SAN Volume Controller

Highlights

Simple and more productive management: by a single point access, anywhere on the network with a web browser
Improve storage efficiency: better utilization of storage capacity, enabling businesses to tap into previously unused disk capacity
Optimized Storage Tiering: New IBM System Storage Easy Tier feature optimizes solid-state storage deployments simply and automatically
Flexibility & Scalability: Systems can scale up without disruption from the smallest configuration to the largest
Easier to use: With a fresh new user interface based on the popular IBM XIV interface, SVC helps speed deployments and improve productivity even more

Managing the information explosion without complexity

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 V6.1 can help solve these problems and get you on the road towards a more flexible, responsive, and efficient storage environment. IBM System Storage 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

SAN Volume Controller software is delivered pre-installed 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 Version 6.1 introduces a completely new graphic user interface modeled on the IBM XIV Storage System, which has been very well received by customers. The new user interface is designed to be much easier to use and includes many built-in IBM recommendations to help simplify storage provisioning and enable new users to get started quickly with a rapid learning curve.

iSCSI server attachment

SVC supports attachment to servers using iSCSI protocols over IP networks, 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 with 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.

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 cost 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 SVC 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 and so make 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 5500 2.4 GHz quad-core processor, 24 GB of cache, and four 8 Gbps Fibre Channel 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 6.1 supports up to 256 virtualized disk systems, and supports volumes up to 1PB in size (both four times the previous limits).

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. The 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 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 benefitsall while guided by established best practices.

With IBMs help, businesses today can leverage the many engaging opportunities virtualization technologies present in enhancing every aspect of how IT works in the overall organization.

Common features

Combine storage capacity from multiple vendors for centralized management
Increase storage utilization by providing more flexible access to storage assets
Improve administrator productivity by enabling management of pooled storage from a single interface
Insulate host applications from changes to the physical storage infrastructure
Enable a tiered storage environment to match the cost of storage to the value of data
Apply common network-based copy services across storage systems from multiple vendors
Support data migration among storage systems without interruption to applications
First storage virtualization system with tightly integrated support for solid-state drives (SSDs)
Supports consolidated disaster recovery site servicing more than one production location
Enables almost instant recovery from disk backups

Hardware summary

Based on IBM System x3550 M2
Server Intel Xeon 5500 2.40 GHz quad-core processor
24 GB of cache
Four 8 Gbps FC ports
Supports Solid-state Drives (up to four per SVC node)
Two Power supplies
Double bandwidth compared to its predecessor node (2145-8G4)
Up to double IOPS compared to its predecessor node (2145-8G4)
19 inch rack-mounted enclosure
IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager enabled

All products within the SAN Hardware category

Network Advisor V11