IBM Systems and Technology

Migrating to IBM System StorageProtect your investment with flexible storage solutions

2 Migrating to IBM System Storage

Highlights●● ● IBM virtualization platforms and non-disruptive data

migration reduce complexity●● ● ●IBM solutions share a common, easy-to-use GUI and

support both block and file access●● ● ●Migrating to an IBM System Storage solution may be easier

than moving to another HP platform●● ● ●HP customers can continue to use Enterprise Virtual Array

units with IBM® Storwize® V7000 external virtualization

Businesses today are under tremendous pressure to manage stor-age growth and costs, while maintaining business continuity and optimizing business-critical applications. As you look to expand your storage infrastructure to meet growing business demands, you need to consider storage providers and solutions you can depend upon in the future.

Current Hewlett-Packard (HP) Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) customers have to deal with the uncertain future of the EVA line of storage solutions and the cost and implications of data migra-tion to their business. Choosing the right vendor and correct storage infrastructure is critical. Many business leaders turn to complimentary storage offerings from IBM to help manage their data, content and costs.

“….IDC believes that while HP has stated it intends to follow up with additional enhancements to the P6000, this generation of EVA is likely to be HP’s last.”

—IDC Product Flash, HP Announces Converged Storage, Introduces the P6000 EVA and the Updated x9000 IBRIX, June 6th, 2011.

IBM continues to be a leader in research investment and to make strategic, long-term acquisitions that make it possible to provide the best solutions for clients now and offer a good return on investment going forward. When you compare the capabilities of IBM Storwize V7000 Unified against HP systems, you see the advantages of IBM storage.

IBM storage solutions help clients reduce complexity with easy-to-manage virtualization platforms and non-disruptive data migration between multiple non-homogenous storage devices. Storwize V7000 Unified:

●● ● Delivers sophisticated enterprise-class storage at a midrange cost.

●● ● Supports your growing business requirements and help control costs.

●● ● Enables near-continuous availability of applications through dynamic migration.

●● ● Offers the ability to virtualize older arrays for single manage-ment of the storage environment, use of advanced features for all data and almost transparent data migration.

●● ● Supports faster and more efficient data copies for online backup, testing or data mining.

About IBM Storwize V7000 UnifiedStorwize V7000 Unified is a virtualized storage system that offers easier management, reduced cost, highly scalable capacity, performance and high availability. It also offers improved effi-ciency and f lexibility through built-in solid state drive (SSD) optimization, thin provisioning and non-disruptive migration of data from existing storage. The system can virtualize and reuse existing disk systems offering a greater potential return on investment.

3IBM Systems and Technology

Storwize V7000 Unified offers:

●● ● File support: Consolidates block and file workloads into a single storage system.

●● ● IBM Active Cloud Engine: Delivers policy-based file manage-ment to reduce costs through the use of tiered storage, including tape. It also automates deletion of unwanted or expired files, while minimizing manual intervention.

●● ● IBM System Storage® Easy Tier® automated storage tiering: Advanced technology for automatically migrating data between the storage tiers based on real-time analysis of usage patterns. Provides significant performance improvement with automatic migration to high performing SSDs.

ExternalVirtualization

Hitachi EMC2 NetApp IBM Sun

HP NEC Bull Fujitsu Pillar

Figure 1: IBM Storwize V7000 Unified offering with external virtualization capabilities simplifies management and migration from an HP EVA

●● ● Next generation graphical user interface (GUI): Easy-to-use system management with point and click system management capabilities.

●● ● Virtualized storage: Complements virtualized servers with built in efficiency technologies including storage virtualiza-tion, thin provisioning, sophisticated replication, and more.

Storage flexibility that protects your investmentYou may not be ready to dispose of all your current HP systems yet. With Storwize V7000 Unified, you can purchase just the right amount of internal storage capacity and still attach older systems to Storwize V7000 Unified. This f lexibility helps protect and extend your investments and offers:

●● ● Single easy-to-use management for both the internal Storwize V7000 Unified capacity and externally attached HP units. You have the same GUI the same storage provisioning process, and storage is treated as a global pool.

●● ● Sophisticated functions such as snapshots, Easy Tier, thin provisioning and remote replication are all available for data stored on HP EVA units.

●● ● Shared backup and recovery so the same backup and recovery processes may be used for data stored on IBM and HP disk systems.

●● ● Enhanced performance to help potentially improve the performance of data stored on HP EVA systems by using the Storwize V7000 Unified virtualization capability. The Easy Tier function also can dramatically improve data performance on HP EVA units.

Storwize V7000 Unified offers a new level of storage efficiency that is not typically seen in other midrange disk systems. It sim-plifies administration and helps increase your staff productivity.

4 Migrating to IBM System Storage

“Unified storage makes sense for many data centers, as it offers multiple ways of storing and retrieving data from a single platform, all done with the same management tools. Doing this all at midrange pricing makes IBM Storwize V7000 a good solution for both the mid-sized and larger data centers.”

—Mike Kahn, Managing Director, The Clipper Group, Inc.

Storwize V7000 Unified can manage external arrays with a sim-ple external virtualization license, which is cost-effective and offers a good return on investment. Over time, you can migrate data to other internal or external arrays.

Easy and non-disruptive data migrationMigrating data from IBM and non-IBM devices (such as HP EVA units) is easy and non-disruptive with Storwize V7000 Unified. You attach your current systems to a Storwize V7000 Unified system and use intuitive wizards to migrate your data online, while your production applications continue to run uninterrupted. After you finish the data migration, you can safely remove the older equipment. Data migration is a standard feature of Storwize V7000 Unified and does not incur any additional costs. It is included regardless of the amount of data you migrate or the number of systems involved.

Why choose IBM storage solutions?Every business is unique. The breadth and scale of solutions they require are different as well. IBM storage offerings are based on the proven IBM approach of building solutions around industry-standard components coupled with sophisticated soft-ware. These storage solutions range from feature-rich, scalable

enterprise storage to simple, agile offerings. IBM provides high value solutions that are easy to deploy and manage, along with comprehensive service and industry-leading technology.

Excessive downtime and slow response times can result in increased costs and the loss of sales, customer goodwill and productivity. With more companies running entire suites of business applications on virtualization solutions like VMware, mixed workload scalability with predictable performance is needed. A study done by ESG Labs in February 2011 confirmed that the Storwize V7000 Unified system can deliver exceptional performance that is well suited to a mix of real-world business applications running in a VMware-enabled virtual server infrastructure.1

For more demanding applications

The Storwize V7000 Unified offering is ideal for midrange customers,

but if you need enterprise-level storage, the IBM XIV Storage System

provides Tier 1 performance and high reliability at Tier 2 costs. XIV is a

customer-proven, high-end disk storage system that offers exceptional

ease of use and high performance. The XIV solution offers:

●● Consistent performance for critical business applications. The

system is designed for high performance and balances the load

evenly across components automatically, without manual tuning—

even when you add additional capacity.●● Extraordinary reliability designed to help you avoid downtime.

This offering includes advanced redundancy, self-healing, fast

rebuilds and hot upgrades, which keep your system and your

business running.●● Low total cost of ownership (TCO). Simplified management saves

time and money. High reliability can reduce downtime costs, and

most needed functions are included in the solution. The exclusive

use of high density disk drives also reduces energy and space costs.

If you have a Storwize V7000 Unified solution, you can later attach it to

a XIV for greater performance. The XIV solution uses high-capacity,

low-power drives that are optimized for Tier 1 applications and

automatically distributes workload and applications.

5IBM Systems and Technology

Storwize V7000 Unified with Easy Tier and SSDs can be used to automatically increase the performance of a mix of applications running in a virtual server environment. Because it can automatically migrate only the most active data, it increases the efficiency of your SSDs. In addition, since it reduces response times and dramatically increases the amount of work the virtualized infrastructure can handle, it is easier to justify the cost difference between traditional hard drives and solid state drives. ESG Labs saw up to 3x throughput using Easy Tier with VMware workloads.

What are the business implications of migrating to IBM solutions?With IBM storage solutions such as Storwize V7000 Unified, you can manage your growing midrange storage needs with a single solution. Storwize V7000 Unified helps enable consolidation of multiple storage systems for greater efficiency.

For block-only configurations, clustered systems drive the value of consolidation even further. You can start with a very small capacity, such as a few drives in a single enclosure, which can grow to up to 20 enclosures with up to 480 drives in a clustered system. In addition, with technologies such as thin provisioning, Easy Tier, virtualization and Active Cloud Engine already included, Storwize V7000 Unified helps customers make the best use of their currently available storage resources.

With the Storwize V7000 Unified Storage System you don’t need to deal with complicated product upgrades or model changes or unnecessary data migrations. IBM’s uniform strategy allows for companies to seamlessly grow based upon their storage requirements to higher performance and capacity environments through external virtualization, data mirroring and a common management interface.

Figure 2: IBM XIV offering overview for cases where customers have a large HP EVA array and HP is offering a 3PAR solution upgrade

FC

Host

Host

Host

iSCSI

Cache

Interface Disks

CPU

SSD(optional)

UPS UPS UPS

Data Module

Data Module

Data Module

Data Module

Inter-moduleconnectivity

15 data modules, each containing:12 high-density disk drives24 GB memoryQuad-core Intel CPU2 X 20 Gbps InfiniBand HCA ports400 GB SSD (optional)

•••••

Host connectivity:24 X 8 Gbps FC ports22 x 1 Gbps iSCSI ports

2 InfiniBand switches:Redundant inter-module connectivity600 Gbps total internal bandwidth

3 UPS modules:Stable power to all system componentsSafe shutdown upon power outage

••

••

••

1

To stay with the HP family, current HP EVA users have to decide between several, disparate options all of which require a complete replacement of their present EVA solution, such as the EVA P6000s, LeftHand, IBRIX or 3PAR. HP’s storage strategy may not be as clear. If you don’t pick the right family, you may not have an upgrade path from one product to the next.

ConclusionBusinesses have increasing storage demands, so it’s important to select a storage solution you can depend on now and into the future. When you consider that the HP midrange EVA family is based on a ten-year-old architecture with limitations, such as a lack of unified block and file access, migrating to an IBM solu-tion may actually be significantly easier than moving to another HP option. For HP EVA customers, migrating to the IBM Storwize V7000 Unified Storage System can offer significant advantages in both cost and f lexibility.

For more informationTo learn more about the IBM’s competitive storage offerings, please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/systems/openinvitation

Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the IT solutions that your business needs in the most cost-effective and strategic way possible. We’ll partner with credit qualified clients to customize an IT financing solution to suit your business goals, enable effective cash management, and improve your total cost of ownership. IBM Global Financing is your smartest choice to fund critical IT investments and propel your business forward. For more information, visit: ibm.com/financing

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Produced in the United States of America April 2012

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Storwize, System Storage, Easy Tier, and XIV are trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

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Enterprise Strategy Group, Brian Garrett, “Lab Reports: IBM Storwize V7000: Real-world Mixed Workload Performance in VMware Environments, February 2011.” Accessed at http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/02/ibm-storwize-v7000-real-world- mixed-workload-performance-in-vmware-environments/

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