business continuance: maintaining Preserves performance
business as usual The XIV Storage System is optimized to facilitate continuous
The main objective of business continuance is to support high performance under all conditions. The system:
ongoing business operations without downtime.
G Prevents hotspots by inherently ensuring that the processing
Architected for extensive business continuity and data load are always in balance and hotspot-free—without
requirements human intervention.
The XIV architecture is perhaps the only storage solution in G Optimizes performance in virtualized environments through
its class to be engineered inherently from the ground up for automatic dynamic storage management and randomization.
resilience—not retroﬁt to accommodate today’s demanding G Maximizes bandwidth utilization for continuous availability
requirements. This means that the system is optimized to and throughput using a concurrent native multipath
support nondisruptive business operations, prevent the causes of architecture.
outages, minimize the impact in the event of a failure, and G Preserves system performance during planned and unplanned
recover easily from data and system downtime. maintenance.
G Promotes high performance during data replication
Highly effective cluster management (e.g., snapshots and mirrors).
Powerful XIV cluster management functionality pools and vir-
tualizes storage resources in local and geographically dispersed Fault tolerance to shield against disaster
architectures to: The ability to maintain business-as-usual functionality with zero
downtime and high performance despite disk failures distin-
G Promote high reliability and minimal storage downtime guishes enterprise-class storage from lower-level systems.
through early failure detection.
G Have mirrored data “at the ready.” The XIV infrastructure takes fault tolerance to the next level,
G Initiate near-instant automatic or one-button failover to a with proactive disk monitoring and predictive hardware failure
local or remote site. monitoring, and automatic notiﬁcation of service personnel
G Promote nondisruptive maintenance and updates. prior to failure, preventing disk emergencies.
G Provide simple failback.
G Periodically test disaster recovery. With the XIV system, users are sheltered from system
G Streamline control and reduce human resource overhead. failures. The XIV system was designed to prevent single
points-of-failure within the system and within its components
Strong XIV host cluster integration works in synergy with all to help ensure that basic hardware failures or data anomalies
major cluster services. Integration with IBM SAN Volume have simple repair solutions. In the event of failed blocks or
Controller (SVC) for XIV storage offers powerful “stretched” volumes, replicated data versions are automatically and instantly
campus-wide cluster functionality. accessed, without system interruption.

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Sophisticated XIV multipathing optimizes bandwidth and elim- The all-inclusive XIV system comes complete with all applica-
inates bottlenecks, also providing redundant paths in case of a tions, including snapshots, mirroring, provisioning, and failover.
connectivity failure. No additional products are needed to support high-end
resilience.
In order to compensate for power interruptions, the XIV sys-
tem features 3 UPS units in each rack. The unit functions long Thin provisioning and snapshot technologies ensure that mir-
enough to de-stage data from cache and facilitate a controlled rored and backed up disks contain only essential data—not
shutdown, preventing a hard crash or data corruption. expensive empty volumes or overly redundant unchanged data.

To promote simple, expedient hardware replacement, XIV sys- The XIV architecture eliminates the need for pricey, high-
tems use only industry-standard hardware, including reliable, maintenance RAID storage arrays.
very large capacity drives with a mean-time-before-failure
(MTBF) of 1.2 million hours. Even if a drive does fail, the Proven solution
XIV system architecture facilitates operational continuance by XIV customers are using both synchronous and asynchronous
automatically accessing replicated data on alternate disks. replication to protect their invaluable data assets. One US-
based customer uses asynchronous mirroring from its primary
The XIV Storage System: a value-added East Coast site to its remote site 2600 miles away, having tested
failover in the event of a disaster.
business continuity solution
In addition to the functionality described above, the following
The XIV Storage System has proven itself in real emergencies
are the essential features of XIV business continuity solutions.
and system outages. For example, despite data center air
Cost-effectiveness that meets requirements, but conditioning failure, one customer was able to keep a core
doesn’t break the bank XIV system up with no data loss. Meanwhile, operations con-
Part of the strategy of developing a plan is to match the level of tinued uninterrupted using the second XIV rack at an alternate
investment to the solution required. Striking the balance data center with zero downtime. The system rebuilt itself once
between guaranteeing continuity at any price and practical the computer room cooled down.
investment in a solution that meets organizational requirements
and mitigates risk is the art of business continuity planning. Another customer was able to recover from a disk failure in
only nine minutes, over 98 percent less time than its old storage
The XIV system offers a powerful solution at a remarkably system, which would have taken between eight and twenty-four
low TCO, offering more protection than traditional systems hours.
for less money. The system’s simplicity and streamlined man-
agement reduce maintenance and staffing overhead; its straight- With functionality and conﬁguration testing easy to set up
forward implementation saves days to weeks of migration effort. and conduct, XIV systems reduce the burden and overhead
The minimal XIV system footprint and energy efficiency of ensuring a rock-solid resilience infrastructure. Writable
minimize data center facility expenses—and help promote a snapshots promote a high level of reliability through simple
green IT mission. testing and retesting with real data. Integrated XIV testing
puts the system through its paces without impacting production
performance.

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Enterprise-wide The intuitive XIV GUI has transformed data management
The XIV system attaches to heterogeneous environments and to swift point-and-click simplicity, eliminating error-prone,
diverse architectures. It is engineered to interoperate at all time-consuming manual disk management operations, such as
architectural levels with a range of host platforms, including disk provisioning and multi-path management.
Microsoft Windows, Linux, and UNIX operating systems.
Host Attachment Kits greatly simplify host configuration and During a stressful disaster or a high exposure downtime
management. The XIV system integrates with IBM SAN situation, the XIV system offers simple failover methods—both
Volume Controller for productivity and storage efficiency. automatic and single-button. Preplanned, easily pretested
XIV recovery scripts facilitate predictable results.
Enterprise systems, such as VMware, IBM Tivoli® Productivity
Center, Tivoli Storage Manager, Tivoli FlashCopy Manager, Automatic monitoring
and Symantec, as well as industry-standard applications, such as The XIV system is fully integrated with Tivoli Productivity
Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP, Microsoft Exchange, and Center for centralized storage-infrastructure management,
IBM DB2® have excellent synergy with XIV systems. enabling expanded monitoring, query, and display capabilities.
Tivoli Productivity Center integration is also ideal for helping
To provide the flexibility and speed requirements of enterprise- enterprises understand organizational processes for disaster
level storage, the XIV technology offers multiprotocol support recovery planning.
for both native IP and Fibre Channel protocols—in combined
configurations. For more information on this integration, refer to the
XIV System Storage Information Center. For organizations
Boosts physical and virtual server environments such that do not use Tivoli Productivity Center, XIV integration
as VMware, PowerVM, and HyperV complies with the SMI-S 1.4 (Storage Management Initiative –
The XIV virtualized storage architecture supports optimal Specification) standard for interoperability with external
resource efficiency and prevents hotspots. Coupled with host monitoring tools.
virtualization systems such as VMware, IBM PowerVM™, and
Microsoft Hyper-V, the XIV system offers a dynamic, robust Strong capacity planning and robust scalability
virtualization solution. For any data manager who has scrambled for disk space to keep
operations running, the XIV system offers best-in-class thin
Simplicity and manageability in complex, demanding provisioning, for accurate storage expansion planning without
environments
wasteful over-allocation. Near-instant XIV thin provisioning
XIV simplicity begins with prevention. While dynamically
helps prevent maxing out on storage, which bring traditional
managing disk performance, the high-availability, self-healing
systems to a halt.
XIV system automatically identifies hardware problems, redi-
rects data storage, and replicates data—all without operator
intervention.

13


Migrations to the XIV Storage System are quick—taking far Simplicity, data currency, recovery speed, TCO, performance,
less time than traditional systems with minimal downtime. and reliability are just a few of the measures that organizations
can use to define, evaluate, select, and implement business
XIV monitoring, reporting, and capacity projection tools help continuity plans.
customers understand growth trends to predict future storage
demand. The system handles accelerated data growth with ease. The future-driven XIV enterprise storage solution supports
With the XIV system, organizations can continue to expand all elements of business continuity: end-to-end data protection
with confidence, knowing that their disaster plans can grow for safeguarding mission-critical assets, immediate recovery,
with them. virtualization for system optimization, and other features.

Select IBM XIV business continuity The XIV system was conceived specifically to surpass the
references infrastructure-based limitations inherent in traditional
The following XIV clients are using XIV storage for successful technologies—to promote nondisruptive maintenance, expand
business resilience: data protection capabilities, virtualize storage architecture,
boost resilience, and make continuity solutions affordable.
G Brit Insurance G OCH Medical Center
G British Medical Association G Sanlam With the transformational storage management approach of the
Euronics Telecom Slovenia
XIV system, business continuity means that organizations can
G G

G Graybar G UPMC
G Intertrust G Vinci PLC invest more time and money in core business initiatives, such as
G niu revenue-generating programs and customer-oriented activities.

Although all organizations hope their disaster recovery
Conclusion solutions will never need to be put to the test, knowing that the
While all industries and enterprises have different requirements XIV system meets and exceeds resilience requirements while
for maintaining business continuity, most rely on systems and helping ensure day-to-day continuity, mitigates the risks in
data as critical elements of success. In this increasingly demand- pursuing excellence and an IT-based enterprise vision and
ing environment, organizations need a rock-solid solution for boosts competitive advantage in this world economy.
maintaining business as usual despite hardware failures, data
corruption, human threats, and natural disasters.

14


Appendices The groundbreaking XIV distributed data methodology, accel-
Appendix A – IBM XIV System downtime erated rebuild and self-healing minimize the probability of a
double hardware failure.
situation support
The XIV system helps support organizations in all downtime
Planned maintenance: the impact of planned maintenance is
scenarios:
highly dependent upon organizational operations: 9-to-5 opera-
tions can tolerate after-hours system unavailability with ease;
round-the-clock organizations can be highly impacted by the
Corporate Computer Down Incidents
smallest window of system downtime.
Other
For facilities that need continuous or near-continuous opera-
Environmental Conditions Hardware Failure
11% 4%
21%
System Software Bugs
13%
tions, the XIV system offers nondisruptive maintenance
17%
19%
solutions, such as data mirroring and cluster management, to
15%

Planned Maintenance
keep business going without interruption.

Operator Error Application System Bugs Operator error: by automating manual-intensive storage tasks,
providing an easy-to-use GUI, and enabling pre-scripted
Source: Standish Group Research failover steps, the XIV Storage System helps prevent the main
causes of operator error.

Environmental conditions: this broad category covers both
Hardware failure: the XIV system protects against downtime data center conditions, such as a failed cooling system, and
using highly reliable industry-standard disks, with mean-time- crises such as weather-related emergencies. XIV solutions for
before-failure (MTBF) of 1.2 million hours. What is most both remote synchronous and asynchronous mirroring and
important when addressing disk failure is the impact of the near-instant, reliable failover to a hot-site help mitigate the risk
failure on operations. Landmark XIV redundant storage of environmentally related catastrophic events.
architecture minimizes system downtime caused by hardware
failure. Early warning notiﬁcation provides preventive and Application bugs, system bugs, and other issues: while storage
proactive hardware repair—before a crash. XIV system integra- solutions cannot prevent application and system bugs,
tion with IBM San Volume Controller (SVC) Fast Failover XIV point-in-time and application-consistent snapshots and
offers high resilience following hardware or software failure. targeted data recovery can help organizations rebound quickly
by recovering to previous uncorrupted data states.

15


Appendix B: XIV Storage System business continuity level support

Level 1: Tape restore XIV System Storage functionality

Immediate data availability is relatively low Tape backup and recovery

Recovery can be performed in 24 hours or more Note: industry standards recommend maintaining at least three copies of
important data, including at least one off-site copy and an offline copy in
RPO is about 24 hours case of online sabotage.

Level 2: Tape libraries and automation XIV System Storage functionality

Recovery can be accomplished in a half-day or more Automated tape backup and tape management through libraries

RPO is about 24 hours Integration with Tivoli® Storage Manager and Tivoli® FlashCopy
Manager

Disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) for a cost effective periodic replication
strategy

Cold or warm recovery site

Level 3: Disk copies, deduplication and remote vault XIV System Storage functionality

Recovery should be accomplished in a half-day or less Virtual tape libraries—disk-based copies—and remote storage
(electronic vaulting)
RPO is typically about half a day
RTO in eight hours or less

Hot recovery site with hardware at the ready

Deduplication to minimize multiple copies of identical data (integration to
ProtecTIER available)

Level 4: Point-in-time replication XIV System Storage functionality

Expedited recovery Point-in-time replication and recovery via innovative snapshot technology

Essential data is backed up to disk using point-in-time replication—a Expedited recovery: 1 TB drives can rebuild in 30 minutes or less and
copy of data as it is at a single moment in time. 2 TB drives can rebuild in less than 60 minutes, outperforming the
RTO goal
Boosted data currency: RPO of about 8 hours
RPO in several hours or less, greatly outperforming the goal

Integration with snapshot services such as Microsoft Volume Shadow
Copy Service (VSS), Tivoli Storage Manager and Tivoli FlashCopy
Manager

16


Level 5: Application-consistent backup/restore XIV System Storage functionality

Application integration including backup application consistency for Application-consistent snapshotting , helping ensure application data
advanced data restoration and application data synchronization integrity

RTO measured in hours RTO in several hours or less

Data replication currency on a scale of hours RPO as low as 0

Level 6: Real-time asynchronous data replication and cluster IBM XIV System functionality
management

Data and systems are the lifeblood of the organization Local and geographically dispersed cluster solutions

Continuous availability and the highest levels of currency in data redun- Strong integration with cluster managers
dancy required
Asynchronous mirroring preserves high data currency (RPO close to 0)
Protection against localized or regional disasters (with unlimited distance and negligible system impact
between sites)
RTO of 1 - 2 hours
Recovery requires minimal manual intervention
“One button” site failover
RPO less than 60 seconds (typically 3 - 5 seconds)
Highest levels of availability and resilience

Multiple global mirror sessions

Multiple RPOs supported

Level 7: Storage replication with end-to-end automated XIV System Storage functionality
server recovery

End-to-end storage/server recovery End-to-end storage recovery

Strictest recovery requirements with RTO measured in minutes Recovery optimized for continuous availability

RPO close to zero since data loss can have severe consequences Automated site failover for RTO in minutes

Use of XIV cluster management to eliminate reboot requirements,
accelerating recovery

RPO as low as zero based on synchronous mirroring which helps ensure
complete data restoration

Simple failback

17


Appendix C: Business continuity The planning process requires the following basic steps out-
planning lined in the diagram below:
A comprehensive business continuity plan integrates all
enterprise elements to maintain operations in the event of a 1. Perform a risk assessment and a business impact analysis to
short- or long-term outage, including: determine the impact of an outage to the organization and
individual departments.
G Alternative processes which may require some manual 2. Rate applications in terms of criticality to the organization
workarounds. The organization needs to determine the and define the tolerable RTO and RPO levels for the
balance between the cost to entirely recreate the technology applications.
environment and the effectiveness of some temporary 3. Design the program and select the technologies that will
manual steps. support the program.
G Human resources. Employees trained in the manual processes 4. Develop the disaster recovery strategy, incorporating staffing,
and standby personnel at an alternate site for serious disaster processes, and facilities that make the program ready to
scenarios. implement.
G Facilities for critical remote disaster recovery. Alternate site 5. Implement and test the program, including training staff and
selection should weigh the factors of distance from the main practicing downtime procedures. Confirm that the solution is
site, configuration of a remote facility, and trade-off of dis- predictable and reliable.
tance from primary location versus replication-driven RPO. 6. Manage and update the program periodically.

Business Prioritization Integration into IT Manage

Resilience
Program
Management
RTO/RPO

Business
Risk Program Program Strategy Program
Impact Implement
Assessment Assessment Design Design Validation
Analysis

Source: IBM Systems and Technology Group, IBM Global Services

18

Through sophisticated management capabilities, an easy-to-use
GUI, and advanced analysis tools, the XIV Storage System
facilitates resilience planning.

IBM Redbooks® offer extensive business continuity planning
information. © Copyright IBM Corporation 2011

IBM Systems and Technology Group
Route 100
For more information Somers, New York 10589
To learn more about the IBM XIV Storage System,
please contact your IBM marketing representative or Produced in the United States of America
August 2011
IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: All Rights Reserved
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/xiv/
IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, XIV, the XIV logo, Tivoli, FlashCopy,
ProtecTier, PowerHA, DB2, PowerVM, ProtecTIER, System Storage and
Additionally, financing solutions from IBM Global Financing Redbooks, are trademarks or registered trademarks of International
can enable effective cash management, protection from Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or
both. These and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first
technology obsolescence, improved total cost of ownership occurrence in this information with the appropriate symbol (® or ™),
and return on investment. Our Global Asset Recovery Services indicating US registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the
help address environmental concerns with new, more energy- time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be
registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of
efficient solutions. For more information on IBM Global IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark
Financing, visit: ibm.com/financing. information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.

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