The document discusses IBM's XIV storage system as a solution for tier 1 enterprise applications. It provides an overview of the challenges facing tier 1 storage, including supporting mixed virtualized workloads, high performance I/O, simplicity, scalability, and evolving to private cloud. The IBM XIV is designed to address these challenges through its architecture, performance, ease of use, scalability, and data efficiency. Case studies show how large financial, wholesale, and consumer firms have deployed the XIV successfully for mission critical applications. The future outlook is that IBM is well positioned but will face challenges from competitors improving their scale-out block storage solutions.

1. WHITE P APER
A New Generation of Tier 1 Enterprise Storage
Sponsored by: IBM
Benjamin Woo Amita Potnis
December 2011
IDC OPINION
www.idc.com
The nature of business has changed dramatically in the past decade. Over time,
technological advancements place unprecedented importance on the speeds of
conducting business transactions while having very low tolerance for latency. Today's
huge explosion in data requires block storage solutions to be scalable, simple to
deploy and manage, and highly available with minimal latency.
F.508.935.4015
Tier 1 applications are critical to an organization's ability to generate revenue. These
applications demand the highest performance and reliability. The workloads, I/O, and
bandwidth requirements vary greatly. These same applications also grow and change
quickly; thus, they command a complementary management platform to enable these
P.508.872.8200
changes.
At the same time, organizations are very cost sensitive to the capital intensiveness of
these storage systems.
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA
The IBM XIV Storage System is designed to address these challenges specifically for
tier 1 applications. Augmenting a differentiated architecture and design with a well-
storied history of software and services, the IBM XIV third-generation storage system
platform can provide organizations with the ease of use and performance needed for
tier 1 applications.
In this white paper, IDC analyzes the third generation of the IBM XIV Storage System
and its use cases as tier 1 primary storage for enterprises.
SITUATION OVERVIEW
Recently, much of the focus on storage systems has been on their ability to deal with
the data explosion caused by the increase in structured and unstructured data,
particularly as it pertains to companies that need to comply with regulatory or
legislative requirements. Comparable focus has been placed on the ability of storage
to store, maintain, and preserve data for archival purposes or for future cost
avoidance or revenue opportunities.
While important, the focus on long-term data preservation assumes that an enterprise
is a sustainable entity. However, the sustainability of the enterprise is driven by its
ability to transact its daily business. The data needed for an enterprise's daily
production is generally placed on what is considered to be primary, or what is often
considered tier 1, storage.

2. For the purposes of this white paper, a tier 1 application is an application that is
mission critical to the revenue generation of an organization. These applications may
include OLTP databases, email applications, financial applications, or vertical-specific
applications. In these systems, high performance and reliability are two key factors to
success.
Other features should include:
 Ease of use
 Cost-efficiency
 High availability
In addition to these attributes, tier 1 storage now has to contend with virtual server
and desktop environments that run mixed workloads and applications.
While the past decade brought about physical server sprawl, this decade is all about
virtual server sprawl. IDC research shows that in the past several years, since the
hypervisor has become a core component of datacenter design, the number of virtual
servers that have been created now exceeds the number of physical servers being
shipped.
Whereas prior to the introduction of hypervisor technologies such as VMware's
vSphere 4, many virtualized servers were running second tier (or lower) application
workloads, now many critical applications are being virtualized, including OLTP and
collaborative workloads.
With that, the need to address the increasing use of virtualized servers, along with the
budget constraints brought on by volatile macroeconomic indicators (that lead to
shrinking budgets and smaller IT staff), is driving IT organizations to seek out a
storage system that can handle the technical requirements listed in the following
section.
The Technical Requirements of Tier 1 Storage
The list of technical requirements demanded of top tier storage systems includes:
 Support for mixed workloads running on virtual server environments
 Highest performance for various I/O profiles (high IOPS and high bandwidth)
 Simplicity in capacity management, provisioning, configuration, and tuning
 Scalability to meet growing demands over time
 Ability to evolve into a service-centric, private cloud infrastructure
 Inclusion of data-efficient technologies to maximize utilization (and, therefore,
return on investment)
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3. The Virtual Problem
Virtualization is the key to managing a pool of resources simultaneously across
applications and hardware. Virtualization can cause I/O bottlenecks, as it interlaces
multiple I/O streams together onto a single bus. Each I/O stream may demand
differing quality of service (QoS). Therefore, the ability to isolate application
performance and group applications by performance class becomes a critical factor in
storage system selection.
Highest Performance for Various I/O Profiles
(High IOPS and High Bandwidth)
The ability to support multiple, high-performing applications with differing I/O profiles
(some applications may require high IOPS, such as OLTP databases or Microsoft
Exchange, while other applications may require high bandwidth, such as the delivery
of rich media) is also a key factor in storage system selection.
End users should look to find solutions that can deliver both types of I/O profiles at
high performance simultaneously.
Simplicity in Capacity Management,
Provisioning, Configuration, and Tuning
Given the high number of applications, and the virtual machine sprawl highlighted
earlier, self-tuning storage systems allow IT staff to concentrate on matters that affect
user experiences and meeting service levels rather than spending time on data
placement.
Finding storage solutions that can automatically place data across disk resources to
deliver balanced performance and avoid "hot spots" that can often occur with
demanding applications returns valuable staff resources to the IT organization.
If a storage system can be self-tuning, and relatively self-managing, the accompanying
management tool for the storage system should be equally simple because much of the
work is already handled by the underlying system. At the same time, simplifying
management should also lead to simplification of provisioning and configuration.
Simplicity goes beyond ease of use. It is equally necessary for management software
to provide the necessary instrumentation, monitoring, and reporting that enable
administrators to properly and quickly diagnose and remedy resource allocation. This
is critical in differentiating one storage system's total cost of ownership from that of
another storage system.
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4. Scalability to Meet Growing Demands over
Time
In more recent years, the focus has shifted from scale-up storage (which can be
viewed in the context of acquiring bigger and more powerful storage controllers)
toward scale-out storage (which can be viewed as the addition of equally powerful
storage controllers).
Scale-out storage has the added benefit of adhering to the pay-as-you-grow model
that many organizations prefer, as they no longer have to make very large capital
investments and attempt to recoup the return over time. They can now make smaller
investments when they need to.
Ability to Evolve into a Service-Centric,
Private Cloud Infrastructure
With the onslaught of cloud-based business services, including those that offer
human resource information systems (HRIS), managed email, as well as cloud-based
CRM, IT organizations are under pressure to emulate the acquisition models offered
by service providers.
Traditional chargeback models that are centered around IT metrics such as dollar per
gigabyte or dollar per CPU are no longer acceptable. Instead, chargeback models
should be articulated in business metrics, such as cost per employee or percentage
of revenue.
As a result, IT organizations are evolving themselves to a service provider model,
much like their cloud-based counterparts, and creating private clouds to serve their
clients (namely, the business units).
Therefore, the combination of cost, power, capacity, and management efficiency
becomes a prime factor in the selection of a storage system that needs to be able to
be flexible, dynamic, and scalable enough to meet the ever-changing needs of a
service provider.
Inclusion of Data-Efficient Technologies to
Maximize Utilization (and, Therefore, Return
on Investment)
Data-efficient technologies are no longer considered a desired feature; rather, they
are considered a necessary feature. Utilization rates have been too low for too long,
and the need to drive up the utility from all IT investments is requiring IT organizations
to look for datacenter components that can provide thin provisioning as well as
efficient approaches to data protection.
Efficient snapshots and efficient data mirroring become other features that are now
requisite in considering storage systems.
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5. IBM XIV GEN3
IBM has been shipping XIV since 2008. Currently in its third generation, IBM XIV is
being utilized by clients for traditional mission-critical tier 1 workloads such as
databases, ERP, email, and virtualized server environments.
Vertical industries including finance, government, and healthcare are among the
satisfied users of XIV technology.
The IBM XIV has been designed specifically to meet each of the six technical
requirements listed earlier.
Given the high-performance design that was created especially for the XIV platform
with a view toward eliminating complexity and fully utilizing system resources, IBM
XIV has the ability to support multiple workloads, running on either physical or virtual
servers.
XIV delivers high IOPS and, according to IBM, can support up to 10GBps sequential
throughput. The use of InfiniBand as its internal interconnect minimizes latency
between XIV modules to optimize performance.
The XIV architecture enables system performance to increase along with capacity
expansion. This is made possible by the grid design, which scales out through the
addition of disk modules that include CPUs as well as disk drives.
With Gen3, IBM is also introducing "transparent" XIV solid state drive (SSD) caching
(available in the first half of 2012) that will leverage SSDs as a caching layer between
each XIV module's RAM and the underlying SAS connected disk drives. SSD cache
can be included without the need for IT to manage it as a separate disk tier.
The IBM XIV automatically distributes data evenly across the disk drives within the
XIV system, relieving IT staff from manual intervention and tuning and automatically
eliminating hotspots. Data is automatically redistributed in the event of component
additions or replacements. Additionally, XIV's architecture leverages the parallelized
data distribution to enable rapid disk drive rebuilds. This feature, combined with XIV's
active-active N+1 redundancy of system components, and the standard suite of
snapshot and mirroring functions provide the high reliability and availability required in
a tier 1 system.
Right from the initial design concept, XIV was designed to be exceptionally easy to
set up and use. It has no RAID groups or differing disk types to define and manage,
which reduces much of the inherent complexity of traditional storage configuration
and management. IBM claims that it requires minimal training, and the "breakthrough
GUI," as IBM describes it, provides all the necessary management capabilities with a
minimalist visualization of the XIV system (see Figure 1). The XIV can also be
monitored on the go using a free iPad application called IBM XIV Mobile Dashboard.
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6. FIGURE 1
XIV GUI
Source: IBM, 2011
The same management tool provides the ability to manage up to 64 XIV systems at a
time and, critically, in context with each other (see Figure 2). This is important for
scalability.
FIGURE 2
Contextual Management
Source: IBM, 2011
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7. Given this capability, users can simply add additional XIV systems into the context
when needed, supporting the pay-as-you-grow model. Additional XIV systems can
also be added to increase capacity and/or performance.
This flexibility and dynamism enables users to evolve their storage infrastructure to
cater to the demands of a service-centric, private cloud architecture over time.
XIV was designed in an era where thin provisioning and efficient snapshot
technologies have become a basic requirement in all storage systems. Each XIV
system comes with both technologies embedded and is further enhanced by the
availability of data-efficient replication technologies that enable data protection in
support of disaster recovery and business continuity.
CASE STUDIES
North American Financial Services Firm
This leading financial services customer has depended on IBM XIV since May 2009.
Today, this customer has around 10PB under management. Prior to its deployment of IBM
XIV, this customer had 90% of its capacity on systems from other leading storage vendors.
For this customer, the IBM XIV data dispersion model was key. Before the customer
installed IBM XIV, RAID rebuilds were proving to be untenable. Enabling tier 1
applications using low-cost disk drives provided a very high return on investment.
From the initial deployment, this customer has implemented IBM XIV thin
provisioning, which is fully integrated into the IBM XIV.
Another driver for implementing IBM XIV is the support IBM provided. In this
customer's view, IBM is the gold standard for support. Today, all the core applications
— trading, accounting and finance, and online archiving of financial transactions and
phone conversations — are running on IBM XIV.
Performance is also a major driver for the success of IBM XIV at this customer. For
example, one of its core applications needs a sustained response time of 10
milliseconds. Despite the lower number of SATA hard disk drives, compared with a
higher number of more costly Fibre Channel drives offered by another storage vendor,
the customer was able to gain a 2.5x performance improvement in response time.
Not even SSDs were able to meet the performance requirement due to the sequential
nature of the batch processing of some of the applications. To date, the customer has
observed and recorded savings in terms of millions of dollars through the use of IBM XIV.
North American Wholesale Distributor
In 2001, this distributor launched an initiative to migrate from a proprietary mainframe
solution to SAP. As a wholesale distributor, the company has higher transaction rates
than other companies of its size. Currently, the company has over 10TB in an SAP
ECC (R/3) database and demands close to 16 million SAP interactions and
background tasks a day.
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8. Management required the application response time average to be under 750
milliseconds to be adequately responsive to its customers. In 2008, as the economy
turned down, the company examined all the technology updates on the horizon to
determine where its IT budget could be reduced. Its analysis showed that it had an
opportunity to refresh its entire storage infrastructure over the following two years.
The distributor analyzed its I/O load and response time requirements by application
and service-level objectives. Once the metrics were in place, it evaluated several
first-tier and second-tier storage providers for performance, availability, and cost.
Once the company fully understood its storage subsystem requirements and recognized
its anticipated disk space consumption and its constrained budget, it found the capital
investment, large storage capacity, and native features of IBM XIV attractive.
Currently, the distributor deploys SAP — ECC, SCM, BI, CRM, Enterprise Portal, and
PI (with Oracle databases); Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint;
VMware guests and hosts for various enterprise applications; and IBM TSM disk
pools and database snapshots on IBM XIV. The company reports that the IBM XIV
continues to meet or exceed expected performance metrics while reducing IT
expenses significantly.
North American Consumer Device
Manufacturer
This consumer device manufacturer had a heterogeneous storage environment
consisting of multiple storage vendors. Senior management was questioning why
licensing costs were increasing on a quarterly basis. With the IBM XIV, reports could be
generated in seconds in terms of usage costs, and with the "all-in" licensing model, the
manufacturer was able to eliminate the varying and increasing operational costs.
For this company, performance was less of a concern than the seemingly out-of-
control costs. IBM worked with the customer to identify the workloads before
deploying the IBM XIV.
Today, the customer has deployed IBM XIV for 85% of its tier 1 applications. It has
deployed 32 IBM XIVs. The major applications running on IBM XIV are Microsoft
Exchange and virtual server environments based on VMware, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
The IBM XIV represents a new generation of scale-out block storage solutions, where
scalability, simplicity of design and management, and high performance are the key
expectations.
The approach taken by XIV is unique.
IDC believes that over time, other vendors will extend their scale-out block
capabilities to match IBM's. This provides IBM with a great opportunity to introduce
XIV into tier 1 applications while its competitors may have looked away.
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9. By proving itself through these applications, IBM not only stands to demonstrate
technical design superiority against other solutions vying to be the storage of choice
for top tier applications but also positions itself to be a top contender for other
opportunities (including secondary and archival storage) over time.
However, XIV is not without its challenges. It has a differentiated design that not only
yields unique value but also can draw skeptics. Additionally, while XIV has been
available from IBM for more than three years, with thousands of systems shipped, it
does not yet have the history and market presence of some competitive solutions.
IBM can better position the XIV system as a tier 1 product by emphasizing its
enterprise capabilities and the Fortune 500 enterprise deployments for mission-critical
applications.
CONCLUSION
Since IBM introduced the XIV platform, it has been successful in becoming the
storage of choice among leading enterprises across the globe. Many of these
enterprises have chosen XIV to run their mission-critical applications based on the
considerations of performance, simplicity, scalability, and reliability.
The XIV system is suitable for running tier 1 enterprise applications. It meets the
needs of today's mission-critical applications — needs that have grown to include the
challenges of virtualized servers, mixed workloads, and service-oriented applications
in addition to the more basic high-performance and high-availability requirements. It
also excels in the areas of management simplicity, ease of use, and cost-efficiency
compared with alternative enterprise storage options.
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This document was developed with International Business Machines Corporation
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