 IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller
Are your storage requirements growing too fast? Are the costs of managing
this growth taking more and more of your IT budget? Would you like to make a
better use of existing storage without adding more complexity to the
infrastructure? IBM® System Storage® SAN Volume Controller can help solve
these problems and get you on the road towards a more flexible, responsive,
and efficient storage environment. SAN Volume Controller is designed to
deliver the benefits of storage virtualization in environments from large
enterprises to small businesses and midmarket companies.
Easy to implement
IBM® System Storage® SAN Volume Controller software is delivered
preinstalled on SVC Storage Engines so it is quickly ready for
implementation once the engines are attached to your storage area network
(SAN). SVC Storage Engines are based on proven IBM System x® server
technology and are always deployed in redundant pairs, which are designed to
deliver very high availability.
SVC is designed to take control of existing storage, retaining all your
existing information. This ability helps speed and simplify implementation
while helping to minimize the need for additional storage. Once SVC is
implemented, you can make changes to the configuration quickly and easily as
needed.
SAN Volume Controller uses a completely new graphical user interface
modeled on the IBM XIV® Storage System, which has been very well received by
customers. The user interface is designed to be very easy to use and
includes many built-in IBM recommendations to help simplify storage
provisioning and enable new users to get started quickly.
Plugins to support Microsoft® System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and
VMware vCenter help enable more efficient consolidated management in these
environments.
iSCSI server attachment
SVC supports attachment to servers using iSCSI protocols over IP networks
at 1 Gpbs or 10 Gbps speeds, which can help reduce costs and simplify server
configuration. iSCSI attachment avoids the cost of Fibre Channel host bus
adapters (HBAs) in servers and reduces the need for Fibre Channel switch
ports. This new capability may be particularly attractive for IBM BladeCenter®
server configurations.
Complement server virtualization
As described above, storage virtualization with SAN Volume Controller
complements server virtualization with technologies such as VMware vSphere.
Server virtualization helps speed provisioning of new server images
because provisioning becomes a software operation rather than requiring
hardware changes. Similarly, provisioning with SVC is achieved with software
and thin provisioning, and is designed to become an almost entirely
automated function. Without SVC, server provisioning could be slowed by the
need to provision storage.
New support for VMware vStorage APIs enables SVC to take on some
storage-related tasks that were previously performed by VMware, which helps
improve efficiency and frees up server resources for other more
mission-critical tasks.
Functions such as vMotion support application mobility between physical
servers. Similarly, SVC is designed to support nondisruptive data migration
between storage systems. In addition, SVC helps make storage potentially
available to all attached servers, greatly increasingly the flexibility for
using vMotion. Without SVC, use of vMotion could be limited by storage being
dedicated to specific servers.
Because SVC appears to servers as a single type of storage, virtual
server provisioning is also simplified because only a single driver type is
needed in server images, which also simplifies administration of those
server images. Similarly, SVC eases replacing storage or moving data from
one storage type to another because these changes do not require changes to
server images. Without SVC, changes of storage type could require disruptive
changes to server images.
Server virtualization helps increase flexibility and reduce costs for
disaster recovery by enabling the use of different physical configurations
at production and recovery sites. Common virtual server configurations are
used on these different physical infrastructures. Similarly, SVC supports
the use of different physical storage configurations at production and
recovery sites yet helps create the same virtual configuration at each site.
Without SVC, production and recovery site physical storage configurations
would need to be similar, potentially increasing costs.
The IBM FlashCopy® “snapshot” replication function can be used to help
reduce storage requirements when cloning boot drives for multiple virtual
servers. When using this function, additional storage is used only for
differences among servers instead of needing storage for each boot drive.
Many customers run mixed environments with a variety of virtualized and
non-virtualized servers and expect to do so for years to come. SVC provides
an external storage virtualization function that operates in a consistent
manner and provides consistent services for all attached servers, regardless
of whether or not those servers are virtualized. In contrast, server-based
storage virtualization techniques differ from server to server which makes
mixed environments more complex, rather than less.
Reduce storage used for copies
The SAN Volume Controller FlashCopy “snapshot” replication function is
designed to dramatically reduce storage requirements when copying data by
using additional physical storage only for the differences between source
and target and not for the entire target volume capacity.
This capability can be used to help reduce storage requirements for test
environments that are copied from production data. For example, SAP users
often maintain multiple copies of production data for testing. Using the
FlashCopy “snapshot” replication function to maintain these test
environments can help significantly reduce the amount of physical storage
required.
Simplified provisioning
SAN Volume Controller combines hardware and software into an integrated,
modular solution that is highly scalable. An “I/O Group” is formed by
combining a redundant pair of “storage engines” based on IBM System x server
technology with an Intel® Xeon® 5600 2.5 GHz quad-core processor, 24 GB of
cache, four 8 Gbps Fibre Channel ports, two 1 Gbps iSCSI ports and
optionally two 10 Gbps iSCSI ports. Highly available I/O Groups are the
basic configuration element of a SAN Volume Controller cluster, as shown in
Figure 1. Adding I/O Groups to the cluster is designed to increase cluster
performance and bandwidth.
An entry-level SAN Volume Controller configuration contains a single I/O
Group, can scale out to support four I/O Groups, and can scale up to support
1024 host servers and up to 8192 volumes. This configuration flexibility
means that SAN Volume Controller configurations can start small with an
attractive price to suit smaller environments or pilot projects and then can
grow with your business to manage very large storage environments.
SAN Volume Controller Version 6.2 increases the maximum supported
configuration to 32PB, four times the previous limit.
Improve energy efficiency
Many data centers today are focusing on reducing their energy usage to
reduce costs and out of concern for the environment. SAN Volume Controller
can be a key tool to help you improve the energy efficiency of your data
center. It does so in several significant ways:
- SVC is designed to migrate data from older to newer disk systems
without disruption to applications, which helps make it easier and
quicker for you to implement more energy efficient storage.
- SVC is designed to simplify implementation of a tiered storage
infrastructure and improve performance of lower tier storage, which
helps optimize the mix of storage you deploy and may enable greater use
of lower tier storage.
- SVC can help increase the utilization of storage and reduce
requirements for additional storage in the future, which can help reduce
the total amount of storage required and so helps reduce energy use. The
thin provisioning and “snapshot” functions are designed to extend this
benefit even further.
- The IBM Easy Tier™ function automatically moves more active data to
solid-state drives, which helps enable use of fewer, more energy
efficient disk drives to reduce energy consumption.
Technology designed for a dynamic infrastructure
IBM offers a rich, diverse and integrated array of virtualization
solutions, spanning from x86 systems to IBM System z® mainframes to storage
virtualization with SAN Volume Controller and beyond. Furthermore, IBM can
work effectively with you to develop key business strategies and processes
to capitalize on those solutions’ benefits—all while guided by established
best practices.
With IBM’s help, businesses today can leverage the many engaging
opportunities virtualization technologies present in enhancing every aspect
of how IT works in the overall organization.
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