IBM FlashSystem family
The IBM FlashSystem products are designed to help companies improve performance and reduce server sprawl, power consumption, cooling, and floor space requirements. All of this in turn can help clients save money, improve performance, and invest more in innovation.
The IBM FlashSystem family can help you take control of your storage, harness existing data, and manage your IT infrastructure in a much more cloud-like fashion.
This chapter describes the IBM FlashSystem storage systems, which can either complement or replace traditional hard disk arrays.
This chapter includes the following sections:
5.1 Overview
The IBM FlashSystem portfolio of flash storage delivers high performance, efficiency, and reliability for shared enterprise storage environments, helping clients around the world address performance issues with their most important applications and infrastructure.
These storage systems can either complement or replace traditional hard disk drive (HDD) arrays, even arrays that incorporate solid-state devices (SSDs) or other flash technology, in many applications. Applications include online transaction processing (OLTP), business intelligence (BI), online analytical processing (OLAP), virtual desktop infrastructures, high-performance computing, and content delivery solutions (such as cloud storage and video on demand).
5.2 Why flash matters
Flash technology is a critical component of the new IBM approach to the design and deployment of storage infrastructures. It is part of a holistic approach that uses solid-state storage technology with disk and tape technologies to solve complex problems. Flash delivers performance and value to boost the applications that run your business.
Today, global organizations depend on the ability to unlock business insights from massive volumes of data, and they need to be able to do it faster than the competition. Flash technology changed the economics of today’s data center by eliminating storage bottlenecks. Flash technology redefined the performance, efficiency, and reliability of data-intensive applications. In fact, the IBM FlashSystem storage offerings provide extreme input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance in a power-efficient footprint.
The IBM FlashSystem storage family delivers high performance and efficiency in an easy-to-integrate offering so that businesses can more readily compete in the high velocity marketplace. Extreme performance, IBM MicroLatency, macro efficiency, and enterprise-grade reliability make the IBM FlashSystem a powerful and cost-effective tool for accelerating OLAP systems and gaining competitive advantage. More importantly, the capabilities and capacity of the FlashSystem arrays enable commercial and governmental enterprises to address multiple compute challenges in current 24x7x365 operational environments while empowering growth and innovation in the future.
5.3 IBM FlashSystem 900 storage
Today's global organizations depend on the ability to unlock business insights from massive volumes of data. With IBM FlashSystem 900, they can make faster decisions based on real-time insights and unleash the power of the most demanding applications, including online transaction processing (OLTP) and analytics databases, virtual desktop infrastructures (VDIs), technical computing applications, and cloud environments.
Easy to deploy and manage, the IBM FlashSystem 900 is designed to accelerate the applications that drive business. Powered by IBM FlashCore™ Technology, IBM FlashSystem provides the following characteristics:
•Extreme performance with IBM MicroLatency delivers 90 µs write latency and 155 µs read latency
•Macro efficiency lowers operating costs and increases efficiency of IT infrastructure by using much less power and space than traditional HDD and SSD solutions
•Enterprise reliability protects critical assists with two-dimensional RAID protection, IBM Variable Stripe RAID™, redundant and hot-swappable components, and concurrent code loads
FlashSystem 900 can be configured in capacity points as low as 2.4 TB usable after RAID 5 protection. Coupled with 10 Gbps iSCSI, FlashSystem is positioned to bring extreme performance to small and medium businesses (SMBs) and growth markets. Figure 5-1 shows the FlashSystem 900.
Figure 5-1 IBM FlashSystem 900
FlashSystem V9000 is available with either a one-year or a three-year warranty, so you can select the warranty period that best addresses your business and financial needs.
FlashSystem 900 has these characteristics:
•FlashSystem 900 is configurable with 2.4 - 57 TB of usable capacity for scalability and flexibility.
•FlashSystem 900 provides flexible interface types that include Fibre Channel (FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), iSCSI, and InfiniBand to easily integrate into existing SAN environments.
•FlashSystem 900 offers hardware-based AES 256 data-at-rest encryption with no performance impact.
5.3.1 FlashCore technology
At the heart of FlashSystem 900 is IBM FlashCore Technology, which consists of the following three key elements:
•Hardware-accelerated architecture that is engineered for flash, with a hardware-only data path
•IBM MicroLatency modules that are designed for low latency, density, and reliability
•IBM Advanced Flash Management that improves MLC flash endurance 9x over standard implementations without sacrificing latency
Figure 5-2 shows IBM FlashCore technology.
Figure 5-2 IBM FlashCore Technology
5.3.2 Key features
FlashSystem 900 provides extreme performance with IBM MicroLatency, macro efficiency, and enterprise reliability.
Scalability and performance
FlashSystem 900 has the following scalability and performance features:
•IBM FlashCore technology for consistently high performance at lower cost
– 90us/155us read/write latency
– Up to 1.1 million random read 4 K IOPS
– Up to 10 GBps read bandwidth
•IBM-enhanced Micron MLC technology for higher storage density and improved endurance
•Flexible interface types of Fibre Channel, FCoE, iSCSI, and InfiniBand
– Up to 16 ports of 8 Gbps or eight ports of 16 Gbps Fibre Channel
– Up to 16 ports of 10 Gbps FCoE
– Up to 16 ports of 10 Gbps iSCSI
– Up to eight ports of 40 Gbps quad data rate (QDR) InfiniBand
•Slots for up to 12 hot-swappable IBM MicroLatency storage modules (1.2 TB, 2.9 TB, or 5.7 TB)
•Configurable 2.2- 57 TB of capacity for increased flexibility
Enterprise-class reliability features
FlashSystem 900 delivers the following enterprise-class reliability features:
•Concurrent code load enables customer applications to remain online during firmware upgrades to all components, including the IBM MicroLatency modules.
•Hot-swappable IBM MicroLatency modules by way of tool-less front panel access. If a MicroLatency module failure occurs, critical customer applications can remain online while the defective module is replaced.
•All active components are redundant and hot-swappable, including IBM MicroLatency modules, RAID controllers, management modules, interface, batteries, fans, and power supplies.
•All components are easily accessible through the front or rear of the enclosure. IBM FlashSystem 900 does not need to be moved in the rack and no top access panels or cables need to be extended.
•Two-dimensional (2D) Flash RAID, which consists of IBM Variable Stripe RAID and system-wide RAID 5. Variable Stripe RAID technology helps reduce downtime and maintain performance and capacity during partial or full flash chip failures. System-wide RAID 5, with easily accessed hot swappable flash modules, helps prevent data loss and promote availability.
•IBM Advanced Flash Management improves flash endurance 9x over standard implementations with IBM engineered ECC, advanced wear leveling, and proprietary garbage collection, relocation, and block picking algorithms.
Energy and space efficiency
FlashSystem 900 has the following energy and space efficiency characteristics:
•40% greater density than previous generation
•4x greater capacity than competitive all-flash products
•Reduced power, space, and cooling with only 625 watts typical operating power and 2U form factor
Manageability and security
FlashSystem 900 offers the following manageability and security features:
•Hardware-accelerated AES-XTS 256-bit data at rest encryption including Hot Encryption Activation and Hot Encryption Re-key
•Intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) and command-line interface (CLI) which is available in any supported browser
•Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
•Email alerts
•Syslog redirect to send system log messages to another host
Figure 5-3 shows IBM FlashSystem 900 Management GUI (front view of the system).
Figure 5-3 IBM FlashSystem 900 Management GUI (front view of the system)
5.3.3 More information
For more information, see the following links:
•FlashSystem 900 Product Guide, TIPS1261
•Implementing IBM FlashSystem 900, SG24-8271
•IBM FlashSystem 900 product page
5.4 IBM FlashSystem V9000 storage
IBM FlashSystem V9000 is a comprehensive all-flash enterprise storage solution that delivers the full capabilities of IBM FlashCore technology plus a rich set of software-defined storage features. These features include IBM Real-time Compression, dynamic tiering, thin provisioning, snapshots, cloning, replication, data copy services, and HyperSwap for high availability. With the release of FlashSystem V9000 Software V7.6, extra functions are available including VMWare vSphere Virtual Volumes (VVOL) support, Encryption support for externally virtualized storage, and an integrated comprestimator utility. Support also exists for VMware 6 that will enhance and improve scalability in a VMware environment.
IBM FlashSystem V9000 Software version 7.6 replaces version 7.5 and is available to all IBM FlashSystem V9000 customers with current warranty or software maintenance agreements.
Figure 5-4 shows the IBM FlashSystem V9000.
Figure 5-4 IBM FlashSystem V9000
FlashSystem V9000 has these characteristics:
•FlashSystem V9000 with IBM FlashCore Technology drives real-time analytical insights with up to 50x faster performance than enterprise disk systems.
•FlashSystem V9000 scales up to 2.5 million IOPS and over 2 PB effective capacity with IBM MicroLatency, under a single, fully integrated management interface.
•FlashSystem V9000 now supports encryption for externally virtualized storage, even if the supported virtualized array does not have encryption capabilities.
•FlashSystem V9000 with VVOL support, allows more efficient operations and control of external storage resources.
•FlashSystem V9000 with HyperSwap offers simplified setup and management through a GUI.
•FlashSystem V9000 now incorporates Integrated Comprestimator, a key sizing tool to estimate how much capacity savings the customer can expect with IBM Real-time Compression.
•FlashSystem V9000 now includes IP quorum base support for lower-cost IP attached hosts as a quorum disk.
•FlashSystem V9000 supports a new four port 16 Gb Fibre Channel host adapter (feature code #AF44).
•FlashSystem V9000 support with Virtual Storage Center (VSC) includes performance statistics and metrics of monitored storage systems and switches. These reports can be viewed in the VSC web-based GUI or stand-alone GUI. For more information, see the VSC Knowledge Center:
5.4.1 Key features
FlashSystem V9000 is a rack-mount shared flash memory device that is based on IBM enhanced multi-level cell (MLC) flash technology. It provides macro efficiency with up to 57 TB of protected capacity in a 6U form factor, enterprise reliability through IBM Variable Stripe RAID and two-dimensional flash RAID, and extreme performance with MicroLatency. FlashSystem V9000 provides advanced data services, including business continuity with replication services (Metro Mirror and Global Mirror), data protection with FlashCopy services, and higher storage efficiency with thin provisioning, Real-time Compression, IBM Easy Tier 3rd Generation, external virtualization, space-efficient copies, and HyperSwap capability. The FlashSystem V9000 baseline configuration is composed of the following components:
•Two FlashSystem V9000 control enclosures
FlashSystem V9000 Control Enclosure provides advanced data services for flash memory. It is a 2U, 19-inch rack-mount enclosure. FlashSystem V9000 includes two control enclosures, also called controller nodes, for redundant host access. The control enclosures include up to 16 ports that are used for connectivity, with options for 8 Gb Fibre Channel, 16 Gb Fibre Channel, and 10 Gb Ethernet FCoE and iSCSI.
•One FlashSystem V9000 storage enclosure
FlashSystem V9000 Storage Enclosure is a purpose-built, all-flash storage shelf. It is a 2U 19-inch rack-mount enclosure with 12 slots for flash modules. The storage enclosure provides eight 16 Gb Fibre Channel ports to connect to FlashSystem V9000 control enclosures, either directly or through dedicated internal switches (with the scalable building block). Flash modules within any individual building block are available in 1.2 TB, 2.9 TB, or 5.7 TB capacity. Capacities cannot be intermixed. FlashSystem V9000 is available with either one-year or three-year warranties, so clients can select the warranty period that best addresses their business and financial needs.
Easy to deploy and manage, FlashSystem V9000 is designed to accelerate the applications that drive business. Powered by IBM FlashCore Technology, IBM FlashSystem V9000 provides three dimensions of value. Figure 5-5 shows scalable performance, enduring economics, and agile integration.
Figure 5-5 IBM FlashSystem V9000 dimensions of value
For more information about FlashCore technology, see 5.3.1, “FlashCore technology” on page 129 and the following webpage:
Scalability and performance
FlashSystem V9000 has the following scalability and performance features:
•FlashSystem V9000 eliminates I/O bottlenecks while generating higher levels of application efficiency (improved performance)
•Up to 57 TB usable and 285 TB effective capacity in only 6U
•Up to 456 TB usable and 2.28 PB effective capacity in only 36U
•Up to 2.5 million IOPS and 19.2 GBps bandwidth
•IBM MicroLatency
Reliability, availability, and serviceability
FlashSystem V9000 delivers the following enterprise-class reliability features:
•Concurrent code load enables customer applications to remain online during firmware upgrades to all components, including the flash modules.
•Redundant hot-swappable components: FlashSystem V9000 Storage Enclosure has two clustered, hot-swappable canisters that each contain two hot-swappable fan modules, two management controllers, two management Ethernet ports, and a USB port. The batteries, fans, and power supplies are all redundant and hot-swappable. If a flash module failure occurs, critical customer applications can remain online while the defective module is replaced. IBM Variable Stripe RAID, which is a patented IBM technology that provides an intra-module RAID stripe within each flash module. Variable Stripe RAID technology helps reduce downtime and maintain performance and capacity during partial or full flash chip failures.
•Two-dimensional (2D) flash RAID that consists of IBM Variable Stripe RAID and system-wide RAID 5.
•FlashSystem V9000 control enclosures are an active-active pair and support concurrent code load.
Flash for less than the cost of disk
By offering extreme performance and MicroLatency, FlashSystem V9000 can take the place of multiple racks of HDDs in a small footprint. FlashSystem V9000 can decrease your total cost of ownership (TCO) by lowering your power, space, and cooling costs, and reducing your software licensing expenses.
With Real-time Compression, FlashSystem V9000 can increase the effective capacity of your flash memory up to 5x, decreasing the cost for effective capacity up to 80%. Real-time Compression supports active data, unlike other data reduction solutions. The Model AC2 Control Enclosure offers several features for Real-time Compression workloads. These features include a second Xeon E5 v2 Series eight-core processor with 32 GB of memory and up to two optional compression accelerator cards for hardware-assisted compression.
Comprestimator is the key sizing tool for FlashSystem V9000 to estimate how much capacity savings the customer can expect. Comprestimator can recognize the patterns of the actual customer data, and estimate the compressibility of data per volume. The integration of Comprestimator in FlashSystem V9000 software eases the process of estimating capacity savings by having this sizing tool natively in FlashSystem V9000. This configuration avoids the need to install Comprestimator, and allows estimates of Real-time Compression effectiveness from a central console.
Software-defined services
FlashSystem V9000 merges IBM software-defined storage with the scalable performance of IBM FlashSystem technology to help you more easily manage your entire storage environment while preserving your investments in storage. Software-defined storage services enable you to use the following features across all of your storage:
•Thin provisioning: Enables dynamic growth so you can purchase only the storage you need when you need it.
•Easy Tier flash storage management: Optimizes performance at lower overall cost.
•High availability configurations: Enables near-continuous data availability.
•Copy Services: Enables space efficient backups.
•Disaster recovery techniques: Allows you to practice disaster plans and validate business continuity plans.
•Simple GUI: Allows storage to be quickly deployed and efficiently managed.
•HyperSwap capability: Allows each volume to be presented by two I/O groups. The configuration can tolerate combinations of node and site failures.
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Note: IBM Storage Mobile Dashboard, version 1.5.4, supports the IBM FlashSystem V9000 GUI. You can download the dashboard at no cost from iTunes:
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Deep application integration
IBM FlashSystem V9000 Software V7.6 includes the following features, which enable tight integration with VMware:
•vCenter plug-in: Enables monitoring and self-service provisioning of the system from within VMware vCenter.
•vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) support: Supports hardware accelerated virtual machine (VM) copy/migration, hardware accelerated VM initiation, and accelerates VMware virtual machine file system (VMFS).
•SRM for Site Recovery Manager: Supports automated storage and host failover, failover testing, and failback.
•VVOLs integration for better usability: The migration of space efficient volumes between storage containers will maintain the space efficiency of volumes. Cloning a virtual machine will achieve a full independent set of virtual volumes, and resiliency has been improved for VMs in case volumes start running out of space.
VVOL
Before the availability of VVOLs, a VM in a VMware environment would be presented a disk in the form of a file called a virtual machine disk (VMDK). This file represented a physical disk to the VM. The disk could then be accessed by the operating system installed on the VM in the same way a physical volume on a regular server was. The VMDK file was then placed onto a file system called VMFS hosted by a standard volume (LUN), for example implemented on external storage system such as FlashSystem V9000. With the availability of the vSphere Virtual Volume technology, each VM disk can now be mapped to an external storage volume (for example, a FlashSystem V9000 volume).
With VVOL, FlashSystem V9000 becomes aware of individual VMDK files, and data operations such as snapshot and replication can be performed directly by FlashSystem V9000, at the VMDK level rather than the entire VMFS datastore.
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Note: The integration of VVOL with FlashSystem V9000 is based on the VMware Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA). The IBM support for VASA is delivered as part of IBM Spectrum Control. VASA version 2 is required to use VVOL capability.
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IBM Spectrum Control Base Edition
FlashSystem V9000 currently supports Integration of VASA and VAAI by using IBM Spectrum Control Base Edition 2.1. This is a centralized server system that consolidates a range of IBM storage provisioning, virtualization, cloud, automation, and monitoring solutions through a unified server platform. It provides insight and awareness to VMware and vSphere about the configurations, capabilities and storage health, and events of a storage system. With this capability, VMware administrators can independently and centrally manage their storage resources on IBM storage systems.
IP quorum base support
For lower implementation and operation costs for a high availability solution, IP quorum base support enables the use of lower-cost IP network attached hosts as a quorum disk.
Scale up and scale out
FlashSystem V9000 has a scalable architecture that allows flash capacity to be added (scaled up) to support multiple applications. The virtualized system can also be expanded (scaled out) to support higher IOPS and bandwidth, or the solution can be simultaneously scaled up and out to improve capacity, IOPS, and bandwidth while maintaining MicroLatency. As a result, your organization can gain a competitive advantage through a more flexible, responsive, and efficient storage environment. FlashSystem V9000 has the following scalability features per building block:
•Slots for up to 12 hot-swappable flash memory modules (1.2 TB, 2.9 TB, or 5.7 TB modules)
•Configurable 2.4 - 57 TB of capacity for increased flexibility per storage enclosure
•FlashSystem V9000 has the following flexible scalability configuration options:
– Base configuration
– Scale up: Add capacity
– Scale out: Add controllers and capacity
Figure 5-6 illustrates the increments in the scalable capacity of FlashSystem V9000. It also shows that additional storage enclosures can be added to a single building block, and also two, three, or four building blocks.
Figure 5-6 FlashSystem V9000 scalable capacity
Manageability and security
FlashSystem V9000 offers the following manageability and security features:
•Advanced security for data at rest with hardware-accelerated AES-XTS 256 encryption.
•A GUI to manage the FlashSystem V9000 Control Enclosure and the FlashSystem V9000 Storage Enclosure. The GUI is available in any supported browser. Also included is the FlashSystem V9000 CLI, which is a collection of commands that you can use to manage the FlashSystem V9000.
•Email alerts.
•Syslog redirect to send system log messages to another host.
5.4.2 Software and licensing
FlashSystem V9000 uses IBM Storwize software-defined storage features. FlashSystem V9000 data services are provided through FlashSystem V9000 Software. FlashSystem V9000 has both base and optional software licenses.
The following functions are provided with the FlashSystem V9000 base software license:
•Thin provisioning
•Data migration
•Simple GUI
•EasyTier
•Automatic restriping of data across storage pools
The following functions are included with the FlashSystem V9000 base software license only for internal storage:
•FlashCopy
•Real-time Compression
•Remote Mirroring
The following optional licensed features are offered with the FlashSystem V9000 Software for external storage:
•External storage virtualization
•Real-time Compression
•FlashCopy
•Remote Mirroring
For more information about software and licensing, see IBM FlashSystem V9000 Product Guide, REDP-5317.
5.4.3 IBM FlashSystem V9000 in a VersaStack environment
VersaStack, an IBM and Cisco integrated infrastructure solution, combines computing, networking, and storage into a single integrated system. It combines the Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) Integrated Infrastructure with IBM Spectrum Virtualize, which includes IBM FlashSystem V9000 and IBM Storwize storage offerings, for quick deployment and rapid time to value for the implementation of modern infrastructures. With comprehensive reference architectures that include Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs), IBM Redbooks publications, sizing guidelines, and single-call support, the solution sets a benchmark to accelerate data center infrastructure deployment and to help manage information and resources efficiently amid business change.
Figure 5-7 illustrates the VersaStack solution with IBM FlashSystem V9000 at a glance.
Figure 5-7 VersaStack at a glance
For more information about IBM FlashSystem V9000 in a VersaStack environment, see IBM FlashSystem V9000 in a VersaStack Environment, REDP-5264.
5.4.4 More information
For more information and detailed specifications, see the following website:
Also, see the following IBM Redbooks publications:
•IBM FlashSystem V9000 Product Guide, REDP-5317
•Introducing and Implementing IBM FlashSystem V9000, SG24-8273
•IBM FlashSystem V9000 in a VersaStack Environment, REDP-5264
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