IBM Cloud
IBM Cloud
IBM Cloud
Larry Coyne
Joe Dain
Phil Gilmer
Patrizia Guaitani
Ian Hancock
Antoine Maille
Tony Pearson
Brian Sherman
Christopher Vollmar
Redpaper
International Technical Support Organization
January 2017
REDP-4873-03
Note: Before using this information and the product it supports, read the information in Notices on
page vii.
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Contents
Notices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Now you can become a published author, too! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
Comments welcome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
Stay connected to IBM Redbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
5.1 Large enterprise OpenStack cloud supporting XIV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.1.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.1.2 Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
5.1.3 Benefits of the solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.2 IT storage cloud orchestration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.2.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.2.2 Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5.2.3 Solution benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
5.3 National library public cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.3.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.3.2 Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
5.3.3 Benefits of the solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Contents v
5.4 Video surveillance solution for public safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.4.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.4.2 Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.4.3 Benefits of the solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.5 Telecommunication company public cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.5.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.5.2 Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.5.3 Benefits of the solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
5.6 Life science healthcare hybrid cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.6.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.6.2 Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.6.3 Benefits of the solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
5.7 University disaster recovery on public cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.7.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.7.2 Proposed solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.7.3 Benefits of the solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.8 Media and entertainment company hybrid cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.8.1 Business needs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.8.2 Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
5.8.3 Benefits of the solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
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This IBM Redpaper publication takes you on a journey that surveys cloud computing to
answer several fundamental questions about storage cloud technology. What are storage
clouds? How can a storage cloud help solve your current and future data storage business
requirements? What can IBM do to help you implement a storage cloud solution that
addresses these needs?
This paper shows how IBM storage clouds use the extensive cloud computing experience,
services, proven technologies, and products of IBM to support a smart storage cloud solution
designed for your storage optimization efforts. Clients face many common storage challenges
and some have variations that make them unique. It describes various successful client
storage cloud implementations and the options that are available to meet your current needs
and position you to avoid storage issues in the future. IBM Cloud Services (IBM Cloud
Managed Services and IBM SoftLayer) are highlighted as well as the contributions of IBM
to OpenStack cloud storage.
This paper is intended for anyone who wants to learn about storage clouds and how IBM
addresses data storage challenges with smart storage cloud solutions. It is suitable for IBM
clients, storage solution integrators, and IBM specialist sales representatives.
Authors
This paper was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working at the IBM
Client Center Montpellier, France.
Larry Coyne is a Project Leader at the International Technical Support Organization, Tucson
Arizona Center. He has 34 years of IBM experience with 23 in IBM storage software
management. He holds degrees in Software Engineering from the University of Texas at
El Paso and Project Management from George Washington University. His areas of expertise
include client relationship management, quality assurance, development management, and
support management for IBM Storage Management Software.
Joe Dain is a Senior Engineer and Master Inventor in Tucson, Arizona and works in the
Storage and Software Defined Infrastructure CTO Office. He joined IBM in 2003 with a BS in
Electrical Engineering. His areas of expertise include backup, restore, disaster recovery,
object storage, data reduction techniques such as data deduplication and compression, and
emerging storage technology trends. He is on his fourteenth IBM invention plateau with over
60 patents issued and pending worldwide, including 22 high-value patents.
Phil Gilmer is an Information Infrastructure Consultant in the IBM Systems and Technology
Group Lab Consulting, in Tucson, Arizona, United States. He has 33 years of experience with
IBM in various roles including Test Engineer, Systems Engineer, Network Integrator, Sales
Representative, and PMP Certified Project/Program Manager. He holds a Bachelors degree
in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University. His current areas of expertise
include business consulting and project management in information infrastructure
architecture, business case development, information lifecycle, and availability management.
He works with clients worldwide to perform cloud and storage IT optimization engagements.
He has written numerous optimization reports, white papers, and IBM Redpaper publications
related to storage virtualization and tiering.
Ian Hancock is a Technical Sales specialist currently working with software-defined storage
products for customers in the United Kingdom. He has over 37 years of experience in the
IT industry, working for international vendors of IT systems in the UK and EMEA regions. He
has worked in many fields from hardware development, services, consultancy, project
management, and line management through to technical sales. Most of his career in IBM has
been in storage software technical sales. However, he is also a qualified ITIL Manager, which
has helped to bring a service management perspective to his approach for solving data
management problems. His current area of interest is to help customers use the latest
software-defined storage products and technologies to modernize their data protection
environments by using innovative architectures and designs.
Antoine Maille is an IBM Certified Architect expert. Since 2002, he has been involved in
planning and leading large distributed environments infrastructure projects. Initially, he
worked as the benchmark manager responsible for testing and qualifying new products in real
customer contexts. Currently, Antoine is one of the leaders of the storage design center at the
IBM Client Center in Montpellier, France.
Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior Software Engineer in the IBM Tucson
Executive Briefing Center, and is a subject matter expert for all IBM storage hardware and
software solutions. He has worked on IBM Storage for more than 30 years, with 19 patents for
storage solutions and technologies. He is known for his Inside System Storage blog, one
of the most popular blogs on IBM developerWorks. He has a bachelor's degree in
Computing Engineering and master's degree in Electrical Engineering, both from the
University of Arizona.
Brian Sherman is an IBM Distinguished Engineer with over thirty years experience as an I/T
Specialist since joining IBM from McMaster University in 1985 with a Mathematics and
Computer Science Degree. Brian has been involved in Storage since joining IBM and has
held various storage related roles including level 2 software support, storage implementation
services and branch Systems Engineer in the Public and Financial Sectors. Brian currently is
the technical lead for Software Defined Storage (SDS), Spectrum Storage Family, IBM
DS8000, and XIV/A9000 in the World Wide Advanced Technical Skills (ATS) organization.
He also develops and provides World Wide technical education on new Storage Hardware
and Software product launches and participates on several Storage Product Development
Teams.
Ann Lund
International Technical Support Organization
Erwan Auffray
Marc Bouzigues
Olivier Fraimbault
Benoit Granier
Joelle Haman
Thierry Huche
Hubert Lacaze
Marc Lapierre
Khanh Ngo
Christine OSullivan
Gauthier Siri
Olivier Vallod
IBM Systems
Larry Coyne
Mark Bagley
Gaurav Chhaunker
Phil Gilmer
Shivaramakrishnan Gopalakrishnan
Patrizia Guaitani
Tiberiu Hajas
Magnus Hallback
Mikael Lindstrm
Daniel Michel
John Sing
Hrvoje Stanilovic
Christopher Vollmar
Find out more about the residency program, browse the residency index, and apply online at:
ibm.com/redbooks/residencies.html
Preface xi
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1
See NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-145, A NIST Definition of Cloud Computing:
http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.800-145
A company can use cloud services that are provided by third parties, or it can build its own
cloud. The company can then provide services from the cloud to internal company users, to
selected business partners or customers, or to the world at large.
To provide these characteristics, the infrastructure that enables the cloud services takes
advantage of two key enablers:
Virtualization: Allows computing resources to be pooled and allocated on demand. It also
enables pay-per-use billing to be implemented.
Automation: Allows for the elastic use of available resources, and for workloads to be
moved to where resources are available. It also supports provisioning and deprovisioning
of service instances to support scalability.
Although these enablers are not part of any formal cloud definition, they are indispensable in
delivering the essential cloud service characteristics.
Many traditional IT services are provisioned with some of the characteristics of a cloud
service. So how do you know that you are providing a cloud service, or when you are using a
cloud service? You know that you are providing a cloud service when your service exhibits
the characteristics listed previously, typically provisioned by using the virtualization and
automation enablers.
As the user of any service, whether it is being provisioned as a cloud service might be
immaterial. However, you are likely to be using a cloud service when the service that you are
using exhibits the characteristics that are listed previously. From a cloud user perspective, it is
important that you are able to perform self-service activities to quickly provision new service
instances and have resources that are elastically sized to meet your changing processing
demands.
As you can see, although cost savings are important, what is even more noteworthy is the
number of business-related, time-to-market, competitive advantage, business
revenue-related aspects of the move to the cloud. In aggregate, these business reasons are
at least as important, if not more so, than the cost reduction. For more insight into the data
behind what is driving cloud decisions, see the following website:
http://www.kpmginfo.com/EnablingBusinessInTheCloud/downloads/7397-CloudSurvey-Rev1
-5-15.pdf
For almost any organization, the magnitude of effort that is required to construct internal
custom-built answers to these questions from scratch is daunting and often is not feasible.
This concern is why proven, pre-built, pre-tested cloud workflow IaaS offerings are so popular
for organizations that need to change quickly to stay competitive. IaaS offerings already
implement the cloud preferred practices workflow, and good IaaS offerings come with a
system of proven experience and proven users. By adopting a proven IaaS solution, an IT
organization can obtain and implement a reliable template and toolset to create true cloud
capabilities within the IT organization.
The BPaaS model combines software and workflow elements to deliver end-to-end business
processes as a service. Many business processes have the potential to be delivered through,
vertical markets (such as healthcare and insurance). BPaaS allows businesses to pass on
some of their day-to-day operating costs to service providers by using a fee-for-service model
so that the businesses can focus on their core competencies.
Table 1-1 lists the functions that are provided by the cloud service provider and the cloud
service user for each service model. For any service model, the service provider also
provides the functions that are listed in the service models below it. The cloud user provides
the functions listed in the service models above it, if required, as indicated by the arrows in
the table.
Table 1-1 Cloud service provider and service user responsibilities by service model
Service model Cloud service provider Cloud user
delivered functions delivered functions
These delivery models provide services in line with the service models described in 1.3,
Introduction to cloud service models on page 4. You can integrate them with existing IT
systems and other clouds.
Figure 1-3 illustrates these cloud delivery models, and identifies some of their characteristics
in terms of roles, users, and accessibility.
!
Examples of public clouds include IBM SoftLayer, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2),
Google AppEngine, and Microsoft Azure App Service.
A private cloud can be owned, managed, and operated by the organization, a third party, or a
combination. The private cloud infrastructure is usually provisioned on the organizations
premises, but it can also be hosted in a data center that is owned by a third party.
IBM uses the term Local when referring to on-premises private clouds that are owned,
managed, and operated by the organization, and the term Dedicated when referring to
off-premise third-party managed private clouds.
The hybrid approach allows a business to take advantage of the scalability and
cost-effectiveness of off-premise third-party resources without exposing applications and data
beyond the corporate intranet. A well-constructed hybrid cloud can service secure,
mission-critical processes, such as receiving customer payments (a private cloud service),
and secondary processes such as employee payroll processing (a public cloud service).
The challenge for a hybrid cloud is the difficulty in effectively creating and governing such a
solution. Services from various sources must be obtained and provisioned as though they
originated from a single location, and interactions between on-premises and off-premise
components make the implementation even more complicated.
The community cloud infrastructure can be provided on-premises or at a third partys data
center, and can be managed by the participating organizations or a third party.
Carefully plan the security and privacy aspects of cloud computing solutions before engaging
them. Public cloud computing represents a significant paradigm shift from the conventional
norms of an organizational data center to a de-perimeterized infrastructure open to use by
potential adversaries. As with any emerging information technology area, cloud computing
should be approached carefully with due consideration to the sensitivity of data. Planning
helps to ensure that the computing environment is as secure as possible and in compliance
with all relevant organizational policies and that privacy is maintained. It also helps to ensure
that the agency derives full benefit from information technology spending.
To maximize effectiveness and minimize costs, security and privacy must be considered
throughout the system lifecycle from the initial planning stage forward. Attempting to address
security and privacy issues after implementation and deployment is not only much more
difficult and expensive, but also exposes the organization to unnecessary risk.
Understand the public cloud computing environment offered by the cloud provider. The
responsibilities of both the organization and the cloud provider vary depending on the service
model. Organizations consuming cloud services must understand the delineation of
responsibilities over the computing environment and the implications for security and privacy.
Assurances furnished by the cloud provider to support security or privacy claims, or by a
certification and compliance review entity paid by the cloud provider, should be verified
whenever possible through independent assessment by the organization.
Understanding the policies, procedures, and technical controls used by a cloud provider is a
prerequisite to assessing the security and privacy risks involved. It is also important to
comprehend the technologies used to provision services and the implications for security and
privacy of the system. Details about the system architecture of a cloud can be analyzed and
used to formulate a complete picture of the protection afforded by the security and privacy
controls, which improves the ability of the organization to assess and manage risk accurately,
including mitigating risk by employing appropriate techniques and procedures for the
continuous monitoring of the security state of the system.
Ensure that a cloud computing solution satisfies organizational security and privacy
requirements. Public cloud providers' default offerings generally do not reflect a specific
organization's security and privacy needs. From a risk perspective, determining the suitability
of cloud services requires an understanding of the context in which the organization operates
and the consequences from the plausible threats it faces. Adjustments to the cloud computing
environment may be warranted to meet an organization's requirements. Organizations should
require that any selected public cloud computing solution is configured, deployed, and
managed to meet their security, privacy, and other requirements.
Non-negotiable service agreements in which the terms of service are prescribed completely
by the cloud provider are generally the norm in public cloud computing. Negotiated service
agreements are also possible. Similar to traditional information technology outsourcing
contracts used by agencies, negotiated agreements can address an organization's concerns
about security and privacy details, such as the vetting of employees, data ownership and exit
rights, breach notification, isolation of tenant applications, data encryption and segregation,
tracking and reporting service effectiveness, compliance with laws and regulations, and the
use of validated products meeting federal or national standards (e.g., Federal Information
Processing Standard 140). A negotiated agreement can also document the assurances the
cloud provider must furnish to corroborate that organizational requirements are being met.
Critical data and applications may require an agency to undertake a negotiated service
agreement in order to use a public cloud. Points of negotiation can negatively affect the
economies of scale that a non-negotiable service agreement brings to public cloud
computing, however, making a negotiated agreement less cost effective. As an alternative,
The IBM CCRA is designed around a set of architectural principles that establish the
framework within which architectural decisions are made. CCRA has these architectural
principles:
Design for cloud-scale efficiencies
Support lean service management
Identify and use commonalities
Define and manage cloud services generically during their lifecycle
For more information about IBM CCRA, see the following website:
https://ibm.biz/BdEWLz
The roles that are defined by the CCRA are described, at a high level, in 1.5.2, Cloud service
roles on page 13.
CCRA categorizes the cloud business models and corresponding architecture by the
following cloud adoption patterns:
Cloud enabled data center (IaaS)
Platform as a service (PaaS) adoption pattern
Software as a service (SaaS)
Cloud service providers
Mobile
Analytics
Government - Cloud
These roles are interrelated in that a Cloud Service Creator is responsible for creating a cloud
service, which can be run by a Cloud Service Provider, and exposed to Cloud Service
Consumers. Multiple roles can be fulfilled by the same organization or person.
A Cloud Service Provider might be a link within a chain of service providers and service
consumers, with each provider adding some value to the service within the chain. In this case,
each service provider needs to establish a partnership with their service providers to be able
to ensure service levels to their clients. This chain is illustrated in Figure 1-4 on page 12 by
the shaded segment named Existing and Third Party Services, Partner Ecosystems.
Within the Cloud Service Consumer role, more specific roles can exist. The consumer
organization might require a technical role responsible for making service consumption work
from a technical perspective. There might also be a business person on the consumer side
who is responsible for the financial aspects of consuming the service. In simple public cloud
scenarios, all of these consumer roles can be collapsed into a single person.
The Cloud Service Consumer browses the service offering catalog and triggers service
instantiation and management from there. Interaction with the service delivery catalog can be
tightly embedded within the actual cloud service. In particular, these cases are common for
SaaS and BPaaS cloud services where application-level virtualization is implemented.
Traditional IT
CRM
HR Public
Public Private Private
ERP
Dev/Test Prod Application and/or data
Systems of Systems of record are portable and can go
engagement
Choose private, public or hybrid to and from public and
Link new social and mobile systems cloud based on independent private for improved
to core business systems workload requirements optimization
Data sync
Tap into public cloud
Use private cloud normally and switch to resources dynamically when Leverage off-premise resources for backup
public cloud to recover files and data a shortage occurs on private cloud and archiving of on-premises resources
With a brokerage solution, you can plan, purchase, and manage IT services across all cloud
models from multiple supplies. It helps you choosing the right cloud.
Cloud-based disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) has emerged rapidly as both small and
large organizations look for a cost-effective way to ensure that data is protected and business
activities can continue during a data center disruption. The evolution of today's leading
DRaaS offerings centers around traditional managed storage and collocation service models.
Some organizations have evolved solutions from either backup and recovery (B/R) software
or cloud-related compute and storage services offerings.
Figure 1-8 shows the preferred practices steps that help ensure a successful cloud
deployment.
The specific relationship patterns and workflows that the successful cloud must implement
are not depicted in this progression. The next section summarizes those workflows so that
you can exactly see what best practices and organizational structure are required to provide
true cloud services, and where the storage cloud is positioned within the overall cloud.
At the bottom is the Software Defined Infrastructure layer that underpins the adoption
patterns. Software Defined Infrastructure is discussed in 1.8, Software-defined environment
on page 20.
The following sections detail the use cases that make up each of these macro-patterns.
IBM is a platinum sponsor of IBM offerings are based on VMware and Microsoft are
OpenStack Foundation OpenStack open source code with entirely proprietary, but have a
value-added proprietary large market share for x86-based
features from IBM server infrastructure
OpenStack open source code
can manage IBM compute,
network and storage resources IBM Cloud Orchestrator IBM was VMwares first OEM and
OpenStack supports x86, POWER supports a variety of server joint development partner (since
Systems and z System mainframe hypervisors. IBM BlueBox and 1998) IBM Global Services is one
IBM PowerVC provide additional of VMwares largest customers
features
IBM offers OpenStack Cinder
interfaces on most of its major IBM and Microsoft agreement to
storage products and OpenStack IBM Spectrum Control provide offer SQL Server and .NET on
Swift interfaces for object access reporting, provisioning, trouble IBM Cloud and IBM software on
shooting and chargeback Microsoft Azure
capabilities
Some assembly required Enterprise-ready out of the box
x86, POWER systems, and z System mainframe Concerns about vendor lock-in
Copyright IBM Corporation 2016. Technical University/Symposia materials 12
IBM Systems Technical Events | ibm.com/training/events may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the prior written permission of
IBM.
Workloads
Traditional Cloud Based
Middleware Based Services
Virtualized Network
Virtual Storage Virtual Compute
Layer Resources
SDI drives efficiency by optimizing the connections between workloads and resources based
on the needs of the business. Workloads are defined and orchestrated based on usage
patterns, and resources are managed and deployed according to business rules and policies.
An SDI offers several core advantages that provide enterprises that employ an SDI approach
with improvements within several processes that IT operations, until now, have traditionally
handled manually.
An SDI requires hardware to provide resources to support the server, storage, and network
infrastructure. The essential characteristic requirement for an SDI is that these hardware
components be dynamically configurable to support real-time service level requirements.
It is important to consider that SDI by itself will not provide infrastructure that is aligned to
business IT service level requirements unless the proper software definable components are
in place. High performance, availability, and security service levels require software definable
components that can be configured to meet these business requirements.
Similarly, lower level (for example, best effort) service levels should generally be configured
with software definable components cost aligned to these business requirements. SDI
architectures that need to support varied service levels will still require appropriate
performance and capacity planning across higher performance components and
differentiation of availability requirements for cost optimization. SDI supports the optimization
of infrastructure service levels to available component resources in real time. Implementing
an SDI framework supports the transformation from static infrastructure into dynamic,
continually optimized, workload-aware, and virtualized resources that allow line-of-business
users to better use IT as needed. This system enables far greater business agility.
The deployment velocity requirements of Systems of Engagement (SoE) demand this new
interaction between the consumer and the infrastructure provider to define workloads in a way
that enables the infrastructure to dynamically respond to the needs of those workloads.
Analytics processing, for example, typically needs to rapidly access required data, efficiently
process that data, and then release resources when the analysis completes. SDI is an ideal
IT infrastructure implementation approach in this scenario. Similarly, SDI supports efficient
deployment of rapidly growing and dynamically evolving transactional applications that
support the increasing number of mobile devices that IT now manages. SDI value is even
more apparent in hybrid scenarios like social analytics that are employed in sentiment
analysis used to determine customer opinions and thinking, or develop macro-level
understanding of worldwide events to create opportunity out of the data. Without SDI, the
ability to react in a timely fashion to Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Security and Social (CAMSS)
workloads requirements is limited and inhibits ITs ability to expeditiously meet the dynamic
infrastructure requirement for these workloads. As a result, these applications are often
delayed and less effectively deployed, resulting in under-realized or missed business
opportunities.
The business value of SDI is too great to ignore and is maximized when these design
parameters are given proper consideration while planning and deploying software defined
infrastructures. IBM is investing heavily in developing offerings across the spectrum of the
software defined universe, from building block components to integrated cloud offerings, as
well as implementing and supporting open API standards and architectures. These objects
help businesses achieve improved agility and competitiveness, and produce outstanding
customer satisfaction. Figure 1-12 shows the building blocks required to support new IT
infrastructure, highlighting software-defined storage (SDS).
Other
Social & Big Data &
Mobile Analytics
Business Workloads
Apps
Server Networking
choices choices
Storage
choices
Private, Public
or Hybrid Cloud
SDS storage component examples: Clouds, arrays, flash, high/medium/low function disk, tape
Figure 1-12 SDS building block of SDI for support of new IT business requirements
For more information about SDS, see IBM Software-Defined Storage Guide, REDP-5121.
The OpenStack cloud software was initially released into open source in 2010 by Rackspace
Cloud and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The OpenStack
architecture goal is to provide an open source cloud operating system IaaS platform for
creating and managing large groups of virtual private servers in a cloud computing
environment. OpenStack cloud software is an open source IaaS cloud operating system that
is released under the terms of the Apache 2.0 license. The design goals of OpenStack cloud
software are scale and elasticity, share nothing, and distribute everything. OpenStack cloud
software and offerings like it provide a means for traditional IT to quickly adopt newer cloud
computing workflows and best practices.
By adopting and using offerings such as OpenStack cloud software, the IT organization can
organize, develop skill sets, and deploy cloud computing around proven offerings that already
implement industry cloud computing best practices.
The OpenStack cloud software has experienced rapid adoption in just the past four years,
and has become largest, fastest growing open source IaaS offering. OpenStack community
currently has more than 507 companies who have joined and actively contribute to the
OpenStack software and the OpenStack Foundation project, including IBM (Figure 1-14).
OpenStack architecture is modular and includes the major components that are required for a
cloud infrastructure. The OpenStack architecture diagram shows the various OpenStack
components, already implemented in a cloud best practices workflow (Figure 1-15).
OpenStack IaaS solution provides a full cloud best practices solution for implementing cloud
IT services. In addition, the most important aspect of OpenStack cloud software is its large
and rapidly growing open source community of contributors worldwide. In a similar manner to
Linux, which has become a reliable, mission-critical capable technology for operating
systems, OpenStack technology seems like it will play a similar role for cloud operating
systems.
For more information about IBM participation, see the OpenStack website at:
http://www.openstack.org/foundation/companies/profile/ibm
IBM views support of OpenStack cloud software as a strategic and key component of IBM
participation in providing cloud computing capability.
Also, IBM has Cloud OpenStack Services, which can help reduce your need to invest in
up-front capital resources for an in-house private cloud infrastructure. The IBM hosted private
cloud runs on dedicated, high-performing SoftLayer bare metal servers that are housed in
global data centers designed to meet stringent industry and regulatory compliance
requirements.
Features such as physical infrastructure isolation for compute and storage, network
gateways, and a virtual private network connection with an encrypted tunnel can help you feel
more confident that your data is being protected with the same rigor as an on-premises
solution.
The paper reviews what a storage cloud is; what the storage features that enable a storage
cloud are; key technology aspects such as storage efficiency, automation, and management;
and security and data protection. It provides an overview of storage key enablers of a cloud
IaaS, including a description of OpenStack storage components. It also highlights specific
IBM products that participate in the storage cloud workflow.
Storage cloud capability can also be offered in the form of storage as a service, where you pay
based on the amount of storage space used. A storage cloud can be used in various ways,
based on your organization's specific requirements.
Figure 2-1 shows how various electronic or portable devices can access storage through the
Internet without necessarily knowing the explicit details of the type or location of storage that
is used underneath. Although the devices can access SAN or NAS storage, SAN or NAS
storage can itself use storage cloud for backup or other purposes.
Storage cloud
Storage cloud is the storage capacity service that is provided for client data and the primary
focus of this paper. A storage cloud exhibits the characteristics that are essential to any cloud
service (self-service provisioning, Internet and intranet accessibility, pooled resources,
elastic, and metered). It is a cloud environment on which the offered services can store and
retrieve data on behalf of computing processes that are not part of the storage cloud service.
A storage cloud can be used in combination with a compute cloud, a private compute facility,
or as storage for a computing device. Storage in a storage cloud can be categorized as
follows:
Hosted storage
This category is primary storage for block or file data that can be written and read on
demand, and is provisioned as generally higher performance and availability storage.
Reference storage
This category is fixed content storage to which blocks or files are typically written to once,
and read from many times. Examples of data typically on reference storage include
multimedia, archival data, medical imaging, surveillance data, and log files.
Persistent Storage
Reference Storage
Persists across
Archives
reboots
Video surveillance
Shared data
Document imaging
Transaction processing
Substantial reserve capacity is often required to support growth, which requires planning and
investment far in advance of the actual need to store data. The reason is because the
infrastructure cannot easily scale up the needed extra capacity as a result of an inability to
seamlessly add required storage resources. This key issue makes it more difficult to cope
with rapidly changing business environments, adversely affecting the ability to make better
decisions more rapidly and proactively optimize processes with more predictable outcomes.
Extensive capacity planning effort is needed to plan for future storage capacity and service
level requirements. Capacity is often underutilized because the storage infrastructure requires
reserve capacity for unpredictable future growth requirements, and therefore cannot be easily
scaled up or down. Compounding these issues is the frequent inability to seamlessly
provision more storage capacity without impacting application uptime.
Organizational constraints
Another barrier to efficient use of resources can be traced to artificial resource acquisition,
ownership, and operational practices:
Project-oriented infrastructure funding
Constrained operational budgets
Difficulty implementing resource sharing
No chargeback or showback mechanism as incentive for IT resource conservation
The limited ability to share data across the enterprise, especially in the context of
interdepartmental sharing, can degrade overall use of IT resources including storage
capacity. Parallel performance requirements in existing storage systems result in one node
supporting one disk, leading to multiplication of nodes and servers.
IT resource management
Efficient IT support is based on cost-effective infrastructure and service-level management to
address business needs:
Rapid capacity growth
Cost control
Service-level monitoring and support (performance, availability, capacity, security,
retention, and so on)
Architectural open standardization
Sometimes, the desire to avoid vendor lock-in because of proprietary protocols for data
access also creates tremendous pressure on storage resource management. Other
challenges are related to managing and meeting stringent service level agreement (SLA)
requirements and lack of enough in-house expertise to manage complex storage
infrastructures. New service levels, adjusting existing SLAs to align IT disaster recovery,
business resilience requirements, and high-availability solutions are also factors.
Storage cloud helps companies to become more flexible and agile, and supports their growth.
Improvement in quality of service (QoS), by automating provisioning and management of
underlying complex storage infrastructure, helps improve the overall efficiency of IT storage.
Cloud features such as data deduplication, compression, automatic tiering, and data
migration capabilities are generally built-in options, and also support the optimizing of storage
costs by implementing tiered storage.
Often the growth in file-based systems is restricted to approximately a few terabytes (TB).
This restriction can be easily overcome with storage cloud. Ubiquitous access to data over the
Internet, intranet, or both, provides location-independent access. This configuration can
provide a single management platform to manage hundreds of nodes, with data flowing from
all the nodes to all the storage arrays.
Figure 2-3 shows layers that provide unique benefits in the storage cloud.
Cross-site data
d mobility
Automation Operational management centralized
Multi-site file
fil distribution, synchronization
and
Management
Scalable capacity
Virtual resources - mobile, efficient
Smart allocation - deduplicated,
Hyper-Efficient compressed, thin provisioned
Storage
.
#$
Table 2-1 Typical storage service level requirements for various workloads
Service level Mission-critical: Business-vital: Business-vital: Business-vital: Business-
OLTP OLTP Data warehouse File service important:
File service
Availability
Performance
Recovery
Structured, transactional, or Storage to support runtime computations of a compute cloud, for example,
both database indexing, which are considered tier one
Must be co-located with the computation
Has the most stringent latency, I/O operations per second (IOPS), and data
protection requirements
Is the least sensitive to cost and is the smallest quantity of storage
File, unstructured, or both Storage that allows a customer to flexibly increase file storage capacity, for
example productivity, web content
Must be relatively close to customer data center
Has intermediate latency and IOPS requirements
Has immediate sensitivity to cost
Fixed Content Contains objects that are written once and never modified but can be replaced, for
example records, images
Can accept some latency in access to first byte and is not focused on IOPS
Has high sensitivity to cost and is the largest quantity
Unlike the public model, data is comparatively secure behind enterprise firewalls on dedicated
hardware. Because the storage space is not shared by other organizations, security and
multitenancy concerns are similar to traditional IT. In this model, the client might also save
significantly with storage consolidation and virtualization.
Figure 2-5 shows the typical journey from a traditional model to cloud-based model.
Figure 2-5 The overall cloud journey from traditional IT to storage cloud
Solutions: IBM offers a comprehensive set of solutions geared toward enabling a cloud
infrastructure for clients, from small and medium businesses to global enterprises. See
Chapter 4, IBM Storage Systems for SDS on page 59 for a survey of industry-leading,
enterprise-ready IBM storage offerings for cloud.
= Data
Access Branch Office Branch Office
The following examples are types of organizations that might operate within the distributed
computing model:
Financial institutions
Government departments
Retail organizations
The following sections describe the tiering structure that is shown in Figure 2-6, and some of
the operational characteristics of an organization that is operating within the distributed
computing model.
Read/write data that is held in this tier includes a users personal data, and data shared
among co-workers within a team. Teams might be spread across regional offices within this
tier.
Although most users who are operating within this tier are normally dedicated to a single
regional office, users in management roles might roam across the regional offices.
For some organizations, branch users are not dedicated to a single branch, but roam among
branches within a region. Regional managers might also spend time at the branches for
which they are responsible.
Data accessibility
One of the features of a storage cloud is its ability to consolidate multiple disparate data
islands into a single data repository, accessible to anyone from anywhere throughout an
organization (if security permits it). This single view of data is helpful in a distributed
computing environment, where data islands are prevalent. Users and administrators can take
advantage of this consolidated view to more easily access the data across the organization.
Data replication
Data replication is the key to enabling effective user roaming within and across the Distributed
Computing Environment tiers. It can reduce WAN congestion and improve operational
performance by having users access copies of data that is on their local area network (LAN)
rather than across the WAN.
Branch staff can have their personal data replicated to branches within their region. Regional
managers can have their personal data replicated to all of the branches within their region.
Inter-region managers can have their personal data replicated to all regional offices. Teams
that operate across regions can have their shared data replicated to their own regional office.
Each tier can have data replicated to its parent to facilitate high availability at the originating
tier, and also to enhance the efficiency of the enterprise backup strategy. Corporate data can
be replicated out to the branches for local manipulation, including printing.
IT infrastructure data can be replicated to all locations to facilitate IT-related tasks, such as
workstation builds, software distribution, and patch management.
Figure 2-7 shows the current IT structure of Organization ABCs currently isolated IT
structures.
Figure 2-7 Various teams' dedicated access makes sharing hardware resources difficult
Figure 2-8 shows how Organization ABC is now better prepared to adapt to changing
demands.
Elastic
Figure 2-8 Storage and compute resources can be scaled up or down to meet new demands
By consolidating its storage infrastructure, the organization is able to provide a single storage
infrastructure over a broader client base. This way provides both economies of scale, and the
potential to even out demand peaks and troughs.
Pooling of storage resources means that the organization can allocate storage from anywhere
to where it is the most effective in meeting a client needs.
Elasticity
Client resource demands can be met with agility because a storage cloud enables resources
to be provisioned in an elastic fashion, dynamically as demands dictate.
Internal resource peak and trough demands for resources can also be met by provisioning a
storage cloud. After activities, such as testing, are completed, the virtual machines and the
attached storage that is associated with these activities can be released and added back to
the virtual storage pool to be used later, or by other business units.
Rapid provisioning
A storage cloud allows for rapid provisioning of resources by providing a consolidated view of
resources and automation of the overall storage provisioning process through a storage cloud
portal.
Automation and self-provisioning also helps the temporary workforce, in terms of providing
the test setup in minutes rather than weeks. This feature means that personnel can be
productive on startup, rather than being delayed by infrastructure provisioning workflows.
Standard deployment templates, which can be customized for differing environments, ensure
that the provisioned environments are more stable and less error-prone, improving the quality
of deliverables.
OpenStack and VMware technologies are key enablers of cloud infrastructure as a service
(IaaS) capability. Both OpenStack and VMware provide overall cloud preferred practices, and
automated provisioning, workflow, and orchestration capabilities.
Storage vendors implement Cinder drivers by using the Cinder API, which provides the
following functions:
Creating, modifying, extending, and deleting block storage LUNs
Attaching/detaching these LUNs to server images created in the Nova component
Performing block storage functions such as snapshots (create, delete, list)
Providing support for backup and restore of volumes (volume from snapshot/image)
Protection functions such as Volume Replications and Consistency Groups
Migrating volumes from one system to another
vRealize Suite for vSphere based APIs use these applications through IBM Spectrum Control
Base (Management):
VMware vRA/vRO: The VMware (vRO) administrator can apply simple IBM Storage
discovery and provisioning in custom automated workflows and can easily develop IBM
storage-based workload (PaaS) and storage (SaaS) blueprints. Application owners can
self-provision IBM-Storage based workloads.
vROps: The VMware vROps operator can be notified about unexpected IBM Storage
behavior (trend analysis, alerts, and events), easily traverse relations between VM and
IBM Storage components (resolve root cause from impacted workload), view trends of a
rich set of IBM Storage statistics and apply ready or custom thresholds for notification, and
centrally view IBM Storage alerts and events.
VMware Storage based APIs used directly through the IBM software-defined storage
offerings for IBM Spectrum Accelerate and IBM Spectrum Virtualize block offerings
provide these features:
vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) is a feature that provides hardware acceleration
functions. It enables your host to offload specific virtual machine and storage management
operations to compliant storage hardware. With the storage hardware assistance, your
host performs these operations faster and consumes less CPU, memory, and storage
fabric bandwidth.
vSphere Virtual Volumes (VVoL), in concert with the VASA v2.0, provides storage
abstraction, and delivers easy automated provisioning with tenant domains,
policy-compliant service, snapshot and cloning offloading, and instant space reclamation.
The Virtual Volume model eliminates the complexity of managing the storage
infrastructure. It introduces a new control plane in Storage Policy-Based Management.
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is the disaster recovery management
product that ensures simple and reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.
Site Recovery Manager can use storage-based replication to provide centralized
management of recovery plans, enable nondisruptive testing, and automate site recovery
and migration processes through the VMware Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for the
individual software-defined storage (SDS) block storage offerings. The SRA enables the
communication with vSphere SRM to enable the awareness of storage-based replication.
For more information about the IBM Storage Integration points on VMware, see these
resources:
IBM FlashSystem V9000 and VMware Best Practices Guide, REDP-5247
IBM Spectrum Virtualize and SAN Volume Controller Enhanced Stretched Cluster with
VMware, SG24-8211
3.2.1 Virtualization
Storage virtualization refers to the abstraction of storage systems from applications and
servers. It is a foundation for the implementation of other technologies, such as thin
provisioning, tiering, and data protection, that are transparent to the server. It is one of the key
enablers for storage cloud environments where several cloud services typically share one
common infrastructure. Storage virtualization abstracts storage from multiple sources into a
single storage pool. It helps you to manage the rapid information growth by using your storage
equipment and data center space more effectively. The increase in storage utilization reduces
power costs and keeps the footprint of your storage hardware small.
3.2.2 Compression
The amount of stored data continues to grow exponentially every year, which creates
tremendous strain on the IT infrastructure, especially on storage systems. Additional storage
systems can help to meet these storage growth requirements in the near-term. However,
shrinking IT budgets are pressuring IT managers to increase the lifetime of existing storage
Online compression immediately reduces the physical storage across all storage tiers. It
allows storage administrators to gain back free disk space in the existing storage system
without the need to change any administrative processes or requiring users to clean up or
archive data. The benefits to the business are immediate because the capital expense of
upgrading the storage environment is delayed. Compression also reduces the environmental
requirements per unit of storage. After compression is applied to stored data, the required
power and cooling per unit of storage are reduced because more logical data is stored in the
same physical space.
Automated tiering refers to the automated migration of data between storage tiers based on
real-time analysis of access patterns. This continuously ongoing process consists of these
steps:
1. The workload on the storage is monitored by the storage system.
2. After a certain period, the storage system evaluates the historical information to identify
hot spots, which means data with a high I/O density.
3. The storage system creates a migration plan for moving this hot spot data to a higher tier
storage that can provide the required performance.
Data whose I/O density has dropped off is moved back to a lower tier. Automated tiering helps
you to more precisely plan and manage both storage costs and application performance.
Restores are performed to recover the loss or corruption of data from operational issues such
as inadvertent or malicious delete, localized hardware failures, and software issues. The
recovery time objective (RTO) defines how long it takes to restore the data and the recovery
point objective (RPO) defines the amount of time that elapses between backup operations.
The amount of data that is created and modified after the last backup but before the next
backup is at risk of being lost because it has not been protected yet. For example, with a
nightly backup, the amount of data that is created and modified during the day after the last
nightly backup, but before the next nightly backup is at risk of being lost.
3.4.3 Archive
Archiving retains inactive data that has long-term data retention requirements, either for
compliance or business purpose. It does so by providing secure and cost effective solutions
with automated process for retention policies and data migration to low-cost storage.
Data replication
Data replication creates multiple copies of data in different geographic locations to protect
against site failure. Synchronous replication provides a strong consistency model with an
RPO of zero, ensuring that the data is identical at the different geographic locations. It is often
used for mission critical application data, is deployed over metro distances, and is sometimes
referred to as mirroring between the two locations. Asynchronous replication of data provides
eventual consistency with a near zero RPO, and is typically deployed between two or more
geographic locations.
3.5.1 Multitenancy
The term multitenancy refers to an architecture that is typically used in cloud environments.
Instead of providing each cloud service consumer (tenant) a separate, dedicated
infrastructure (single-tenancy architecture), all consumers share one common environment.
Shared layers must behave as though they were set up in a dedicated fashion in terms of
customization, isolation, and so on.
A cloud environment has two primary technology stacks where multitenancy is relevant:
The management environment (cloud management stack)
The managed environment (infrastructure, platform, or application that is provided as a
service)
Access control lists (ACLs) provide fine grain control of which resources individual users and
groups can access. For example, in the context of object storage, ACLs indicate which users
and groups are able to access individual buckets or vaults. In the context of file-based
storage, ACLs define which users are able to access individual files and directories.
3.5.3 Encryption
Encryption is a technique that is used to encode data with an encryption key so that the
information content of the data can be decoded only with knowledge of a decryption key. Data
that is encrypted is referred to as ciphertext. Data that is not encrypted is referred to as
plaintext or cleartext. With an appropriately derived encryption key and an appropriate
encryption algorithm, guessing the decryption key is prohibitively difficult. Data that is
encrypted into ciphertext is considered secure from anyone who does not have possession of
the decryption key. This section describes the following encryption considerations for storage
clouds:
Encryption of data in motion
Encryption of data at rest
Secure data deletion
Encryption considerations for public storage clouds
Alternatively, encryption can be provided by the storage software and does not require the
use of SED drives. In addition to protecting against theft of drives, storage-software-based
encryption protects against attacks by unprivileged users of a multi-tenant system.
Encryption key management is the administration of tasks involved with protecting, storing,
backing up, and organizing encryption keys, and is a critical component of managing
encryption of data at rest. Keys can be managed locally by the storage cloud infrastructure or
might be managed externally by using dedicated encryption key management infrastructure.
3.5.4 Audit
Referencing NIST SP-800-14, audit trails maintain a record of system activity by system or
application processes and by user activity. Audit trails provide the following advantages:
Individual accountability: The audit trail supports accountability by providing a trace of user
actions. While users cannot be prevented from using resources to which they have
legitimate access authorization, audit trail analysis can be used to examine their actions.
Reconstruction of events: An organization should use audit trails to support investigations
of how, when, and why normal operations ceased.
Intrusion detection: If audit trails have been designed and implemented to record
appropriate information, they can help intrusion detection. Intrusions can be detected in
real time by examining audit records as they are created or after the fact, by examining
audit records in a batch process.
Problem identification: Audit trails can also be used as online tools to help identify
problems other than intrusions as they occur. This feature is often referred to as real-time
auditing or monitoring.
The Cloud Auditing Data Federation (CADF) open standard defines a full event model that
anyone can use to complete the essential data needed to certify, self-manage, and self-audit
application security in cloud environments.
For more information about audit capabilities, see the following links:
NIST standards
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-14/800-14.pdf
CADF standards
https://www.dmtf.org/standards/cadf
The requirements for a customer's SDS environment can include response times for hot and
cold data. A FlashSystem V9000 or FlashSystem A9000/A9000R, with Spectrum Scale,
Spectrum Archive, and an IBM TS4500 library might be the answer to the requirement for fast
access for hot data. The FlashSystem is integrated with active archive requirements for cold
data that can be stored on tape. The storage systems can be seamlessly integrated with
Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Archive.
IBM disk, hybrid disk, and all flash systems provide storage efficiency solutions such as inline
Real-time Compression, inline data deduplication, automated tiering, virtualization, and thin
provisioning. These storage solutions increase the data storage optimization opportunities for
organizations of all sizes to boost system performance and lower IT costs.
Figure 4-1 shows the IBM SDS architecture with a mapping of the Spectrum Storage family of
products across the SDS control plane and data plane.
Storage Policy Analytics & Snapshot & Integration & Self Service Data Protection
Management Automation Optimization Replication API Services Storage
Management
Spectrum Virtualize Spectrum Accelerate Spectrum Scale IBM Cloud Object Spectrum Archive
Storage
Flexibility to use IBM and non-IBM Servers & Storage or Cloud Services
Figure 4-1 IBM Spectrum Storage family mapped to SDS Control Plane and Data Plane
Table 4-1 on page 61 is an overview of the IBM Spectrum Storage family including high-level
descriptions with the products that provide those functions.
Copy Services Manager Automated control and IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center
optimization of storage for Replication
replication features
IBM Spectrum Protect Optimized data protection for IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Suite for
client data through backup Unified Recovery
and restore capabilities
Spectrum Archive Enables long-term storage of IBM Linear Tape File System
low activity data Enterprise Edition, Library Edition, and
Single Drive Edition
This section describes the IBM software product offerings that provide the building blocks for
the SDS control plane:
IBM Spectrum Control
IBM Spectrum Protect
Key capabilities
Spectrum Control helps organizations transition to new workloads and updated storage
infrastructures by providing these advantages to significantly reduce total cost of ownership:
A single management console that supports IBM Spectrum Virtualize, IBM Spectrum
Accelerate, IBM Cloud Object Storage, and IBM Spectrum Scale environments, enabling
holistic management of physical and virtual block, file, and object systems storage
environments.
Insights that offer advanced, detailed metrics for storage configurations, performance, and
tiered capacity in an intuitive web-based user interface with customizable dashboards so
that the most important information is always accessible.
Performance monitoring views that enable quick and efficient troubleshooting during an
issue with simple threshold configuration and fault alerting for high availability.
Benefits
Spectrum Control can help reduce the administrative complexity of managing a
heterogeneous storage environment, improve capacity forecasting, and reduce the amount of
time spent troubleshooting performance-related issues. Spectrum Control provides these key
values:
Transparent mobility across storage tiers and devices for IBM Spectrum Virtualize based
designs
Centralized management that offers visibility to block, file, and object workloads as well as
control and automation of block storage volumes
Note: The Management Layer of VSC is now called IBM Spectrum Control Advanced
Edition.
Spectrum
Spectrum Control Base Protect
VAAI support
Spectrum Virtualize, Storwize, V9000, XIV, Spectrum Accelerate, DS8000 (data path integration)
In Figure 4-3 on page 85, IBM Spectrum Control Base Edition is not in the data path.
Spectrum Control Base Edition runs in the control plane as shown in Figure 4-1 on page 60.
Spectrum Control Base Edition provides integration between IBM Block Storage and
VMware. Clients utilize Spectrum Control Base Edition if they are or plan on using the
VMware Web Client (VWC), VMware Virtual Volumes (VVol) or the vRealize Automation Suite
from VMware.
Spectrum Control Base Edition provides common services like authentication, high
availability, and storage configuration for IBM Block Storage in homogeneous and
heterogeneous multiple target environments. Spectrum Control Base Edition manages IBM
XIV Storage System, A9000, A9000R, IBM DS8000 series, IBM SAN Volume Controller, the
IBM Storwize family, and third party storage subsystems.
Figure 4-5 IBM Storage connectivity to VMware through IBM Spectrum Control Base Edition
For more information, see IBM Spectrum Control Base Edition at:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/STWMS9/landing/IBM_Spectrum_Control_Ba
se_Edition_welcome_page.html
Advanced Edition has built-in efficiency features that help users avoid complicated integration
issues or the need to purchase add-ons or additional licenses:
Simplified user experience: Virtual Storage Center provides an advanced GUI and a
VMware vCenter plug-in to reduce administration complexity. Administrators can perform
common tasks consistently over multiple storage systems, including those from different
vendors. The IBM storage GUI enables simplified storage provisioning with intelligent
presets and embedded best practices, and integrated context-sensitive performance
management.
Near-instant, application-aware backup and restore: To reduce downtime in
high-availability virtual environments, critical applications such as mission critical
databases or executive email requiring near-instant backups must have little or no impact
on application performance. Application-aware snapshot backups can be performed
frequently throughout the day to reduce the risk of data loss. Virtual Storage Center
simplifies administration and recovery from snapshot backups.
IBM Spectrum Protect Snapshot, previously known as IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy
Manager, is designed to deliver data protection for business-critical applications through
integrated application snapshot backup and restore capabilities. These capabilities are
achieved through the utilization of advanced storage-specific hardware snapshot
technology to help create a high-performance, low-impact, application data protection
solution. It is designed for easy installation, configuration, and deployment, and integrates
with various traditional storage systems and software-defined storage environments.
IBM Tiered Storage Optimizer: Virtual Storage Center uses performance metrics,
advanced analytics, and automation to enable storage optimization on a large scale.
Self-optimizing storage adapts automatically to workload changes to optimize application
performance, eliminating most manual tuning efforts. It can optimize storage volumes
across different storage systems and virtual machine vendors. The Tiered Storage
Optimizer feature can reduce the unit cost of storage by as much as 50 percent, based on
deployment results in a large IBM data center.
Spectrum Control Advanced Edition is data and storage management software for managing
heterogeneous storage infrastructures. It helps to improve visibility, control, and automation
for data and storage infrastructures. Organizations with multiple storage systems can simplify
storage provisioning, performance management, and data replication.
Spectrum Control Advanced Edition simplifies the following data and storage management
processes:
A single console for managing all types of data on disk, flash, file, and object storage
systems.
Simplified visual administration tools that include an advanced web-based user interface,
a VMware vCenter plug-in, and IBM Cognos Business Intelligence with pre-designed
reports.
Storage and device management to give you fast deployment with agent-less device
management.
Intelligent presets that improve provisioning consistency and control.
Spectrum Control enables multi-platform storage virtualization, and data and storage
management. It supports most storage systems and devices by using the Storage Networking
Industry Association (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S), versions
1.0.2, 1.1, and 1.5 and later.
Hardware and software interoperability information is provided on the IBM Support Portal for
Spectrum Control. The interoperability matrix can be found at:
http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg27047049
Advanced Edition enables you to adapt to the dynamic storage needs of your applications by
providing storage virtualization, automation, and integration for cloud environments with
features that include the following:
OpenStack cloud application provisioning: Advanced Edition includes an OpenStack
Cinder volume driver that enables automated provisioning using any of the heterogeneous
storage systems that are controlled by IBM Cloud Orchestrator or Virtual Storage Center.
OpenStack cloud applications can access multiple storage tiers and services without
adding complexity.
Self-service portal: Advanced Edition can provide provisioning automation for self-service
storage portals, which enables immediate responses to service requests while eliminating
manual administration tasks.
Pay-per-use invoicing: Advanced Edition now includes a native chargeback tool. This tool
allows customers to create chargeback or showback reports from the native GUI, or work
with more advanced reporting as part of the embedded Cognos engine that is also
included for building custom reports.
IBM Cognos-based reporting helps create and integrate custom reports on capacity,
performance, and utilization. Spectrum Control provides better reporting and analytics with no
additional cost through integration with Cognos reporting and modeling. Some reporting is
included. Novice users can rapidly create reports with the intuitive drag function. Data
abstraction and ad hoc reporting makes it easy to create high-quality reports and charts. You
can easily change the scaling and select sections for both reporting and charting. Reports
can be generated on schedule or on demand in multiple distribution formats, including email.
Spectrum Control provides better user management and integration with external user
repositories, like Microsoft Active Directory. Enhanced management for virtual environments
provides enhanced reporting for virtual servers (VMware). Tiered Storage Optimization
provides integration with the existing storage optimizer and storage tiering reporting. Tiered
Storage Optimization is policy-driven information lifecycle management (ILM) that uses
virtualization technology to provide recommendations for storage relocation. It provides
recommendations for workload migration based on user-defined policy that is based on file
system level data, performance, and capacity utilization. This feature ensures that only the
highest performing workloads are allocated to the most expensive storage.
Spectrum Control provides block storage provisioning capabilities that a storage administrator
can use to define the properties and characteristics of storage volumes within a particular
service class. For example, a block storage service class can define RAID levels, tiers of
storage, and various other storage characteristics.
IBM Virtual Storage Center is a virtualization platform and a management solution for
cloud-based and software-defined storage. It is an offering that combines both IBM Spectrum
Control Advanced Edition with IBM Spectrum Virtualize, including SAN Volume Controller,
members of the IBM Storwize family, and FlashSystem V9000. VSC helps organizations
transition to new workloads and update storage infrastructures. It enables organizations to
monitor, automate, and analyze storage. It delivers provisioning, capacity management,
storage tier optimization, and reporting. VSC helps standardize processes without replacing
existing storage systems, and can also significantly reduce IT costs by making storage more
user and application oriented.
Cloud computing is all about agility. Storage for clouds needs to be as flexible and
service-oriented as the applications it supports. IBM Virtual Storage Center can virtualize
existing storage into a private storage cloud with no rip and replace required.
For more information, see these websites about IBM Storage Insights:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/storage/spectrum/insights
http://www.ibm.com/marketplace/cloud/analytics-driven-data-management/us/en-us
The IBM Copy Services Manager family of products consists of the following products:
Copy Services Manager provides high availability and disaster recovery for multiple sites
Copy Services Manager for z Systems provides high availability and disaster recovery for
multiple sites
Copy Services Manager Basic Edition for z Systems provides high availability for a single
site if a disk storage system failure occurs
Key capabilities
Here are a few capability highlights:
Protects virtual, physical, and cloud data with one solution
Reduces backup and recovery infrastructure costs
Delivers greater visualization and administrator productivity
Simplifies backups by consolidating administration tasks
Space Management moves less active data to less expensive storage, such as tape or
cloud
Provides long-term data archive for data retention, such as for compliance with
government regulations
Benefits
The following are highlights of the benefits of IBM Spectrum Protect:
Application-aware and VM-aware data protection for any size organization
Simplified administration
Built-in efficiency features: Data deduplication, incremental forever backup
Integrated multi-site replication and disaster recovery
Multi-site data availability with active-active replication-based architecture and
heterogeneous storage flexibility using disk, tape, or cloud
Whatever your data type and infrastructure size, IBM Spectrum Protect scales from a small
environment, consisting of 10 to 20 machines to a large environment with thousands of
machines to protect. The software product consists of two basic functional components:
IBM Spectrum Protect server with IBM DB2 database engine
The IBM Spectrum Protect server provides backup, archive, and space management
services to the IBM Spectrum Protect clients, and manages the storage repository. The
storage repository can be implemented in a hierarchy of storage pools using any
combination of supported media and storage devices. These devices must be directly
connected to the IBM Spectrum Protect server system or be accessible through a SAN.
IBM Spectrum Protect clients with application programming interfaces (APIs)
IBM Spectrum Protect enables data protection from failures and other errors by storing
backup, archive, space management, and bare-metal restore data, and also compliance
and disaster-recovery data in a hierarchy of auxiliary storage. IBM Spectrum Protect can help
protect computers that run various operating systems, on various hardware platforms and
connected together through the Internet, wide area networks (WANs), local area networks
(LANs), or storage area networks (SANs). It uses web-based management, intelligent data
move-and-store techniques, and comprehensive policy-based automation that work together
to increase data protection and potentially decrease time and administration costs.
The storage environment offers three functions that improve the efficiency and effectiveness
of data protection and retention:
Backup and recovery: Provides cost-effective and efficient backup and restore capabilities,
improving the performance, reliability, and recovery of data that is aligned to business
required service levels. Backups protect current data, and are unlikely to be accessed
unless data is lost or corrupted.
Archiving: Stores data that has long-term data retention requirements, either for
compliance or business purposes, by providing secure and cost effective solutions with
automated process for retention policies and data migration to different storage media.
Continuous data availability: Ensures uninterrupted access to data for critical business
systems, reducing the risk of downtime by providing the capability to fail over transparently
and as instantaneously as possible to an active copy of the data. The total mirroring
strategy needs to be automated to ensure automated failover and then an appropriate
automated fail-back.
Optimizing all of these areas helps an organization deliver better services with reduced
application downtime. Data protection and retention, archiving, and continuous data
availability can improve business agility by ensuring that applications have the correct data
when needed, while inactive data is stored in the correct places for the correct length of time.
This method requires that the data protection functions must be application aware.
Tool set
IBM Spectrum Protect is a family of tools that helps manage and control the information
explosion by delivering a single point of control and administration for storage management
needs. It provides a wide range of data protection, recovery management, movement,
retention, reporting, and monitoring capabilities by using policy-based automation.
Products: For an updated list of the available products in the IBM Spectrum Protect family,
see the following website:
http://www.ibm.com/software/products/en/spectrum-protect
See the IBM Spectrum Protect Knowledge Center for information about the most recent
releases:
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGSG7/landing/welcome_ssgsg7.html
Table 4-2 Main features, functions, and benefits of IBM Spectrum Protect
Feature Function Benefits
Advanced data Combines incremental backup, Reduces the costs of data storage,
reduction source inline, and target data environmental requirements, and
deduplication, compression, administration
and tape management to
provide data reduction
IBM Spectrum Protect also supports IBM Cloud Object Storage (Cleversafe) dsNet as a
storage system within Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) protocol. In addition, IBM
Spectrum Protect lets you configure cloud-container storage pools to use Amazon Web
Services (AWS) using the Amazon S3 protocol.
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Spectrum Protect
Storage
Server
Hierarchy
Figure 4-10 IBM Spectrum Protect protecting data hosted in an OpenStack environment
To guard against these threats, define a cloud-container storage pool to be encrypted. When
you do, the server encrypts data before it is sent to the storage pool. After data is retrieved
from the storage pool, the server decrypts it so is understandable and usable again. Your data
is protected from eavesdropping and unauthorized access when it is outside your network
because it can be understood only when it is back on premises.
IBM Spectrum Protect for Virtual Environments enables your organization to protect data
without the need for a traditional backup window. It allows you to reliably and confidently
safeguard the massive amounts of information that virtual machines generate.
Although many storage systems are now equipped with volume snapshot tools, these
hardware-based snapshot technologies provide only crash consistent copies of data. Many
business critical applications, including those that rely on a relational database, need an extra
snapshot process to ensure that all parts of a data transaction are flushed from memory and
committed to disk before the snapshot. This process is necessary to ensure that you have a
usable, consistent copy of the data.
IBM Spectrum Protect Snapshot helps deliver the highest levels of protection for
mission-critical IBM DB2, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft SQL Server
applications using integrated, application-aware snapshot backup and restore capabilities.
This protection is achieved by using advanced IBM storage hardware snapshot technology to
create a high performance, low impact application data protection solution.
Because a snapshot operation typically takes much less time than the time for a tape backup,
the window during which the application must be aware of a backup can be reduced. This
advantage facilitates more frequent backups, which can reduce the time spent performing
forward recovery through transaction logs, increases the flexibility of backup scheduling, and
eases administration.
Spectrum Protect
Application Snapshot 9 Online, near instant
System Local snapshot backups with
Application Snapshot minimal performance
Data Versions
impact
Snapshot
Backup
9 High performance, near
instant restore capability
Oracle
9 Integrated with Storage
DB2
SAP
Hardware snapshots
SQL Server
Exchange Server For Various Storage 9 Simplified deployment
Custom Apps With Optional
9SVC
File Systems 9V7000
Spectrum Protect 9 Database Cloning
9V5000 Backup Integration
VMware
9V3700
9XIV
9DS8000
9N-Series * Via Rocket Adapter
9NetApp **VSS Integration
9EMC*
9Other**
Application availability is also significantly improved due to the reduction of the load on the
production servers. IBM Spectrum Protect Snapshot uses storage snapshot capabilities to
provide high speed, low impact, application-integrated backup and restore functions for the
supported application and storage environments. Automated policy-based management of
multiple snapshot backup versions, together with a simple and guided installation and
configuration process, provide an easy way to use and quick to deploy data protection
solution that enables the most stringent database recovery time requirements to be met.
This member of the IBM Spectrum Storage family automates the creation and catalogs the
copy data on existing storage infrastructure, such as snapshots, vaults, clones, and replicas.
One of the key use cases centers around use with Oracle, Microsoft SQL server, and other
databases that are often copied to support application development, testing, and data
protection.
The IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management software is an IT modernization technology that
focuses on using existing data in a manner that is efficient, automated, scalable, and easy to
use to improve data access. IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management (Figure 4-12), with IBM
storage arrays, delivers in-place copy data management that modernizes IT processes and
enables key use cases with existing infrastructure.
Software-Defined
Protection and
Copy Data Management Disaster Recovery
IBM FlashSystem A9000
Platform
IBM FlashSystem A9000R
DevOps, Test/Dev
LEVERAGE
BM FlashSystem V9000
IBM
Automated Copy
IBM
BM Storwize V3k,V5x,
V3k V5x V7x Management
Discover
Also supports: Catalog
Search
SAN Volume Controller
Spectrum Virtualize
SLA compliance
Hybrid Cloud
Spectrum Accelerate Automate
Policy-based
XIV Storage Arrays
VersaStack
EMC VNX and Unity Cloud integrated
Transform
NetAPP DevOps enabled
Applications
IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management includes support for the following copy data
management use cases:
Automated Copy management
Development and operations
Data protection and disaster recovery
Test and development
Hybrid cloud computing
IT teams can use the core policy engine, catalog, and reporting of IBM Spectrum Copy Data
Management to dramatically improve IT operations that rely on copies of data, including
disaster recovery, testing and development, business analytics, and local recovery. IBM
Spectrum Copy Data Management improves operations by using automated, service-level
based copy policies that are consistent, reliable, and easily repeatable. This feature provides
huge savings in operating expenses.
Database-specific functionality
IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management allows the IT team to easily create and share copies
of all popular database management systems by integrating key database management
system (DBMS) tasks within well-defined policies and work-flows. The solution also includes
application-aware integration for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server platforms, providing a
deeper level of coordination with the DBMS.
Secure multi-tenancy
Secure multi- tenancy meets the needs of both managed service providers and large
organizations that need to delegate resources internally. Individual tenants can be created
within a single IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management instance, allowing each tenant its own
set of resources and the ability to support administration within the tenancy to create users,
define jobs, and perform other functions.
Compatibility
IBM Spectrum Copy Data Management is a simple-to-deploy software platform that is
designed to use the existing IT infrastructure. It works directly with hypervisor and storage
APIs to provide the overall orchestration layer that uses the copy services of the underlying
infrastructure resources. It also integrates with Amazon Web Services S3 for cloud-based
data retention.
Block, file, and object are simply different approaches to accessing data. Figure 4-13 is a
high-level view of these differences.
The section describes the following IBM software product offerings (organized by block, file,
and object support) that provide the building blocks for the SDS data plane:
IBM Spectrum Virtualize
IBM Spectrum Accelerate
IBM Spectrum Scale
IBM Spectrum Archive
Figure 4-13 High-level view of data access differences between file, block, and object storage
Object storage also introduces the concept of eventual consistency. If one user creates an
object, a second user might not see that object listed immediately. Eventually, all users will be
able to see the object.
When a user or application needs access to an object, the object storage system is provided
with a unique ID. This flat index approach provides greater scalability, enabling an object
storage system to support faster access to a massively higher quantity of objects or files as
compared to traditional file systems.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize systems provide management of storage from entry and midrange
up to enterprise disk systems, and enable hosts to attach through SAN, FCoE, or iSCSI to
existing Ethernet networks. IBM Spectrum Virtualize is easy to use, enabling existing staff to
start working with it rapidly. IBM Spectrum Virtualize uses virtualization, thin provisioning, and
compression technologies to improve storage utilization and meet changing needs quickly
and easily. In this way, Spectrum Virtualize products are the ideal complement to server
virtualization strategies.
Key Capabilities
IBM Spectrum Virtualize software capabilities are offered across various platforms, including
SAN Volume Controller (SVC), Storwize V7000 (Unified), Storwize V5000, and
FlashSystem V9000. IBM Spectrum Virtualize products are designed to deliver the benefits of
storage virtualization and advanced storage capabilities in environments from large
enterprises to small businesses and midmarket companies:
IBM Real-time Compression for inline, real-time compression
Stretched Cluster and IBM HyperSwap for a high-availability solution
IBM Easy Tier for automatic and dynamic data tiering
Distributed RAID for better availability and faster rebuild times
Benefits
The sophisticated virtualization, management, and functions of Spectrum Virtualize provide
these storage benefits:
Improves storage utilization up to 2x
Supports up to 5x as much data in the same physical space
Simplifies management of heterogeneous storage systems
Enables rapid deployment of new storage technologies for greater ROI
Improves application availability with virtually zero storage-related outages
The SAN Volume Controller combines software and hardware into a comprehensive, modular
appliance that uses symmetric virtualization.
Symmetric virtualization is achieved by creating a pool of managed disks (MDisks) from the
attached storage systems. Those storage systems are then mapped to a set of volumes for
use by the attached host systems. System administrators can view and access a common
pool of storage on the SAN. This function helps administrators to use storage resources more
efficiently and provides a common base for advanced functions.
Pools the storage capacity of Helps you manage storage as a resource to meet business
multiple storage systems on a requirements and not just as a set of boxes
SAN Helps administrators better deploy storage as required
beyond traditional SAN islands
Can help increase use of storage assets
Insulates applications from physical changes to the storage
infrastructure
Innovative and tightly integrated Designed to deliver ultra-high performance capability for
support for flash storage critical application data
Move data to and from flash storage without disruption; make
copies of data onto hard disk drive (HDD)
Support for IBM FlashSystem Enables high performance for critical applications with IBM
MicroLatency, coupled with sophisticated functions
Easy-to-use IBM Storwize family Single interface for storage configuration, management, and
management interface service tasks regardless of storage vendor
Helps administrators use their existing storage assets more
efficiently
IBM Storage Mobile Dashboard Provides basic monitoring capabilities to securely check system
health and performance
Dynamic data migration Migrate data among devices without taking applications that
are using that data offline
Manage and scale storage capacity without disrupting
applications
Manage tiered storage Helps balance performance needs against infrastructure costs in
a tiered storage environment
Advanced network-based copy Copy data across multiple storage systems with IBM
services FlashCopy
Copy data across metropolitan and global distances as
needed to create high-availability storage solutions
Enhanced stretch cluster Provide highly available, concurrent access to a single copy
configurations of data from data centers up to 300 km apart
Enable nondisruptive storage and virtual machine mobility
between data centers
Thin provisioning and snapshot Dramatically reduce physical storage requirements by using
replication physical storage only when data changes
Improve storage administrator productivity through
automated on-demand storage provisioning
Virtualizing storage with SAN Volume Controller helps make new and existing heterogeneous
storage arrays more effective by including many functions that are traditionally deployed
within disk array systems. By including these functions in a virtualization system, SAN Volume
Controller standardizes functions across virtualized storage for greater flexibility and
potentially lower costs.
Figure 4-15 shows how SAN Volume Controller stretch virtual volume standardizes
heterogeneous storage across data centers.
Figure 4-15 Stretching virtual volume across data centers with heterogeneous storage
Integrating these functions into SAN Volume Controller also means that they are designed to
operate smoothly together, reducing management effort:
Storage virtualization: Virtualization is a foundational technology for software defined
infrastructures that enables software configuration of the storage infrastructure. Without
virtualization, networked storage capacity utilization averages about 50 percent,
depending on the operating platform. Virtualized storage enables up to 90 percent
utilization by enabling pooling across storage networks with online data migration for
capacity load balancing. Virtual Storage Center supports a virtualization of storage
resources from multiple storage systems and vendors (that is, heterogeneous storage).
Pooling storage devices enables access to capacity from any networked storage system,
which is a significant advantage over the limitations inherent in traditional storage arrays.
IBM Easy Tier: Virtual Storage Center helps optimize flash memory with automated tiering
for critical workloads. Easy Tier helps make the best use of available storage resources by
automatically moving the most active data to the fastest storage tier, which helps
applications and virtual desktop environments run up to three times faster.
Thin provisioning: Thin provisioning helps automate provisioning and improve productivity
by enabling administrators to focus on overall storage deployment and utilization, and on
longer-term strategic requirements, without being distracted by routine
storage-provisioning requests.
Remote mirroring: IBM Metro Mirror and Global Mirror functions automatically copy data to
remote sites as it changes, enabling fast failover and recovery. These capabilities are
integrated into the advanced GUI, making them easy to deploy.
IBM Real-time Compression: Real-time Compression is patented technology that is
designed to reduce space requirements for active primary data. It enables users to store
up to five times as much data in the same physical disk space, and can do so without
affecting performance.
1 Compression data based on IBM measurements. Compression rates vary by data type and content.
Figure 4-16 shows how straightforward scaling is by building a storage grid with Spectrum
Accelerate.
Key capabilities
Spectrum Accelerate gives organizations these capabilities:
Enterprise cloud storage in minutes, using commodity hardware
Hotspot-free performance and QoS without any manual or background tuning needed
Advanced remote replication, role-based security, and multi-tenancy
Deploy on-premises or on the cloud (also as a service on SoftLayer)
Hyper-scale management of dozens of petabytes
Best in class VMware and OpenStack integration
Run IBM Spectrum Accelerate and other application virtual machines on the same server
Spectrum Accelerate runs as a virtual machine on vSphere ESXi hypervisor, enabling you to
build a server-based SAN from commodity hardware that includes x86 servers, Ethernet
switches, solid-state drives (SSDs), and direct-attached, high-density disks. Spectrum
Accelerate essentially acts as an operating system for your self-built SAN storage, grouping
virtual nodes and spreading the data across the entire grid.
Table 4-4 describes Spectrum Accelerate features with their associated benefits.
Reliability and Availability Grid redundancy maintains two copies of each 1-MB data
partition with each copy being on a different VM, proactive
diagnostics, fast and automatic rebuilds, event externalization
Advanced monitoring; network monitoring; disk performance
tracking/reporting; data center monitoring; shared monitoring
for some components; data and graphical reports on I/O,
usage, and trends
Self-healing, whcih minimizes the rebuild process by
rebuilding only actual data
Automated load balancing across components; minimized risk
of disk failure due to rapid return to redundancy
Thin provisioning; space Thin provisioning per pool, thick-to-thin migration; VMware,
reclamation Microsoft, Symantec space reclamation support
The IBM Storage Driver for OpenStack Cinder component added support starting with the
Folsom release as shown in Figure 4-17, and then expanded the support for the Grizzly and
Havana releases. The driver enables OpenStack clouds to be able to directly access and use
IBM Spectrum Accelerate Storage System Gen3.
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Hyperconverged Orchestration
Using IBM Spectrum Control Base (see Figure 4-5 on page 66, IBM Storage VMware
Integration), orchestration of the compute layer, provisioning from predefined Spectrum
Accelerate pools, and replication can all be done through the VMware integration points.
Therefore, the Hyperconverged solution can be controlled through the vRealize suite and can
use vCenter and VMware SRM-based APIs.
Note: For more information about Spectrum Accelerate, see these IBM publications:
IBM Spectrum Accelerate Deployment, Usage, and Maintenance, SG24-8267
Deploying IBM Spectrum Accelerate on Cloud, REDP-5261
IBM Spectrum Accelerate Reference Architecture, REDP-5260
Note: For more information about IBM FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R, see these IBM
publications:
IBM FlashSystem A9000 and IBM FlashSystem A9000R Architecture, Implementation,
and Usage, SG24-8345
IBM FlashSystem A9000 Product Guide, REDP-5325
First introduced in 1998, this mature technology enables a maximum volume size of 8 YB, a
maximum file size of 8 EB, and up to 18.4 quintillion (two to the 64th power) files per file
system. IBM Spectrum Scale provides simplified data management and integrated
information lifecycle tools such as software-defined storage for cloud, big data, and analytics.
It introduces enhanced security, flash accelerated performance, and improved usability. It also
provides capacity quotas, access control lists (ACLs), and a powerful snapshot function.
Benefits
IBM Spectrum Scale provides these benefits:
Improves performance by removing data-related bottlenecks
Automated tiering, data lifecycle management from flash (acceleration) to tape (savings)
Enables sharing of data across multiple applications
Reduces cost per performance by placing data on most applicable storage (flash to tape
or cloud)
IBM Spectrum Scale is part of the IBM market-leading software-defined storage family:
As a Software-only solution: Runs on virtually any hardware platform and supports almost
any block storage device. IBM Spectrum Scale runs on Linux (including Linux on IBM
z Systems), IBM AIX, and Windows systems.
As an integrated IBM Elastic Storage Server solution: A bundled hardware, software,
and services offering that includes installation and ease of management with a graphical
user interface. Elastic Storage Server provides unsurpassed end-to-end data availability,
reliability, and integrity with unique technologies that include IBM Spectrum Scale RAID.
As a cloud service: IBM Spectrum Scale delivered as a service provides high
performance, scalable storage, and integrated data governance for managing large
amounts of data and files in the IBM SoftLayer cloud.
IBM Spectrum Scale features enhanced security with native encryption and secure erase. It
can increase performance by using server-side flash cache to increase I/O performance up to
six times. IBM Spectrum Scale provides improved usability through data replication
capabilities, data migration capabilities, Active File Management (AFM), transparent cloud
tiering (TCT), File Placement Optimizer (FPO), and IBM Spectrum Scale Native RAID.
Traditional
Applications
Users and Applications
Single namespace
POSIX SMB/CIFS OpenStack
Transparent
HDFS Cinder Swift
NFS Manila Glance
Spectrum Scale
Site A
Site B
Automated data placement and data migration
Site C
Storage pools
A storage pool is a collection of disks or arrays with similar attributes. It is an organizational
structure that allows the combination of multiple storage locations with identical
characteristics. There are three different types of storage pools:
System Pool One system pool is needed per file system. The system pool contains
file system metadata and can be used to store data.
Data Pool A data pool is used to store file data. A data pool is optional.
External Pool An external pool is used to attach auxiliary storage, such as tape to
IBM Spectrum Scale. An external pool is optional.
Policy engine
The policy engine uses an SQL style syntax to query or operate on files based on file
attributes. Policies can be used to migrate all data that has not been accessed in 6 months
(for example) to less expensive storage or used to query the contents of a file system.
Management policies support advanced query capabilities, though what makes the policy
engine most useful is the performance. The policy engine is capable of scanning billions of
objects as shown in Table 4-5.
find ~ 47 hours
Table 4-5 shows the power of the GPFS policy engine. Although an average find across
1 billion files took ~ 47 hours, the GPFS policy engine can satisfy the request within
five hours. The GPFS policy engine can also create a candidate list for backup applications to
use to achieve a massive reduction in candidate identification time.
IBM Spectrum Scale has next generation availability with features that include rolling software
and hardware upgrades. You can add and remove servers to adapt the performance and
capacity of the system to changing needs. Storage can be added or replaced online, and you
can control how data is balanced after storage is assessed.
For migration, IBM Spectrum Scale provides the capability to add storage to the file system,
migrate the existing data to the new storage, and remove the old storage from the file system.
All of this can be done online without disruption to your business.
AFM operates at the file set level. This configuration means that you can create hundreds of
AFM relationships in each file system. AFM is a caching technology though inode. File data in
a cache file set is the same as an inode and file data in any IBM Spectrum Scale file system.
It is a real file that is stored on disk. The job of the cache is to keep the data in the file
consistent with the data on the other side of the relationship.
These modes can be used to collect data at a remote location (single-writer), create a flash
cache for heavily read data (read-only), provide a development copy of data (local-update),
create a global interactive name space (independent-writer), and create asynchronous copies
of file data (asynchronous DR).
Transparent cloud tiering is a new feature of IBM Spectrum Scale 4.2.1 that provides hybrid
cloud storage capability. This software defined capability enables usage of public, private, and
on-premises cloud object storage as a secure, reliable, transparent storage tier that is natively
integrated with Spectrum Scale without introducing additional hardware appliances or new
management touch points. It uses the existing ILM policy language semantics available in
IBM Spectrum Scale. the semantics allow administrators to define policies for tiering cooler
and cold data to a cloud object storage such as the following:
IBM Cloud Object Storage (Cleversafe)
Amazon Web Services S3
OpenStack Swift
This configuration frees up storage capacity in higher-cost storage tiers that can be used for
more active data.
Transparent to end-users of
Global Namespace
IBM Spectrum Scale
Secure, reliable, and policy-driven
For more information, see Enabling Hybrid Cloud Storage for IBM Spectrum Scale Using
Transparent Cloud Tiering, REDP-5411.
The IBM Spectrum Scale management GUI provides an easy way to configure and manage
various features that are available with the IBM Spectrum Scale system. You can perform the
following important tasks through the IBM Spectrum Scale management GUI:
Monitoring the performance of the system based on various aspects
Monitoring system health
Managing file systems
Creating file sets and snapshots
Managing Objects and NFS and SMB data exports
Creating administrative users and defining roles for the users
Creating object users and defining roles for them
Defining default, user, group, and file set quotas
Monitoring the capacity details at various levels such as file system, pools, file sets, users,
and user groups
DeepFlash 150 does not use conventional SSDs. Instead, this innovative new storage system
relies on a larger, systems-level approach that enables organizations to manage much larger
data sets without having to manage individual storage modules. The DeepFlash 150 system
comes complete with the hardware necessary for enterprise and hyper-scale storage,
including up to 64 purpose-engineered flash cards in a 3U chassis and 12-Gbps SAS
connectors for up to eight servers. The flash modules have a capacity of 8 TB each.
DeepFlash 150 comes preinstalled with 16, 32 or 64 Board Solid State Drives (BSSDs).
More information about IBM Spectrum Scale FPO can be found in the GPFS V4.1: Advanced
Administration Guide, SC23-7032.
IBM Spectrum Scale native RAID is available with the IBM Power8 architecture in the IBM
Elastic Storage Server (ESS) offering.
Licensing
IBM Spectrum Scale V4.2 offers different editions so you only pay for the functions that you
need:
Express Edition contains the base IBM Spectrum Scale function
Standard Edition includes the base function plus ILM, AFM, and integrated multi-protocol
support, which includes NFS, SMB, and Object
Advanced Edition includes encryption of data at rest, secure erase, asynchronous
multisite disaster recovery, and all the features of Standard Edition
For each of these editions, you can choose an IBM Spectrum Scale license for Server, Client,
and FPO.
For more information, see:
IBM Spectrum Scale:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/storage/spectrum/scale/index.html
IBM Spectrum Scale (IBM Knowledge Center):
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/STXKQY/ibmspectrumscale_welcome.html
IBM Spectrum Scale Wiki:
https://ibm.biz/BdFPR2
For more information, see Getting started with IBM Spectrum Scale for Linux on z Systems:
http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=ZSW03272USEN
For more information, see the Elastic Storage Server in the IBM Knowledge Center at:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8ehc/p8ehc_storage_landing.htm
Built from the ESS DeepFlash Storage drawers and Power ESS data servers, it enables big
data storage to dramatically expand scale-out deployments with high density and
performance. DeepFlash Elastic Storage Server V5.0 supports 256 TB or 512 TB
configurations that use one or two flash storage drawers deployed with Spectrum Scale for
DeepFlash Elastic Storage Server. Two ESS Data Servers are connected to this storage
through 12 Gb high-speed SAS adapters to provide maximum data throughput. The data
servers come preinstalled with Spectrum Scale for DeepFlash Elastic Storage Software to
provide a complete solution that has been optimized for workloads requiring low latency, high
capacity, and sustained throughput.
ESS DeepFlash (Figure 4-22 on page 102) is designed for hyperscale and cloud workloads
that are also evolving and demanding scalability, high levels of availability, and agility in how
IT resources are allocated and used. New performance levels bring the advantages of ESS
DeepFlash Storage to a wider variety of applications, including high-performance computing
workloads.
Spectrum Archive offers three software solutions for managing your digital files with the LTFS
format:
Single Drive Edition (SDE)
Library Edition (LE)
Enterprise Edition (EE)
With Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition and Spectrum Scale, tape can now add savings as
a low-cost storage tape tier. Being able to use a tier of tape for active but cold data enables
enterprises to look at new ways to cost optimize their unstructured data storage. They are
able to match the value of the data, or the value of the copies of data to the most appropriate
storage media. In addition, the capability to store the data at the cost of tape storage allows
customers to build their cloud environments to take advantage of this new cost structure.
Spectrum Archive provides enterprises with the ability to store cold data at costs that can be
Network attached unstructured data storage with native tape support using LTFS delivers the
best mix of performance and lowest cost storage.
Key capabilities
Spectrum Archive options can support small, medium, and enterprise businesses with these
advantages:
Seamless virtualization of storage tiers
Policy-based placement of data
Single universal namespace for all file data
Security and protection of assets
Open, non-proprietary, cross platform interchange
Integrated functionality with IBM Spectrum Scale
Benefits
IBM Spectrum Archive enables direct, intuitive, and graphical access to data stored in IBM
tape drives and libraries by incorporating the LTFS format standard for reading, writing, and
exchanging descriptive metadata on formatted tape cartridges. Spectrum Archive eliminates
the need for additional tape management and software to access data.
Spectrum Archive takes advantage of the low cost of tape storage while making it easy to
use. Spectrum Archive provides these benefits:
Access and manage all data in stand-alone tape environments as easily as though it were
on disk
Enable easy-as-disk access to single or multiple cartridges in a tape library
Improve efficiency and reduce costs for long-term, tiered storage
Optimize data placement for cost and performance
Enable data file sharing without proprietary software
Scalable and low cost
Furthermore, any LTFS-capable system can read a tape that is created by any other
LTFS-capable system (regardless of the operating system and platform). Any LTFS-capable
system can identify and retrieve the files that are stored on it. LTFS-capable systems have the
following characteristics:
Files and directories are displayed to you as a directory tree listing.
More intuitive searches of cartridge and library content are now possible due to the
addition of file tagging.
LTFS is the first file system that works with IBM System Storage tape technology to optimize
ease of use and portability for open-systems tape storage. It manages the automation and
provides operating system-level access to the contents of the library. Spectrum Archive LE is
based on the LTFS format specification, enabling tape library cartridges to be
IBM TS1150 and IBM TS1140 tape drives are supported on the IBM TS4500 and
IBM TS3500 tape libraries only.
Spectrum Archive LE enables the reading, writing, searching, and indexing of user data on
tape and access to user metadata. Metadata is the descriptive information about user data
that is stored on a cartridge. Metadata enables searching and accessing of files through the
GUI of the operating system. Spectrum Archive LE supports both Linux and Windows.
The IBM Spectrum Archive LE offers the same basic capabilities as the SDE with additional
support of tape libraries. Each LTFS tape cartridge in the library appears as an individual
folder within the file space. The user or application can navigate to these folders to access the
files that are stored on each tape. The Spectrum Archive LE software automatically controls
the tape library robotics to load and unload the necessary LTFS Volumes to provide access to
the stored files.
Spectrum Archive EE for the IBM TS4500, IBM TS3500, and IBM TS3310 tape libraries
provides seamless integration of Spectrum Archive with Spectrum Scale by creating an LTFS
tape tier. You can run any application that is designed for disk files on tape by using Spectrum
Archive EE. Spectrum Archive EE can play a major role in reducing the cost of storage for
data that does not need the access performance of primary disk. This configuration improves
efficiency and reduces costs for long-term, tiered storage.
With Spectrum Archive EE, you can enable the use of LTFS for the policy management of
tape as a storage tier in a Spectrum Scale environment and use tape as a critical tier in the
storage environment. Spectrum Archive EE supports IBM LTO Ultrium 7, 6, and 5,
IBM System Storage TS1150, and TS1140 tape drives that are installed in TS4500, TS3500,
or LTO Ultrium 7, 6, and 5 tape drives that are installed in the TS3310 tape libraries.
The use of Spectrum Archive EE to replace disks with tape in Tier 2 and Tier 3 storage can
improve data access over other storage solutions. It improves efficiency and streamlines
management for files on tape. Spectrum Archive EE simplifies the use of tape by making it
transparent to the user and manageable by the administrator under a single infrastructure.
Figure 4-24 shows the integration of Spectrum Archive EE archive solution with Spectrum
Scale.
Figure 4-24 Integration of Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition
IBM Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition can also be used to provide object storage by using
OpenStack Swift. This configuration means that Objects can be stored in the file system and
can exist on either disk or tape tiers within the enterprise. More information on creating an
object storage Active Archive with IBM Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Archive can be found
in Active Archive Implementation Guide with IBM Spectrum Scale Object and IBM Spectrum
Archive, REDP-5237.
The Internet of Things (IoT) allows every aspect of life to be instrumented through millions of
devices that create, collect, and send data every second. These trends are causing an
unprecedented growth in the volume of data being generated. IT organizations are now
tasked with finding ways to efficiently preserve, protect, analyze, and maximize the value of
their unstructured data as it grows to petabytes and beyond. Object storage is designed to
handle unstructured data at web-scale.
Figure 4-25 Cloud Object Storage offers flexibility for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud deployment options
IBM Cloud Object Storage's Dispersed Storage Network (dsNet) solutions enhances
on-premises storage options for clients and service providers with low-cost, large-scale active
archives and unstructured data content stores. The solutions complement the IBM software
defined Spectrum Storage portfolio for data protection and backup, tape archive, and a
high-performance file and object solution where the focus is on response time.
IBM Cloud Object Storage can be deployed as an on-premises, public cloud, or hybrid
solution, providing you unprecedented choice, control, and efficiency:
On-Premise solutions
Deploy IBM Cloud Object Storage on premises for optimal scalability,
reliability, and security. The software runs on industry standard
hardware for flexibility and simplified management.
Cloud Solutions Easily deploy IBM Cloud Object Storage on the IBM SoftLayer public
cloud.
Hybrid Solutions For optimal flexibility, deploy IBM Cloud object storage as a hybrid
solution to support multiple sites across your enterprise (on-premises
and in the public cloud) for agility and efficiency.
Figure 4-26 REST APIs accessing objects using object IDs with IBM COS Slicestor
Figure 4-27 IBM COS System deployed as a cluster combining three types of nodes
The Accesser is a stateless node that presents the storage interface of the IBM COS System
to client applications and transforms data using an Information Dispersal Algorithm (IDA).
Slicestor nodes receive data to be stored from Accesser nodes on ingest and return data to
Accesser nodes as required by reads.
The IDA transforms each object written to the system into a number of slices such that the
object can be read bit-perfectly by using a subset of those slices. The number of slices
created is called the IDA Width (or Width) and the number required to read the data is called
the IDA Read Threshold (or Read Threshold). The difference between the Width and the
Storage capacity is provided by a group of Slicestor nodes, which are referred to as a storage
pool. In the diagram in Figure 4-27 on page 110, 12 Slicestor nodes are grouped in a storage
pool. A single IBM COS System can have one or multiple storage pools.
A Vault is not part of the physical architecture, but is an important concept in an IBM COS
System. A Vault is a logical container or a virtual storage space, upon which reliability, data
transformation options (for example, IBM COS SecureSlice and IDA algorithm), and access
control policies can be defined. Multiple vaults can be provisioned on the same storage pool.
Information Dispersal
At the foundation of the IBM COS System is a technology called information dispersal.
Information dispersal is the practice of using erasure codes as a means to create redundancy
for transferring and storing data. An erasure code is a Forward Error Correction (FEC) code
that transforms a message of k symbols into a longer message with n symbols such that the
original message can be recovered from a subset of the n symbols (k symbols).
Erasure codes use advanced deterministic math to insert extra data in the original data
that allows a user to need only a subset of the coded data to re-create the original data.
As you can see in Figure 4-28, there are five variables (a through e) and eight different
equations that use these variables, with each yielding a different output. To understand how
information dispersal works, imagine the five variables are bytes. Following the eight
equations, you can compute eight results, each of which is a byte. To solve for the original five
bytes, you can use any five of the resulting eight bytes. This process is how information
dispersal can support any value for k, and n- k is the number of variables, and n is the number
of equations.
Figure 4-29 COS Systems three steps for slicing, dispersing, and retrieving data
Because OpenStack software design and development is done in the open, public
documentation is available regarding the development status of the current release and
decisions made at each Design Summit. You can review this information in technical detail at
the following link:
https://releases.openstack.org/mitaka
Within the overall cloud workflow, specific OpenStack components support storage. The
following OpenStack components support storage:
IBM Cinder storage drivers
Swift (object storage)
Manila (file storage)
Figure 4-30 shows the OpenStack storage components Cinder, Manila, and Swift.
Figure 4-30 OpenStack storage components Cinder (block), Swift (object), and Manila (file)
4.4.2 Cinder
Cinder is an OpenStack project to provide block storage as a service and provides an API to
users to interact with different storage backend solutions. Cinder component provides
support, provisioning, and control of block storage. The following are standards across all
drivers for Cinder services to properly interact with a driver.
Icehouse updates for Cinder are block storage added backend migrations with tiered storage
environments, allowing for performance management in heterogeneous environments.
Mandatory testing for external drivers now ensures a consistent user experience across
storage platforms, and fully distributed services improve scalability.
4.4.3 Swift
The OpenStack Object Store project, which is known as OpenStack Swift, offers cloud
storage software so that you can store and retrieve lots of data with a simple API. It is built for
scale and optimized for durability, availability, and concurrency across the entire data set.
Swift is ideal for storing unstructured data that can grow without bound.
Note: Do not confuse OpenStack Swift with Apple Swift, a programming language. In this
paper, the term Swift always refers to OpenStack Swift.
4.4.4 Manila
The OpenStack Manila (File) component provides file storage, which allows coordinated
access to shared or distributed file systems. Although the primary consumption of shares
would be OpenStack compute instances, the service is also intended to be accessed
independently, based on the modular design established by OpenStack services.
The following sections highlight the IBM SDS products that have interfaces to OpenStack
components:
The IBM Storage Driver for OpenStack environments: The IBM Storage Driver for
OpenStack environments is a software component that integrates with the OpenStack
cloud environment. It enables the usage of storage resources that are provided by the
following IBM storage systems:
DS8880: This storage system can offer a range of capabilities that enable more
effective storage automation deployments in private or public clouds. Enabling the
OpenStack Cinder storage component with DS8880 allows for storage to be made
available whenever it is needed without the traditional associated cost of highly skilled
administrators and infrastructure. For more information, see Using IBM DS8870 in an
OpenStack Environment, REDP-5220.
IBM XIV: Remote cloud users can issue requests for storage resources from the
OpenStack cloud. These requests are transparently handled by the IBM Storage
Driver. The IBM Storage Driver communicates with the XIV Storage System and
controls the storage volumes on it. With the release of Version 11.5 software, the XIV
introduced support for multi-tenancy. Multi-tenancy enables cloud providers to divide
and isolate the XIV resources into logical domains, which can then be used by tenants
without any knowledge of the rest of the system resources. For more information, see
Using XIV in OpenStack Environments, REDP-4971.
IBM Storwize family/SAN Volume Controller: The volume management driver for the
Storwize family and SAN Volume Controller provides OpenStack Compute instances
with access to IBM Storwize family or SAN Volume Controller storage systems.
Storwize and SAN Volume Controller support fully transparent live storage migration in
OpenStack Havana:
No interaction with the host is required: All advanced Storwize features are
supported and exposed to the Cinder system.
Real-time Compression with EasyTier supports iSCSI + FC attachment.
IBM FlashSystem (Kilo release): The volume driver for FlashSystem provides
OpenStack Block Storage hosts with access to IBM FlashSystems.
IBM Spectrum Scale: As of OpenStack Juno Release, Spectrum Scale combines the
benefits of Spectrum Scale with the most widely used open source object store today,
OpenStack Swift. Spectrum Scale provides enterprise ILM features. OpenStack Swift
provides a robust object layer with an active community that is continuously adding
innovative new features. To ensure compatibility with the Swift packages over time, no
code changes are required to either Spectrum Scale or Swift to build the solution. For
more information, see A Deployment Guide for IBM Spectrum Scale Object, REDP-5113.
IBM Spectrum Protect: IBM data protection and data recovery solutions provide protection
for virtual, physical, cloud, and software-defined infrastructures as well as core
applications and remote facilities. These solutions fit nearly any size organization and
recovery objective. They deliver the functions of IBM Spectrum Protect.
IBM Spectrum Protect enables software-defined storage environments by delivering
automated data protection services at the control plane for file, block, and object backup.
IBM Spectrum Protect enables cloud data protection with OpenStack and VMware
integration, cloud portal, and cloud deployment options.
Note: For more information about the IBM storage drivers and functions that are supported
in the various OpenStack releases, see the following wiki:
https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/CinderSupportMatrix
The IBM FlashSystem family allows you to take advantage of best-in-breed solutions that
provide extreme performance, macro efficiency, and microsecond response times. The IBM
FlashSystem V9000 Enterprise Performance Solution, the IBM FlashSystem A9000, and the
IBM FlashSystem 900 members of the FlashSystem family are described in this section. IBM
FlashSystem A9000 is the newest addition to the FlashSystem family of storage systems. You
can consider IBM FlashSystem as a major Tier for SDS.
FlashSystem benefits
Flash technology has fundamentally changed the paradigm for IT systems, enabling new use
cases and unlocking the scale of enterprise applications. Flash technology enhances the
performance, efficiency, reliability, and design of essential enterprise applications and
IBM Flash products can either augment or replace traditional hard disk drive storage systems
in enterprise environments. They empower applications to work faster and scale further. In
addition to optimizing performance, the IBM FlashSystem family brings enterprise reliability
and macro efficiency to the most demanding data centers, allowing businesses to receive the
following benefits:
Reduce customer complaints by improving application response time
Service more users with less hardware
Reduce I/O wait and response times of critical applications
Simplify solutions
Reduce power and floor space requirements
Speed up applications, enhancing the pace of business
Improve utilization of existing infrastructure
Complement existing infrastructure
Eliminate storage bottlenecks
From the client business perspective, IBM FlashSystem provides focus benefits and value in
these essential areas:
Extreme Performance: Enable business to unleash the power of performance, scale, and
insight to drive services and products to market faster.
MicroLatency: Achieve competitive advantage through applications that enable faster
decision making due to microsecond response times.
Macro Efficiency: Decrease costs by getting more from efficient use of the IT staff,
IT applications, and IT equipment due to the efficiencies that flash brings to the data
center.
Enterprise Reliability: Durable and reliable designs that use enterprise class flash and
patented data protection technology.
Through SAN Volume Controller, the FlashSystem 900 has support for OpenStack cloud
environments.
FlashSystem V9000 offers the advantages of software-defined storage at the speed of flash.
These all-flash storage systems deliver the full capabilities of the hardware-accelerated I/O
provided by FlashCore Technology. FlashSystem V9000 also delivers the enterprise reliability
of MicroLatency modules and advanced flash management. These features are coupled with
a rich set of the features that are found in the most advanced software-defined storage
solutions. These features include Real-time Compression, dynamic tiering, thin provisioning,
snapshots, cloning, replication, data copy services, and high-availability configurations.
Figure 4-31 shows the V9000 connectivity to VMware through IBM Spectrum Control Base
Edition 2.1.1.
Virtual Machines
FC or iSCSI
IP
IBM Storage
Provider for
VMware IP
IP VASA
IP
IBM Storage
Management Pack
nt
me
for vCOps IBM Storage
nce
Enhancements for
Manual creation, mapping,
nha
VMware
vSphere Web Client and management of
dE Volumes
nne
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IP Legend
Figure 4-31 V9000 connectivity with IBM Spectrum Base Edition and VMware
FlashCore technology plus a rich set of storage virtualization features allow FlashSystem
V9000 to deliver industry-leading value to enterprises in scalable performance, enduring
economics, and agile integration:
Fast: Optimize your infrastructure with scale-up, scale-out capabilities of fast FlashSystem
performance.
Cost-effective: Powerful virtualized storage enables you to realize immediate and
long-term economic benefits.
Easy: Unlike conventional storage, FlashSystem is easy to deploy, can virtualize legacy
systems, and delivers value in hours.
The FlashSystem V9000 has connectivity to OpenStack cloud environments through the
Cinder driver.
As a cloud optimized solution, IBM FlashSystem A9000 suits the requirements of public and
private cloud providers who require features, such as inline data deduplication, multi-tenancy,
and quality of service. It also uses powerful software-defined storage capabilities from IBM
Spectrum Accelerate, such as Hyper-Scale technology and VMware integration:
An enhanced management interface simplifies storage administration
Data reduction: Pattern removal, data deduplication, and compression
VMware vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)
Multi-tenancy
Host Rate Limiting: QoS
Fibre Channel and iSCSI support
Snapshots
Synchronous and asynchronous remote mirroring
Data Migration
Hyper-Scale Mobility
Encryption
Authentication by using Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
OpenStack and REST support
VMware synergy
IBM FlashSystem A9000R is a scalable storage solution into a single rack from 300 TB to
1800 TB of effective capacity.
Both FlashSystem A9000 and FlashSystem A9000R use the same firmware, and both offer
onsite setup and service that are provided by IBM. They also share a feature set.
Data deduplication is a key technology to dramatically reduce the amount of, and the cost
associated with, storing large amounts of data by consolidating redundant copies of a file or
file subset. Incoming or existing data is standardized into chunks that are then examined for
redundancy. If duplicates are detected, pointers are shifted to reference a single copy of the
chunk and the extraneous duplicates are then released.
IBM ProtecTIER offers two different types of interface for front end connectivity:
Virtual tape library (VTL) mode
File System Interface (FSI) mode
With VTL mode, ProtecTIER provides true dual-node active-active clustering for higher
availability and higher performance.
VTL mode allows the emulation of different types of tape libraries and tape drives, most
prominently the IBM TS3500 tape library with IBM LTO3 drives. These libraries and drives
can perfectly interface into any backup application that supports this mode.
FSI offers CIFS and NFSv3 connectivity at the same time. Using IP-based connectivity,
ProtecTIER can either be used as a target for backup applications or can be directly
addressed as a backup target by applications like Oracle.
2
5 7
1 3
6 8
4
For more information, see IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway at:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts7650g
Figure 4-33 shows how a TS4500 or TS3500 tape library can be configured as the tape tier in
the storage cloud through Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition.
Figure 4-33 TS4500/TS3500 tape library tape tier configuration for cold storage
In the TS4500, IBM delivers the density that todays and tomorrows data growth requires,
along with the cost efficiency and the manageability to grow with business data needs while
preserving existing investments in IBM tape library products. You can now achieve both a low
cost per terabyte (TB) and a high TB density per square foot. The TS4500 can store up to 5.5
PBs of uncompressed data in a single 10-square foot library frame and up to 175.5PBs of
uncompressed data in a 17 frame library.
For more information, see the IBM TS4500 R3 Tape Library Guide, SG24-8235.
The IBM TS3500 tape library is designed to provide a highly scalable, automated tape library
for mainframe and open-systems backup and archive. The library can scale from midsize to
large enterprise environments. Here are the highlights of the tape library:
Support highly scalable, automated data retention on tape by using LTO Ultrium and IBM
3592 tape drive families
Deliver extreme scalability and capacity, growing from one to 16 frames per library and
from one to 15 libraries per library complex
Provide up to 2.25 exabytes (EB) of automated, low-cost storage under a single library
image, improving floor space utilization and reducing storage cost per TB with IBM 3592
JD enterprise advanced data cartridges (10 TB native capacity)
Figure 4-34 TS3500 Shuttle Complex moves tapes cartridges between physical libraries
For more information, see IBM Tape Library Guide for Open Systems, SG24-5946.
The IBM DS8880 family now offers business-critical, all-flash, and hybrid data systems that
span a wide range of price points:
The IBM DS8888 is an all-flash offering. It scales to 192 gigabytes of raw Flash Card
capacity in a two-rack footprint.
The IBM DS8884 and IBM DS8886 are two high-performance hybrid models scaling to
more than 4.6 petabytes (PB) of raw drive capacity. Nine types of drives can be managed
in up to three different tiers (Flash cards and flash drives, SAS and Nearline SAS drives).
Integration of storage systems requires an OpenStack Block Storage driver on the OpenStack
Cinder nodes. The driver is an IBM proprietary solution that supports OpenStack Block
Storage on top of the OpenStack and Cinder open source technologies.
With the availability of the IBM Storage Driver for the OpenStack Cinder component, the IBM
DS8880 storage system can now extend its benefits to the OpenStack cloud environment.
The IBM Storage Driver for OpenStack Cinder enables OpenStack clouds to access the
DS8880 storage system. The IBM Storage Driver for OpenStack is fully supported by Cinder
and provides block storage as a service through iSCSI and Fibre Channel to VMs. Cloud
users can send requests for storage volumes from the OpenStack cloud. These requests are
routed to, and transparently handled by the IBM Storage Driver. The IBM Storage Driver
communicates with the DS8880 storage system and controls the storage volumes on it.
The last version of Cinder Driver Mikata (1.7.0) provides the following capabilities:
Create/Delete Volume
Volume Attach/Detach (through Nova Compute)
Snapshots, Clones (FlashCopy with background copy)
Backups (Copy Volume Images to Object Store)
Swift, Ceph, and TSM Support
Volume Types, Volume Retype
Quotas
Consistency Groups for FlashCopy
IBM also provides Storage integration between VMware and DS8000. See Figure 4-36.
For more information see the DS8880 Product Guide (Release 8.2), REDP-5344.
The IBM Storwize family consists of the IBM SAN Volume Controller, IBM Storwize V7000
and V7000 Unified, IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node, IBM Storwize V5000, IBM
Storwize V3700, and the all flash memory systems including V7000F and V5000F. Benefits of
the Storwize family include high-performance thin provisioning, Real-time Compression,
IP replication, Easy Tier, an advanced GUI, and storage virtualization.
The Storwize family uses IBM Spectrum Virtualize software the same proven software as
SAN Volume Controller, and provides the same interface and similar capabilities across the
product line.
IBM Storwize V7000 Unified is a virtualized storage system that is designed to consolidate
block and file workloads into a single storage system. This configuration provides simplicity of
management, reduced cost, highly scalable capacity, performance, and high availability. IBM
Storwize V7000 Unified storage also offers improved efficiency and flexibility through built-in
SSD optimization, thin provisioning, and nondisruptive migration of data from existing storage.
The system can virtualize and reuse existing disk systems, offering a greater potential return
on investment (ROI). Integrated IBM Active Cloud Engine enables you to use all those
features to build your storage cloud.
For more information, see the IBM Spectrum Control web page:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/servicemanagement/sm/spectrum_control/index.html
File capabilities
File module software is based on IBM common network-attached storage (NAS) software and
roadmap, which enables faster delivery of file functions and file ISV certifications across
multiple products. IBM Active Cloud Engine is included to reduce costs through policy-based
management of files and use of tiered storage, and to improve data governance. Information
lifecycle is provided with automated movement of less frequently used files to lower tiers of
storage, including tape in an IBM Spectrum Protect system. File replication, backup and
recovery, and snapshot features are provided to extend your data protection to the file level.
Data is also protected by providing antivirus capabilities with the Antivirus Connector, which
integrates with the external antivirus scan nodes. Files can be provisioned to various host
types by using open file protocols such as NFS, CIFS, FTP, HTTPS, and SCP.
IBM Spectrum Virtualize software in SVC helps make new and existing storage more
effective. SVC includes many functions that are traditionally deployed separately in disk
systems. By including these functions in a virtualization system, SVC standardizes functions
across virtualized storage for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.
SVC systems can handle the massive volumes of data from mobile and social applications,
enable rapid and flexible cloud services deployments, and deliver the performance and
scalability that is needed to gain insights from the latest analytics technologies.
With the OpenStack Havana release, a new administrator feature for migrating volumes
between Cinder instances was added. Volumes can be migrated with Host Assisted Data
Migration or by Storage Assisted Data Migration with the IBM Storwize family.
Figure 4-39 Common use cases for volume migration in OpenStack environment
IBM Storwize family is the only storage in the Havana release to support storage assisted
migration. Volumes move between two storage pools that are managed by a Storwize family
system.
These are the key benefits to using the Storwize family storage assisted migration:
No interaction with the host
No impact on VM and node
Instantaneous
No effect on VM operations or volume management
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Figure 4-40 IBM SoftLayer and IBM CLoud Managed Services Offerings
Figure 4-40 shows the SoftLayer and Cloud Managed Services strengths to highlight the
broad scope of the two offerings. The overlapping bars at the bottom of the figure illustrate
that there are functional similarities between the offerings.
You can think of IBM Cloud Managed Services as ideal for these use cases:
A highly built out and resilient, steady workload, transaction-oriented IT infrastructure
Traditional three tier IT application models that consist of application, middleware, and
database
SAP, Oracle ERP solutions, and similar database management systems
You can think of IBM SoftLayer as ideal for these use cases:
Cloud native and internet native applications
Associated requirements for internet scale, widely varying and quickly changing workload
levels
Modern internet applications where resiliency is built into the application layer
Web-centric, native cloud programming environments
Bare metal server capability, allowing the client the option and flexibility to load their own
software stack to meet their needs
Full self-service API control of all aspects of the clients SoftLayer infrastructure to allow
the flexibility and control access to manage their SoftLayer infrastructure however the
client wants
Regarding positioning IBM Cloud Managed Services and IBM SoftLayer, see Figure 4-41 for
a short description of the high-level characteristics of each.
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Figure 4-41 highlights the major characteristics of IBM Cloud Managed Services and
SoftLayer to show the breadth of the offerings together. For example, the Managed Services
Requirements column shows the focus areas of Cloud Managed Services and SoftLayer.
Unmanaged is displayed for SoftLayer because they also have options for managed services.
For more information about IBM SoftLayer, see the following website:
http://www.softlayer.com/
Cloud Managed Services offers three storage options that include Flash Storage (IBM
FlashSystem 900), High Performance (IBM XiV), and Base Storage (IBM V7000) to meet
even the most demanding storage requirements of cloud workloads. Individual virtual servers
in Cloud Managed Services can support up to 96 TBs of storage on AIX, and 48 TBs on
Microsoft Windows and Linux. Other storage features include availability zones, local and
remote mirroring for high availability and disaster recovery implementations, FlashCopy,
shared disks, and robust backup and restore capabilities.
For information about other storage-related IBM cloud service offerings, see the following
websites:
IBM Cloud Managed Backup
http://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/business-continuity/cloud-managed
-backup
IBM Data Vault
http://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/managed-data-vault.html
IBM Storage Services
http://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/smart-business-storage-cloud.html
IBM Federal Community Cloud
https://www.ibm.com/shop/americas/content/home/en_US/government-contracts.html
With IBM Cloud Automated Modular Management, you can transfer the complexity and
challenges of monitoring and managing an increasingly complex environment to a trusted
service provider. IBM offers discreet IT management components that are available as
self-managed or fully managed services that use policy-based automation to help you
significantly reduce management costs:
Reduced IT administration costs with automation, improved visibility, and efficient
monitoring features
Improved utilization and quality of service by using reports on health and usage of
resources and applications
Simplified business operations with fulfillment, billing, and management of this service
with your SoftLayer account
IBM seasoned cloud and strategy specialists help you with a five-step approach to cloud
transformation:
A cloud envisioning workshop
Opportunity prioritization
Roadmap creation
Cloud readiness and governance assessment
Adoption plan creation
These steps cover all quadrants of the IBM Cloud Strategy Framework. For more information,
see:
http://www.ibm.com/services/us/en/it-services/cloud-services/cloud-transformation-
services/index.html
Built on Cloud Foundry open source technology, Bluemix makes application development
easier with platform as a service (PaaS). Bluemix also provides pre-built mobile backend as a
service (MBaaS) capabilities. It simplifies the delivery of an application by providing services
that are ready for immediate use and hosting capabilities to enable internet scale
development.
With Bluemix, you can access the public Bluemix platform, set up a dedicated Bluemix
platform, or both.
At its core, Bluemix is an environment for you to develop apps and use services that provide
ready-to-use functions. Bluemix also provides an environment to host application artifacts that
run on an application server such as Liberty. By using SoftLayer, Bluemix deploys virtual
containers that host each deployed app. In this environment, the app can use pre-built
services (including third-party services) to make app assembly easy.
As a developer, you can interact with the Bluemix infrastructure by using a browser-based
user interface. You can also use a Cloud Foundry command-line interface, called cf, to deploy
web apps.
Clients, which can be mobile apps, apps that run externally, apps that are built on Bluemix, or
developers that are using browsers, interact with the Bluemix-hosted apps. Clients use REST
or HTTP APIs to route requests through Bluemix to one of the app instances or the composite
services.
This chapter describes hybrid storage cloud solutions across various industries. Each
description covers the client's needs, proposed solution, and results.
(2)systems
XIV XIV Systems
10GbE ports(24) 10Gb Ports
Connected
500
486TBs
TBsusable
Useable
Open source
eCommerce
tools
Figure 5-1 Internet commerce company using OpenStack cloud software with XIV storage
The consistent, auto-tuning performance, and predictability of I/O response time are the
characteristics that led this client to choose XIV storage for their cloud OpenStack
environment to enforce their crucial SLAs.
Client background
The client had the following background and IT infrastructure already in place:
Category: Banking Industry.
Storage Infrastructure: 10 petabytes of storage that included block storage devices like
XIV, Spectrum Virtualize (under Spectrum Virtualize control: HP 3PAR and PureStorage),
Spectrum Scale, and Spectrum Control.
Number of users: More than 45,000.
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 141
The following information is also relevant:
IBM Security Directory Server was used as the authentication and user management
system.
The IT environment includes many IBM Power, Oracle SPARC, HP x86, and VMware
ESX servers.
The client has two data centers: One for production and one for disaster recovery (DR).
The storage resources were already monitored through Spectrum Control.
The storage services provided included file and block services, and were supported by
a small team of people.
Automated resource allocation and workload Automated storage creation on request approval
reduction
Driving resource expiration with warnings IBM Cloud Orchestrator expiration settings
during the request
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 143
Other uses: The customer understood that IBM Cloud Orchestrator can also be used for
provisioning of virtual machines, networks, applications, and advanced patterns. They
also began researching how to use the capabilities of IBM Cloud Orchestrator.
NFS Disk
PN2 NSD2
SMB/CIFS
POSIX
Openstack Swift
PNn Tape
Openstack Cinder NSDn
Openstack Glance & Manila
Users
Elastic
Storage
Server
Authentication Protocol Network
Physical Storage
Services Node Shared Disks
The solution provides the capability to the national library to distribute bibliography services
across the country through the public intranet.
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 145
The customer is looking to the possibility to modify the Spectrum Scale infrastructure,
including IBM cloud object storage as new pool using the evolution of the cloud infrastructure
from Private to Hybrid. The proposed architecture is represented in Figure 5-4.
Global namespace
Tier 1
IBM Cloud Object Storage
Spectrum Scale was paired with a specialized video software provider, delivering a
broadband cable network solution and video network displays.
CIFS/NFS/Object
CIFS/NFS
Global Namespace
with Spectrum Scale
AFM
CIFS/NFS
Figure 5-5 Video collector with Spectrum Scale Active File Management
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 147
Figure 5-6 summarize the implemented architecture.
Single Namespace
Spectrum Scale
Spectrum Archive
Flash Disk
Tape
Gold Pool Silver Pool
LTFS
The company has many data centers that are distributed across the country, and the storage
infrastructure is based on different storage systems from various vendors, including IBM XIV
and IBM DS8800. The goal of this project was to find a solution that could reduce the
complexity in the management activities to save time and expedite the delivery of the service.
Phase 1
IBM proposed implementation of SVC in a split-cluster configuration between the two
production sites (150 km (93 mi) apart) to provide an abstraction layer between the physical
storage resources and the applications. This configuration hides the complexity of the
environment, makes management easier, and increases utilization. The Spectrum Virtualize
software in SVC represents a key enabler at the infrastructure level to implement an efficient
data replication mechanism for high availability and disaster recovery as a cloud service. SVC
creates a single point of control and management. For disaster recovery, Spectrum Virtualize
provides consistent synchronous and asynchronous mirroring across sites (campus and long
distance).
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 149
Figure 5-7 shows the high-level description of Phase 1 of the solution with SAN Volume
Controller in split cluster configuration and Global Mirror for disaster recovery.
Global Mirror
> 150km
DR Site
Campus HA solution
Stretched Cluster
Phase 2
As the IT environment grew and the needs to also address unstructured data requirements,
the client had a vision to move from an OpenStack cloud service management to a
proprietary cloud service management. This change was intended to establish a standard
support matrix through a proprietary vendor.
A solution to address the business requirement was formulated and proposed to the client
with the following things in mind:
Must co-exist with the existing IT environment
Must reuse the existing solution components
Must align to the future vision of the client
Must reduce capital investments
The solution included a proposal to use OpenStack drivers that can work with the existing
environment. The proposal also introduced Spectrum Scale. The customer had a OpenStack
IceHouse version that included the drivers for Spectrum Scale.
Spectrum Scale through IBM Elastic Storage Server was an automatic choice because it
could address the needs of very large amounts of data that needs stringent lifecycle
management. In addition, Spectrum Scale can be used as a back end for OpenStack object
storage service.
For the entire cloud client base, the solution is able to deliver replication and collaboration on
the access of the information. It does so by using both Spectrum Virtualize replication
functions and Active File Management with Spectrum Scale. Figure 5-8 represents the final
architecture.
User Service
provider
OS images upload
BPM layer and re-validation
OpenStack layer
OpenStack Horizon OpenStack Heat
OpenStack Keystone OpenStack Nova OpenStack Glance OpenStack Swift OpenStack Cinder
Storage virtualization
Multi-vendor Storage
back-end IBM SAN Volume Controller
Other infrastructure
resources
Scale out ubiquitous storage
Metering and Charge Back
IBM Elastic Storage Server
IBM SmartCloud
Cost Management
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 151
5.6 Life science healthcare hybrid cloud
The client is a health sciences company whose mission is DNA sequencing and analysis
research. The client creates and delivers excellence in biomedical research to better
understand chronic human diseases and aging, as influenced by metabolism, genetics, and
the environment.
Figure 5-9 Spectrum Scale, Platform LSF providing Workload Scheduling, and Active File
Management providing file synchronization services between onsite and offsite cloud
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 153
Figure 5-10 highlights the interaction between Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Archive.
Figure 5-10 Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Archive interaction to archive to or recall from tape
The stub information that is needed to recall the data on tape remains in the researcher's
folder. In the future, data can be recalled from tape and compared to newer results. Using the
Public SoftLayer Cloud reduces the investment in hardware, software, and facilities that are
only needed during a couple of days per month. The money that is saved can be spent on
areas more central to the research company.
Virtual machines
vCenter A SRM A IBM XIV SRA vCenter B SRM B IBM XIV SRA
failover through
IPsec VPN tunnel
ESXi 1 ESXi 2
Virtual machines
App 1 App 2 App 3 App 4
fallback
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3 VM 4
Public
Network
VyOS IBM
Network Cloud Vyatta
gateway gateway Spectrum
Spectrum Accelerate
Accelerate
Remote Mirroring
appliance
through IPsec
VPN tunnel
IBM XIV
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 155
5.7.3 Benefits of the solution
Spectrum Accelerate provides XIV as software so that you can provision XIV on bare metal
servers in the IBM SoftLayer Public cloud. This configuration saves money on data center
space, power, and personnel. It has the same GUI as XIV, so the universitys existing storage
skills can be reused without major retraining costs. Spectrum Control Base provides a rich
integration layer for VMware to make XIV a full member of a VMware Private Cloud. Spectrum
Control provides advanced management, monitoring, and capacity and performance
management for proactive systems management.
The storage cloud solution needs to deploy a pay-per-use model for its customers to allow
them to purchase access to old and recent TV programs.
5.8.2 Solution
The proposed solution was a Spectrum Scale Storage system with a multitier storage pool. It
included Active File Manager tape management by IBM Spectrum Protect to move
information to tape for archiving requests. The regional sites of the media company used
Storwize V7000 Unified with Active File Manager (formerly Active Cloud Engine) to share the
information managed by the local site and vice versa. Spectrum Control Storage Insights
(storage as a service (SaaS) running on IBM SoftLayer) is used for collecting and managing
storage usage information. IBM SmartCloud Cost Management is used for reporting for
chargeback of the customers of the web services. IBM Aspera On Demand Managed File
Transfer (SaaS running on IBM SoftLayer) is used for file transfers to and from external
parties for the fastest and the most cost-effective file-transfer.
Figure 5-12 Solution based on Spectrum Scale with multitier storage pools
The IBM cloud storage solution, which is based on Spectrum Scale and its Active File
Manager Technology, ensures that the remote locations have excellent access-response time
to the media content.
The Spectrum Scale capability to manage multiple file systems with multiuser file sharing,
managed by the HSM policies, provided a secure and cost-effective solution for the
requirements. Spectrum Control Storage Insights provides intuitive analytics-based
monitoring of storage usage. The information that is collected by IBM SmartCloud Cost
Manager provides the customer with a solution to start pay-per-use services. IBM Aspera on
Demand High-speed Managed File transfer sends and receives files from and to external
partners in the quickest possible time over the internet using as little bandwidth as possible.
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 157
The collaborative benefits of the solution for every phase of the digital-media data process are
shown in Figure 5-13, Figure 5-14, and Figure 5-15 on page 159. Figure 5-13 shows the
value for Broadcast.
Figure 5-15 Cloud storage value for Content Archiving and Distribution
Chapter 5. What are others doing in the journey to storage cloud 159
160 IBM Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud Storage Solutions
6
IBM personnel can assist you in your journey to smart storage cloud by developing a
high-level architecture and implementation plan with a supporting business case to justify
investment. This plan will be based on a compelling return on investment (ROI), and on
improved service levels and lowered costs.
This chapter helps you review your storage strategy, identify where you are on the journey to
storage cloud, and your next steps.
Remember that although storage cloud can be a key component of an overall cloud
computing approach, you should determine how a storage cloud strategy fits within your
broader cloud computing architectural plans. Overall integration of these system parameters
is essential to successful implementations:
Performance
Availability and resiliency
Data management
Scalability and elasticity
Operations
Security
Compliance
Consider your security needs and how a storage cloud is affected by the confidentiality of the
data that you need to store. Data that is highly sensitive, or subject to security-compliance
regulations, might not be able to be stored on a public network. Therefore, your storage cloud
might need to be located behind an enterprise firewall, indicating a private cloud solution
requirement. The same might be true for instances where users need to easily access, share,
and collaborate, without compromising data security, integrity, availability, and control of the
data.
Your storage strategy must consider the requirements of the various business units within
your company, along with customer expectations of your IT organization. Competitive
pressures might dictate that a storage cloud is the only way to meet the quick service
provisioning, elastic resourcing, and pay-as-you-go charging model that your customers are
looking for.
Figure 6-1 Framework for cloud infrastructure implementation and optimization practices
When considering the use of any new technology, a common mistake is to focus on the
technology itself, rather than on the business requirements to be addressed by a technical
solution. To stay on track with your storage strategy, identify several significant use cases in
your organization where technology can be helpful. Start by analyzing a use case and its
importance to your business, and then determine how the introduction of a storage cloud will
affect your business operations and costs.
With the use-case approach, you can gain an understanding that a private cloud is not only a
storage infrastructure, but rather a system of cloud storage clients, backup, and archive
solutions, special purpose data movers, management, and support. When these components
are combined with cloud storage infrastructure, a complete solution for storage is achievable.
From internal experiences and from hundreds of cloud engagements with clients worldwide,
IBM has identified key steps in the deployment of a storage cloud. These steps can overlap,
so there is no need to necessarily complete one step before moving to the next. Rather, the
steps represent a progression. For example, in some organizations, the consolidation step
might require major effort because the infrastructure might be highly heterogeneous and
distributed. For others, consolidation might be more evolutionary, and performed
simultaneously with other steps. Although there is no single approach to completing these
Figure 6-2 The overall cloud journey from traditional IT to storage cloud
Each of these items is discussed in further detail in 3.2, Storage efficiency on page 50.
6.2.4 Automate
Automated processes result in significant cost reductions within the storage management
discipline. Opportunities to automate can include the following items:
A service catalog with self-provisioning capability
Monitoring user activity and integrating this data with a chargeback system, which enables
pay-per-use
Policy-driven automation for data movement (replication, tier management, backup)
By contrast, cloud storage uses a pool of optimized shared resources in an environment that
uses virtualization of the physical assets to support multiple workloads. To achieve efficient
delivery of the storage services, self-service and self-management are required. These
features in turn rely on standardization of the assets and automation to enable a responsive
user experience.
By following these steps to storage cloud, your infrastructure should be able to provide
resources in support of any storage cloud delivery model (public, private, hybrid, or
community), and will finally be cloud-ready.
When you have a roadmap for your journey to storage cloud, you can take the next step.
Cloud storage, as with any other emerging technology, is experiencing growing pains. Some
facets are immature, fragmented, and lack standardization. Vendors are promoting their own
As a leader in cloud computing, IBM has the resources and experience to help businesses
implement and use cloud services, including storage cloud. IBM offers hardware and software
technologies and key services to help you take advantage of cloud computing. IBM can assist
you in planning, designing, building, deploying, and even managing and maintaining a storage
cloud environment.
Whether on your premises or someone elses, IBM can make the journey move more quickly,
and in many cases deliver value to your business much more rapidly, ultimately saving you
money.
Clients that have implemented an IBM Smart Business Storage Cloud solution are projecting
savings as follows:
A large client with 1.5 PB of usable unstructured file system capacity projects savings of
over $7.1 million (USD) over the course of five years in hardware acquisition and
maintenance, and environmental and administration costs.
A medium client with 400 TB of usable unstructured file system capacity projects savings
of over $2.2 million in hardware acquisition and maintenance, and environmental and
administration costs.
A small client with 200 TB of usable unstructured file system capacity projects savings of
over $460,000 in hardware acquisition and maintenance, and environmental and
administration costs.
The latest information related to IBM cloud offerings is available at the following website:
http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/us/en/index.html
IBM personnel can assist you by developing a high-level architecture and implementation
plan with a supporting business case to justify investment based on a compelling return on
investment, with improved service levels and lowered costs for your cloud infrastructure. IBM
consultants use a unique cloud adoption framework, the Cloud Computing Reference
Architecture (CCRA), and the IBM Cloud Workload Analysis Tool to help you analyze your
existing environment and determine which cloud computing model is best suited for your
business. They help you identify the business areas and workloads that, when changed to a
cloud computing model, can enable you to reduce costs and improve service delivery that is
in line with your business priorities.
Figure 6-1 on page 163 illustrates the comprehensive structured approach that IBM brings to
a cloud implementation engagement. This approach helps IBM to perform a rigorous analysis
of your IT and application infrastructure, and provides recommendations and project planning
for streamlining your infrastructure and processes. The IBM methodology incorporates key
practices that were learned from engagements with leading businesses around the globe,
and partnering with them on their storage cloud journey.
The publications listed in this section are considered particularly suitable for a more detailed
discussion of the topics covered in this paper.
IBM Redbooks
The following IBM Redbooks publications provide additional information about the topic in this
document. Some publications referenced in this list might be available in softcopy only.
Active Archive Implementation Guide with IBM Spectrum Scale Object and IBM Spectrum
Archive, REDP-5237
IT Modernization using Catalogic ECX Copy Data Management and IBM Spectrum
Storage, SG24-8341
Cloud Computing Patterns of Expertise, REDP-5040
A Deployment Guide for IBM Spectrum Scale Object, REDP-5113
Enabling Hybrid Cloud Storage for IBM Spectrum Scale Using Transparent Cloud Tiering,
REDP-5411
Harnessing the Power of ProtecTIER and Tivoli Storage Manager, SG24-8209
IBM DS8880 Architecture and Implementation (Release 8.1), SG24-8323
DS8880 Product Guide (Release 8.2), REDP-5344
IBM Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud Storage Solutions, REDP-4873
IBM SmartCloud: Building a Cloud Enabled Data Center, REDP-4893
IBM Spectrum Accelerate Deployment, Usage, and Maintenance, SG24-8267
IBM Spectrum Accelerate Reference Architecture, REDP-5260
IBM Spectrum Control Base: Enabling VMware Virtual Volumes with IBM XIV Storage
System, REDP-5183
IBM Spectrum Scale (formerly GPFS), SG24-8254
IBM Spectrum Scale in an OpenStack Environment, REDP-5331
IBM Spectrum Scale and ECM FileNet Content Manager Are a Winning Combination:
Deployment Variations and Value-added Features, REDP-5239
IBM Spectrum Scale Security, REDP-5426
IBM Spectrum Virtualize and IBM Spectrum Scale in an Enhanced Stretched Cluster
Implementation, REDP-5224
IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000 Best Practices and
Performance Guidelines, SG24-7521
IBM XIV Storage System Architecture and Implementation, SG24-7659
Implementing IBM FlashSystem 900, SG24-8271
Implementing the IBM SAN Volume Controller and FlashSystem 820, SG24-8172
Implementing IBM Storage Data Deduplication Solutions, SG24-7888
Implementing the IBM Storwize V7000 and IBM Spectrum Virtualize V7.6, SG24-7938
You can search for, view, download or order these documents and other Redbooks,
Redpapers, Web Docs, draft and additional materials, at the following website:
ibm.com/redbooks
Online resources
These websites are also relevant as further information sources:
IBM Client Demonstration Center
https://www.ibm.com/systems/clientcenterdemonstrations
Note: The IBM Client Demonstration Center (for Business Partners, IBMers, and
anyone with an IBMid) provides a catalog of remote demonstrations (video or live
connection) which consist of self contained material for customer demonstrations of
IBM solutions. Most of the demonstrations are provided with predefined scenarios and
some also allow for the development of new scenarios. Demonstrations can also be
considered as 'ready to use' material for enablement or training.
IBM System Storage Tumblr provides product videos, customer reference videos, case
studies, white papers, infographics, and subject matter expert videos around IBM Storage
solutions.
http://www.ibmstorageexperience.tumblr.com
IBM storage news, hints and technical discussions by EMEA storage experts
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/storageneers
The Storage Community sponsored by IBM
http://storagecommunity.org/
IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture wiki
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Wf3cce8f
f09b3_49d2_8ee7_4e49c1ef5d22
IBM Cloud Computing Redbooks
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/portals/cloud
IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center Solution, IBM Redbooks Solution Guide
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/tips0991.html
REDP-4873-03
ISBN 0738455911
Printed in U.S.A.
ibm.com/redbooks