IBM Flash Storage and Software Defined Storage Flexible and Scalable Enterprise Storage Solutions Executive Summary

IBM Flash Storage and Software Defined Storage Flexible and scalable enterprise storage solutions Executive summary

Struggles in today’s IT organizations tend possible through a suite of hardware to stem from explosive data growth and storage offerings based on the expansion dynamic data use. Innovative mobile of FlashCore technology and adjustments in applications, big data analytics, and shifts to the SDS suite of products. cloud-hosted solutions to support business initiatives are pushing traditional storage The SDS offering provides true centralized approaches to their limits. Consequently, management across IBM storage offerings organizations attempt to respond to storage and a comprehensive list of other storage demands by increasing storage capacity, manufacturers. IBM Flash Storage on the expanding to cloud on an ad-hoc basis, or other hand is geared to pair with other even testing murky waters by attempting IBM and non-IBM storage to help drive to manually manage their heterogeneous performance. Together these offerings are systems. well engineered for tackling the three big V’s of data—velocity, variety, and volume. Scale, integration, and flexibility have We’ll explore the drivers facing many consistently been challenges with traditional technical executives around complex data storage. To address these issues, storage needs, business cases on how IBM® has continued to improve its Flash to address these issues, technical Storage hardware and Software Defined architectures, and resulting business Storage (SDS) capabilities across mainframe benefits. and distributed platforms. This is made

2 Defining the problem

As more organizations move from an development, which is essential for a on-premise platform to a cloud or hybrid visionary IT executive to foster innovation cloud model, there is a growing need for and still adhere to a realistic budget. single pane storage management products with software-defined capabilities that offer As large IT organizations follow heavy low latency. For many, these are a necessity project-driven procurements, the for mission critical applications. infrastructure footprint for storage arrays can often have a mix of multiple equipment Even with big data management, where manufacturers and technologies. This organizations often use a combination of can lead to a major storage management commodity storage and enterprise storage, challenge. The cost of training storage the challenge of dealing with a software- engineers and having a different set of defined storage solution that can scale management practices by appliance while also providing deep management can lead to an increase in total cost of capabilities continues to be a major gap for ownership—pushing IT organizations CIOs and CTOs. This includes start-ups that to seek single pane products, many of are trying to tackle big data applications which simply provide report out features and need to have their offerings work as opposed to a true provisioning, across data centers and public cloud management, and monitoring console. infrastructure. Executive leadership also faces ongoing IT The added challenge of providing consistent staffing challenges to do more with less, IT services by employing quality control often leading organizations to focus on measures, such as managing non- improved automation of service delivery. production and production configurations In the realm of storage challenges, All Flash consistently, is further compounded by Arrays (AFAs) and SDS are viewed as the licensing costs and capacity considerations. disruptors that can tackle these challenges IT executives often face major configuration effectively. These technologies matured mismatches within the infrastructure due rapidly—growing automation, information to licensing constraints imposed by vendors exchange, and digital disruptors—due to that don’t include development and test the increase in demand driven by data environments. This hinders research and explosion.

3 Improved Figure 1: Why consider Drivers for All Flash arrays (AFAs) workload migrates from a busy to a Increased performance All Flash Arrays? AFAs offer a hardware solution for reducing resource available compute node. AFAs reliability capital expenditures. They facilitate this also promote a greener IT organization by reduction by removing the need to add reducing power usage, cooling costs, and disks continuously to gain partial Input/ space requirements along with increased output Operations per Second (IOPS). tolerance for vibration and temperature Increased changes. TCO per GB AFAs have lower disk failures over traditional arrays, allowing for reduced operational Drivers for software defined storage expenditures. They also have more IOPS (SDS) over traditional arrays, reducing the time As the IT organization becomes an required for data processing, migration, innovation center instead of just a cost Reduced OPEX and CAPEX and de-duplication. For use cases where center, it’s challenged with providing velocity is key—Internet of Things and big more on-demand capacity for constantly Figure 2: Typical use data—AFAs offer the low latency processing fluctuating workloads. This is driving a cases for Flash storage backbone needed to support reduced data restructuring of the IT department around mapped against IBM processing time. key themes such as being agile, being Flash offerings DevOps-enabled with high automation, Dynamically Reduce TCO AFAs can be used for active data processing and dynamic scaling for infrastructure changing for storage and/or storage based on the use case to support demand-based tracking. workloads needs. For example, a lot of big data These themes require a heavy traditional warehouses use about 20 percent of their infrastructure capacity or a lean software- Support data for active querying. Shifting only that defined infrastructure that can allow for both cloud Reduce portion to an AFA and keeping the rest on nimble capacity management and support and on- maintenance tiered storage could allow them to support massive scale up and scale out. premise Software Defined Storage the business at a fraction of the cost over consistently The need for a better the continuous addition of tiered IOPS to a Compute and network have seen significant SDS is now more than large array. benefits from virtualization and software- ever in the constantly defined technologies like containers. evolving Software Defined Another advantage in virtual server However, enabling SDS continues to be a Support Infastructure space. Increase heterogeneous DevOps environments is to move either entire sets difficult task for many IT organizations to hardware automation of actively used virtual machines (VMs) architect for flexibility and performance in a or critical ones onto AFAs that require constantly evolving workload landscape. low latency VM cross-node migration Since large IT infrastructure procurements without sacrificing performance. This often happen as a result of project-based Increase Rapid is also why AFAs are popular for virtual procurements, organizations can fall victim security provisioning desktop infrastructure use cases where to vendor tie-in for hardware and vendor- oversubscription is high and reliance specific SDS technologies. on the storage array is heavy while the

4 Targeting Flash storage offerings by key workloads Performance Optimized High IOPS/MB/s Low Latency In-memory DB / RT Database ERP / Application acceleration Analytics IOPS / Latency CRM / SAP / Sensitive Database: EPIC HPC / z/OS Virtual storage infrastructure General Scientific Purpose Computing Power HA / Grid scale cloud storage Server / Power i HA Desktop Big data storage Back Virtualization Office Business critical storage Simple Data Big Data Advanced Services SAS Data SPSS Media Services Content

Database Scale Out Entry Big Data File Cost/Capacity Hadoop Sensitive Figure 3: Typical use cases for Spark Flash storage mapped against IBM Flash offerings2 Capacity Optimized

There is a growing movement in IT for SDS in terms of overcoming processor-based with active product development or heavy technologies to align with open standards cache limitations and minimizing bus Why consider IBM SDS offerings? projectized environments where the non- such as the OpenStack, however many latencies within the storage. The reliability IBM SDS has a range of products for end-to- production storage tends to be significantly manufacturers still end up introducing hard may be increased by the micron-based end storage management capabilities that larger, heterogeneous, and constantly dependencies and constraints that can durable chipset at the core of IBM Flash support more than 400 major hardware fluctuating. Additionally, IBM SDS is a ‘follow limit cross-platform scale out. For many technology. platforms from different vendors. Virtually you’ license as opposed to ‘follow the organizations the need for SDS is no longer limitless elastic data scaling combined hardware vendor.’ This allows organizations in question. Instead the focus has shifted IBM Flash offerings are classified by the type with a simplified architecture can allow IT to swap hardware based on their needs to finding the applicable SDS that can keep of complex workload use case, which map organizations to rapidly provision storage with the flexibility to shop across a pool of up with the constantly changing technology to a majority of IT organizations ranging for initiatives—from prototyping, hyper- vendors without having to worry about re- landscape. This means IT organizations from entry level to large enterprise scale. converged, and converged to full grid scale training the storage team. IBM SDS provides can invest in training staff with skills on optimized infrastructures. Products such as greater storage infrastructure flexibility to a technology that their enterprise can Organizations looking to improve data IBM Spectrum ScaleTM allow IT organizations share resources, maintains the required continue to use for a long time. migration and data mobility and achieve to support mission critical workloads with service levels, and allows organizations true data agility should look to All Flash no downtime while providing management to better use data for greater business Why consider IBM Flash offerings? solutions in order to gain that unique mix ease and automation. The flexible per TB insights. IBM uses microcontrollers as opposed to of high performance and financial savings licensing for production includes a no-cost traditional microprocessor- and processor- across the full range of deployment and license for non-production use. This can based AFAs. This may provide an advantage operational activities. be a savings accelerator for organizations

5 Virtualized Storage Cloud Big Data Business Critical Why consider them together? Block storage virtualization Block storage purpose- Highly scalable storage for Highest availability •• A combination of performance with the with enterprise data engineered for public, growing oceans of file and business critical storage for need for management flexibility in a SDI services for heterogeneous private, and hybrid cloud object data mainframe and can be delivered by combining these environments solutions open systems products together. This allows for the reuse of existing investments in tiered FlashSystem A9000 FlashSystem A9000R DeepFlash 150 DS8888 or lower speed arrays for more archival and lower priority workloads, while still Storwize® V7000E FlashSystem A9000 Elastic Storage Server D88886 having SDS provide a consistent, unified way to manage workload distribution by Storwize® V5000E X/V IBM Spectrum Scale DS8884 performance profile.

•• IBM Spectrum-based SDS products and Storwize® V7000 IBM Spectrum IBM Cloud Object Storage & Flash lower administrative challenges Unified Accelerate Storage Data Management and reduce the footprint for data center management in terms of physical space Storwize® V7000 Data Archive & required, software tools to manage, and IBM Spectrum Control Protection Retention existing asset reuse. One of the biggest Storwize® V5000 advantages of SDS is letting customers IBM Spectrum take their licenses without a tie to the IBM Spectrum Tape Libraries Control Insight hardware. Similarly, IBM Flash offers one Virtualize of the fastest performance per GB and LTOP & Enterprise Tape Drives Software Defined allows for distinguishing between fulfilling SVC Computing capacity needs vs. performance needs TSJMO of storage that a traditional array cannot Application provide. IBM Spectrum Acceleration ProtecTIER Deduplication Conductor •• IBM Flash and SDS technologies can be scaled to fit business need and not Spectrum Protect IBM Spectrum Archive FlashSystem 900 IBM Spectrum necessarily an “All In” package. This leaves Symphony organizations with the option to select hardware and software based on business IBM Spectrum LSF need and add onto it later. Figure 4: The right Integrated Solution Appliance storage for the right Software Specialty workload Integrated Cloud Service Integrated Infrastructure Infrastructure

All Flash VersaStack

PurePower

6 OLIP OLAP Online Transaction Online Analytical Storage approaches Processing Processing

FlashSystem storage systems can either IBM Flash approach For organizations focused on consolidation complement or replace With the most recent models of V9000 Flash and a reduced technical footprint, traditional hard disk BI storage, IBM continues to build upon its FlashSystem products help consolidate VDI arrays in many Business history and tradition of producing hardware hardware and software, increase Virtual Desktop business-critical Intelligence to support different workloads and deployment speed, and reduce work for IT Infrastructures applications. business needs. Combining IBM hardware staff. and software can allow for an effective HPC experience and performance and the ability For organizations with green initiatives High Performance to reuse existing storage or add more in the focused on reducing costs through energy Computing future. IBM has also worked with Micron efficiencies, FlashSystem storage systems on development of the actual flash chips, can offer: adding optimization and reliability. •• Energy-efficient flash components to drive lower operational costs Figure 5: Right storage for the Economics is a key factor in determining right solution whether to opt for IBM FlashSystemTM •• One of industry’s best IOPS per watt ratio (FlashSystem). Flash costs more than SSD to maximize energy savings A 1U form factor, which Figure 6: Benefits of FlashSystem and HDD per TB, but if the consideration •• Hexagonal ventilation holes, a part of IBM has a minimal footprint for storage solutions is for performance and speed over cost, Calibrated Vectored Cooling™ technology optimum ROI Flash might be the optimal choice. Choosing (Hexagonal holes can be grouped more the right storage is crucial to the entire densely than round holes, providing more environment. Two dual-port 8 GB Fiber Channel Hot-swap flash modules efficient airflow through the system) controllers or dual-port 40 GB to enable uninterrupted For businesses focused on big data and FlashSystem storage is a more cost-effective QDR InfiniBand controllers operations cloud environments, FlashSystem products solution where using multiple SSDs would are ideal to meet this need. These storage have been the only other alternative. Also, systems can either complement or replace Up to a petabyte (PB) of the latency that is caused by a software traditional hard disk arrays in many FlashSystem storage can be data path and application processing can be 350 watt or less power draw business-critical applications. placed in a single rack, on greatly reduced by FlashSystem products a single floor tile that have a hardware-only data path and low latency.

7 Storage data compression Product Plane Product Description Benefit Along with providing hardware appliances Single management console for the Spectrum that improve performance and lower IBM Spectrum Automated control and optimization of Control suite of products. Allows for monitoring and operational costs, greater compression ControlTM storage and data infrastructure health check across storage devices. extends the utility of physical storage. Compression is the most common form of Copy Services Automated control and optimization of Plan and manage replication across storage Control data reduction technology for most storage storage replication features devices Manager systems due to the continued expansion IBM Spectrum Optimized data protection for client data Provides consistent Disaster Recovery (DR) of data collection and use. As data builds in Control ProtectTM through backup and restore capabilities replication and easy DR management collateral, it is important to store that data in a way that maximizes storage capacity. IBM Spectrum Provides hardware and application agnostic Integrated application- IBM Real-time Compression uses IBM’s Protect Control snapshots, including relational database aware point-in-time copies Random Access Compression Engine (RACE) Snapshot systems technology to help achieve a valuable combination of high performance and Spectrum Automate creation and use of copy data compression efficiencies. Allows for easy replication and management Copy Data Control snapshots, vaults, clones, and replicas on data Management existing storage infrastructure Why does that matter? The cost of licensing can be reduced as compression reduces the overall storage requirement. This translates Core SAN Volume Controller function is into savings, especially when storage is IBM Spectrum virtualization Provides for the virtualization across the Data reduced by 20 to 50 percent. VirtualizeTM that frees client data from underlying storage IT boundaries IBM software defined storage approach IBM Spectrum Cloud enterprise storage that is deployed Accelerates deployment of storage within the The objective of IBM’s Software Defined Data AccelerateTM in minutes instead of months cloud Storage (SDS) is providing a flexible and scalable storage solution. IBM’s approach is IBM Spectrum Storage scalability to yottabytes and File system that is able to manage large Data based on an architecture that separates the ScaleTM across geographical boundaries amounts of data across different storage storage/data control and the data access IBM Spectrum Enables long-term storage of low Provides easy integration with tape archiving planes and places them on top of any server Data ArchiveTM activity data solutions or storage system. Each of these planes is then supported by IBM’s Spectrum software

8 suite, which provides the management and the storage. Additionally, SDS helps meet into their pool. Having the ability to include maintenance capabilities for the underlying security needs by supporting various types these three distinct types of storage allows hardware infrastructure. This configuration of encryption, which can be managed organizations to maximize storage types allows for a singular view of all virtual internally or via IBM Security Key Lifecycle and options. storage that has been provisioned, as well Manager (SKLM). as the underlying servers and hardware. Despite the numerous combinations The IBM Spectrum software suite is a SDS architecture overview of storage possibilities, the allocation comprehensive set of software components The overall architecture of IBM’s SDS and management of it is still simple and that are designed to support all aspects of provides for on-prem, cloud, or a hybrid mix straightforward with IBM’s Spectrum SDX SDS. This suite can be used as a whole or as of both implementations. The flexibility of platform. The various types of storage are individual pieces, allowing it to be tailored this SDS approach (especially in combination presented to end users in a heterogeneous to the individual requirements of each with IBM’s FlashSystem storage) allows manner, allowing it to be managed in the implementation. organizations to mix and match storage for same manner as traditional virtualized the combination that’s right for them. storage. To support the control and data plane, The Spectrum SDX platform allows for all of SDS relies on a set of underlying storage an organization’s storage to be connected There is a broad set of Flash hardware hardware that could be flash, disk, or to and managed from a single console. storage options available spanning tape and from multiple vendors. This This includes on-premise IBM storage, virtualized storage, cloud, big data, and makes it a good candidate for greenfield on-premise non-IBM storage, cloud service business. It provides a comprehensive implementations and integrating with provide storage (Softlayer and other major opportunity to integrate hardware based on existing storage infrastructure. This providers). workload or business need and a software hardware agnostic approach allows reuse solution to manage and administer it all. and incremental upgrade or expansion of The inclusion of IBM and non-IBM storage existing hardware and a variety solutions helps organizations reduce a challenge they that are already in place. often face when procuring new hardware— what to do with legacy hardware. With Even while supporting multiple types of IBM’s Spectrum platform, it can continue storage, creation/management/destruction to be used by integrating it into the storage can be handled in a consistent way from pool. For organizations with a cloud storage one location. This helps streamline the footprint (or those who anticipate gaining overall management and maintenance of one), this storage can also be incorporated

9 Case Case Study I: A marketing and solutions company in Japan studies Business challenge Solution Impact A marketing and solutions company for The company selected IBM FlashSystem •• Reduced daily wait times by 554 a leading electronics giant needed to all-flash storage, designed for high hours across its workforce Here are some examples boost performance, response times, and performance. Average response time of how different companies employee satisfaction by reducing daily wait achieved during the peak period at the •• Reduced use of floor space times of mission-critical applications. beginning of the month was just 60 •• Decreased power consumption have leveraged IBM Flash seconds. The company created a software- or SDS products to help IT headquarters was responsible for defined storage infrastructure by deploying •• Reduced processing time for maintenance and operation of several IBM Spectrum Control™ and IBM Spectrum several tasks from one minute solve business challenges mission-critical applications used daily Virtualize solutions to manage its new to 10 or 20 seconds by approximately 4,000 of the 18,000 FlashSystem and existing IBM Storwize or achieve business •• Improved overall efficiency of employees across its various offices. storage devices. With these tools in place, operations by 83 percent objectives. To address the issue of increasing wait the company was able to implement IBM times, a mechanism was derived to allow FlashSystem with minimal changes to Solution components mission-critical systems to be used as data existing configuration, a key advantage. warehouses by the company’s information By adding FlashSystem to an existing •• IBM FlashSystem systems. IT headquarters also prepared virtualized storage environment, they •• IBM Spectrum Control a data mart that divided up the collected improved the value of existing investments data according to use, helping users rapidly and introduced additional cost reductions. •• IBM Spectrum VirtualizeTM define and execute queries and retrieve •• IBM Storwize® the information they require. Complex SQL When implementing IBM FlashSystem, the queries were used to process this data, with company needed to migrate data used by increasing execution time. the business on a daily basis, which meant that it needed to minimize downtime. As a Most of the data marts accumulated result, the company chose to divide the 40 data for a year, as a result of which the TB of data to be migrated into two parts, data and transaction volumes exceeded with preparatory migration steps carried estimates and response times during peak out over a month, and the main stages over periods started to deteriorate sooner than just two days. expected. With an average of approximately 15,000 transactions daily, and an excess of 50,000 transactions at the peak period at the beginning of each month, the company targeted a tenfold increase in the speed of data processing.

10 Case Study II: A public transport company in Germany

Business challenge Solution Impact A leading transportation company in The company relies on a solid hardware •• Realized full ROI within Germany manages diverse operations, backbone of IBM Power SystemsTM servers, five years acting as the main public transport provider running IBM AIX, to deliver enhanced in one of Germany’s greater urban regions, performance for its business-critical •• Reduced total cost of ownership as well as an IT service provider for a systems, including an extensive SAP ERP by about 50 percent over the number of medium-sized companies. Slow application landscape. To manage growing previous solution response times impacted the company’s quantities of data and provide fast access •• Reduced critical batch process ability to coordinate logistics and deliver to vital information, the company extended times by 98 percent safe, efficient transport to passengers. its existing storage environment—based on IBM System Storage SAN Volume Solution components It was a considerable challenge to meet the Controller—with high-performance IBM increasing capacity demands placed on the FlashSystem technology. •• SAP ERP company’s storage systems. They added •• IBM Power Systems more and more disks to their systems just The company gained greater business to meet the service level agreements and insight and the ability to perform advanced •• IBM FlashSystem 810 provide the throughput rates customers data analytics by moving critical SAP ERP •• IBM SAN Volume Controller needed for their mission-critical SAP applications to Flash. It was also able to systems. Overcapacity and high costs were easily move whole systems or databases •• IBM InfoSphere the consequence, damaging margins and from traditional storage to Flash storage harming competitiveness. at the push of a button. This capability has increased agility and improved user experience and reaction time to changing performance requirements.

11 Case Study III: A US commercial bank

Business challenge Solution Impact This bank needed an end-to-end virtual The bank eliminated performance issues, •• 12x better user density desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution that improved VDI density, and achieved high could support more than two thousand availability with IBM FlashSystem and •• Reduced critical batch process desktops at 175+ branches and handle Atlantis software. times by 98 percent rapid growth. •• Prevented boot storms Using Flash consolidated applications onto a The existing SAN storage could not support platform with the capacity and performance •• Lowered the cost per desktop its virtual desktop infrastructure without scalability capable of supporting multiple •• Realized better performance slowing down other critical applications and applications. It avoided scale out hassle with than real desktop they needed a scalable solution to handle high density flash. The bank was also able business growth. to centralize and virtualize without creating •• Lowered VDI installation risk new silos. •• 12 seconds boot time on a VDI, for a faster-than-local desktop experience

Solution components

•• SAP ERP

•• Atlantis ILIO

•• IBM FlashSystem 820

•• IBM Storwize V3700

•• VMware VDI

12 Case Study IV: A telecommunications company in Egypt

Business challenge Solution Impact This telecommunications company provides To resolve delays in its fraud management •• 300 percent overall a full range of voice and data services to system, the company decided to use IBM performance enhancement more than 22 million subscribers in Egypt, FlashSystem V840. With the new storage for FMS which includes telecom services to large technology in place, the company improved Egyptian enterprises. With increasing the efficiency of its fraud management •• 20x better results in competition, the company faced challenges application, reducing the time spent on analysis time in delivering enhanced performance, processing call records by a factor of 15 •• <500 microseconds read availability, analytics, and security to its times and improving the speed of fraud and write IOs growing customer base. detection by a factor of 37 times. •• Reduced storage footprint and The company’s fraud management system With IBM FlashSystem V840, the company lower energy costs depends on data received from network enhanced analytics performance while switches to detect fraud, like unauthorized reducing storage footprint and lowering Solution components data usage. However it often took as long energy costs. This sped up real-time •• IBM FlashSystem V840 as three days to capture and analyze fraud analytics of its Fraud Management System data. and allowed it to capture and virtually •• IBM Spectrum Virtualize (SVC) analyze fraud data instantly instead of taking three days. This helped the company •• FMS – Fraud Management improve its operations by 300 percent. System •• IBM Flash Centers of Using All Flash Arrays resulted in Competency performance enhancements, significant savings in footprint, key application optimization, business operation and service level improvement, and better decision- making.

13 Case Study V: A US Case Study VI: Network Fleet for a leading telecommunications company US telecommunications company

Business challenge Impact Business challenge Impact This prominent telecommunication To support its broadband wireless •• 33x faster performance than •• 6x faster performance for fleet company’s call-center agents needed fast, and wireline services, a leading US tier 1 EMC VMAX storage queries reliable access to respond to customer communications company operates a fleet issues. Existing storage infrastructure was •• 3.6x more iPhone activations of nearly 45,000 vehicles throughout the •• 15x reduction in IOPS latency, unable to keep up. per minute U.S. To help improve customer service and from 15ms or greater to less control operational costs, fleet managers than 1ms •• #1 Ranking in customer Solution installed GPS tracking on 30,000 of those satisfaction among national •• 80 percent reduction in power This company deployed IBM FlashSystem vehicles. The online GPS tracking solution by carriers to help improve performance and resolve the company required innovative answers •• 50 percent reduction in space to customer queries faster, while slashing for problems of latency, queries, and facilitate TCO savings energy consumption, data center footprint, Solution components reporting and required understanding flash and overall operations cost. The IBM alternatives such as hybrid arrays and inline Solution components •• Oracle RAC FlashSystem solution allowed the company accelerators. •• Oracle RAC to identify and address potential customer •• IBM AIX issues faster, helping to maintain and build Solution •• IBM FlashSystem •• IBM FlashSystem 820 subscriber numbers. Two IBM FlashSystem arrays were deployed •• IBM SAN Volume Controller to support fleet telematics such as location, where they are going, what they are doing, •• Microsoft Lync and monitoring operational health of vehicles. The company saw exponential improvements in performance and reporting, coupled with major reductions in environmental costs.

14 Conclusion References FlashCore technology provides a wide While these products can be used a la 1. Gartner Report on Solid array of storage sizing options for carte, usage of the suite requires time and State Arrays. Retrieved specific workloads to support a wide forethought to implement successfully. from https://www.gartner. variety of businesses. SDS similarly has Additionally, before implementing IBM’s com/doc/reprints?id=1- been developed to integrate and unify Flash technology and/or SDS, a careful 3FNG0BO&ct=160822&st=sg hardware across hosted platforms and evaluation and impact assessment needs to 2. IBM System Whitepaper: To vendor storage products, while adding be performed on current software licenses Achieve True Data Agility, numerous benefits. for tools and products supporting this Consider a Move to All Flash hardware. This is a complex and challenging Arrays. Retrieved from https:// While IBM may have a strong position in exercise that may require involvement www-01.ibm.com/common/ Flash technology and SDS, it is important for from the software vendors to validate and ssi/cgi-bin/ organizations to consider the complexities confirm an organization’s findings. that accompany these products and recognize that Flash and SDS are not just In order to gain many of the benefits and technology solutions. Selecting these efficiencies discussed, an organization’s products often requires a long term vision IT staff must implement and manage and commitment to creating a defined the solutions properly. This also means IT strategy and road map. Lifecycle analysis having dedicated staff or contractors of the existing hardware, architecture with specialized skills for maintaining design, and the business use case the Flash and SDS. hardware is supporting also needs to be understood and considered. This includes It is critical for IT executives to continually involving stakeholders from all parts of look at their current and future IT an organization. landscape and determine what product or technologies will be necessary to meet IT and business objectives.

15 Glossary

Software-Defined Storage (SDS) – Calibrated vectored cooling (CVC) – An Storage Area Network (SAN) – A network Computer data storage software for policy- air-cooling technology developed by IBM which provides access to consolidated, based provisioning and management of for server systems with high component block level data storage. SANs are primarily data storage independent of the underlying density. CVC optimizes the path of air flow used to enhance storage devices, such hardware. through the equipment, increasing the as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical efficiency with which heat is removed. jukeboxes, and are accessible to servers so Flash memory – Electronic non-volatile that the devices appear to the operating computer storage medium that can be Inputs/outputs per second (IOPS) – The system as locally attached devices. A SAN electrically erased and reprogrammed. standard unit of measurement for the typically has its own network of storage Information is stored in an array of memory maximum number of reads and writes to devices that are generally not accessible cells made from floating-gate transistors. non-contiguous storage locations. When through the local area network (LAN) by evaluating a new storage system, especially other devices. Solid-state drive (SSD) – Device used an All-Flash Array, the number of IOPS that to store and retrieve digital information the storage system can sustain is often IBM® Power Systems™ - IBM technology using electronic circuits, without the use of used to differentiate one storage system for z/OS, to manage encryption keys for moving mechanical parts. from another. storage.

Hard disk drive – A data storage device IBM Random Access Compression IBM z/OS® – A 64-bit operating system for that uses magnetic storage to store and Engine (RACE) – IBM’s data optimization IBM mainframes, produced by IBM. retrieve digital information using one technique that compresses data in between or more rigid rotating disks coated with transmission and application servers and Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)– magnetic material. The disks are paired storage devices. A virtualization technology that hosts a with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a desktop operating system on a centralized moving actuator arm, which read and write server in a data center. data to the disk surfaces.

16 Authors

Hemang Dholakia Pete Evans Neethu Jacob Senior Enterprise System Architect Systems Architect | Application Consultant Deloitte Consulting LLP Modernization Deloitte Consulting LLP [email protected] Deloitte Consulting LLP [email protected] [email protected]

Venu Bommenani Mike Zawacki Senior Technology Project Manager Manager Deloitte Consulting LLP Deloitte Consulting LLP [email protected] [email protected]

Contributors

Robert Miller Lead Architect | IBM Alliance Deloitte Consulting LLP [email protected]

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