IBM Storwize Family Technical Solutions V4

The system contains a Storwize V7000 storage system. Each Storwize V7000 single processing unit is a node canister, which is also called a node. The two nodes within their canisters make an I/O group that is attached to the SAN fabric.

Each Storwize V7000 control enclosure requires two Ethernet cables to connect it to an Ethernet switch or hub. One cable connects to port 1 of the left node canister, and the other cable connects to port 1 of the right node canister. A 10/100/1000 Mb Ethernet connection is required for each cable. Both Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and Internet ProtocolVersion 6 (IPv6) are supported.

Note: For increased redundancy, an optional second Ethernet connection is supported for each Storwize V7000 node canister.

References:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ST3FR7_7.7.0/com.ibm.storwize.v7000.770.doc/svc_portsandconnect_gen2.html

IBM SAN Volume Controller key features include:
* Combine storage capacity from multiple vendors for centralized management
* Increase storage utilization by providing more flexible access to storage assets
* Support for almost 400 different storage systems
* Help improve data security with support for encryption
* Implement hybrid cloud capabilities rapidly and with existing on-premises storage
* Has four 10 Gbps copper (RJ45) Ethernet ports for management and/or iSCSI

References:
http://www-
03. ibm.com/systems/storage/software/virtualization/svc/overview.html

Sizing the systems for replication
* Metro Mirror has the least impact to the amount of IO a system can handle, as it has the lowest
overhead.
* Regular Global Mirror further lowers the maximum throughput of the system, and the increase in host write response time depends on the quantity of IO being replicated via Global Mirror. The main cause of increased write response time is spikes of host write IO that there's insufficient partnership bandwidth to replicate instantly, but we have seen cases where the increased overhead of the Global Mirror processing has made a workload unusable.

References:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/storwizecopyservices/entry/sizingreplication?lang=en

In the output of theComprestimator, the Total Savings is presented as a break-down of thin-provisioning savings and compression savings. This helps in future planning tasks; when the volume stores more data
than it does today , thin-provisioning savings get lower, but compression savings are expected to stay the same if new data written to the volume is of the same nature as the data stored in the volume today.
References:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ST3FR7_7.2.0/com.ibm.storwize.v7000.720.learning/comprestimator_script.html

Note:
IBM Spectrum Virtualize includes IBM Easy Tier, a function that responds to the presence of drives in a storage pool that also contains hard disk drives (HDDs). The system automatically and nondisruptively moves frequently accessed data from HDD MDisks to flash storage MDisks, thus placing such data in a faster tier of storage.

The system supports these tiers:
* Flash tier
The flashtier exists when flash MDisks are in the pool. The flash MDisks provide greater performance than enterprise or nearline MDisks.
* Enterprise tier
The enterprise tier exists when enterprise-class MDisks are in the pool.
* Nearline tier
The nearline tier exists when nearline-class MDisks are used in the pool.

Note 2: The formal distinction between online, nearline, and offline storage is:
* Online storage is immediately available for I/O.
* Nearline storage is not immediately available, but can be made online quickly without human intervention.
* Offline storage is not immediately available, and requires some human intervention to become online.

References:
https://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/flexsys/information/index.jsp?topic=_
Fcom.ibm.acc.4939.doc_Fsvc_easy_tier.html

IBM Variable Stripe RAID is a patented IBM technology that provides an intra-module RAID stripe on each flash module.
With two-dimensional (2D) Flash RAID,system-wide RAID 5 along with Variable Stripe RAID helps reduce downtime and maintain performance, and enables the provisioning of an entire flash module as a spare to be used in another flash module failure.

References:
Introducing and Implementing IBMFlashSystem V9000, page 22 (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248273.pdf)

The calculation is correct for a 24 hour workday, but as the workday is only 8 hours, the calculation is off by a factor 3.

Image mode volumes are used to migrate LUNs that were previously mapped directly to host servers over to the control of the IBM Spectrum Virtualize system.

Note: mkimagevolume
Create a new image mode volume. This command can be used to import a volume, preserving existing data.

References:
Implementing the IBM Storwize V7000 and IBM Spectrum Virtualize V7.8, page 215 (http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpieces/pdfs/sg247938.pdf)