Introduction to the IBM DS8880
This chapter introduces the features and functions of the IBM DS8880. More information about functions and features is provided in subsequent chapters.
This chapter covers the following topics:
The previous DS8870 model is described in IBM DS8870 Architecture and Implementation (Release 7.5), SG24-8085.
1.1 Introduction to the IBM DS8880
IBM has a wide range of product offerings that are based on open standards. These offerings share a common set of tools, interfaces, and innovative features. The IBM DS8000 family is a high-performance, high capacity, highly secure, and resilient series of disk storage systems. The DS8880 family is the latest and most advanced of the DS8000 offerings to date. The high availability, multiplatform support, including IBM z Systems, and simplified management tools help provide a cost-effective path to an on-demand world.
The new IBM DS8880 family includes three high-performance models:
•DS8888 Model 982 with its Expansion Unit Model 98F
•DS8886 Model 981 with its associated Expansion Unit Model 98E
•DS8884 Model 980 with its associated Expansion Unit Model 98B)
These additions to the family expand on features that clients expect from a high-end storage system:
•High performance
•High availability
•Cost efficiency
•Energy efficiency
•Scalable
•Business continuity and data protection functions
The DS8880 (Figure 1-1) supports the most demanding business applications with its exceptional all-around performance and data throughput.
Figure 1-1 DS8888 / DS8884 40U Rack and the DS8886 46U Rack
The DS8880 architecture is server-based. Two powerful POWER8 processor-based servers manage the cache to streamline disk I/Os, maximizing performance and throughput. These capabilities are further enhanced with the availability of high-performance flash enclosures (HPFEs). A major change with the introduction of the DS8880 is the reduction of the footprint to a 19-inch rack
Combined with world-class business resiliency and encryption features, the DS8880 provides a unique combination of high availability, performance, and security. The DS8880 is equipped with encryption-capable disk drives. Encryption-capable solid-state flash drives (SSDs) and high-performance encryption-capable flash card storage are also available. Figure 1-2 shows the DS8888 All Flash and the 3-phase direct current uninterruptible power supply (DC-UPS).
Figure 1-2 DS8888 all-flash system
The DS8880 includes a power architecture that is based on a DC-UPS. The DC-UPS converts incoming AC line voltage to rectified AC and contains an integrated battery subsystem. The DC-UPS allows the DS8880 to achieve the highest energy efficiency in the DS8000 series. The DS8880 is designed to comply with the emerging ENERGY STAR specifications. The DS8888 All Flash is available in 3-phase DC-UPS, the DS8886 is available in 3-phase or single-phase DC-UPS, and the DS8884 is available in single-phase DC-UPS.
The DS8880 is delivered in a reduced footprint 19-inch rack. The I/O enclosure that is used for the DS8870 was replaced by a new I/O enclosure that is attached to the POWER8 servers with Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Generation 3 cable. The new I/O enclosure has six PCIe adapter slots and two additional direct-attached, high-performance flash enclosure ports. High-density storage enclosures offer a considerable reduction in the footprint and energy consumption. The rack also has an integrated keyboard and display pocket in the side wall that can be accessed from the front of the rack. A small form factor Hardware Management Console (HMC) is used on the DS8880. One or two HMCs are supported in the base rack. A unique feature of the new rack is the ability to expand from the height of a 40U configuration to a 46U configuration concurrently in the DS8886.
Figure 1-3 shows the differences in configuration that are available between the two sizes of the base frame with the single-phase DC-UPS. The DS8886 is available with an optional 3-phase DC-UPS. The expansion enables clients to add more capacity to their storage systems in the same footprint.
Figure 1-3 DS8886 40U (left) and DS8886 46U (right) fully configured base frames
1.1.1 At-a-glance features of the DS8880
The DS8880 offers the following features (more details can be found in subsequent chapters of this book):
•The DS8880 is available in a variety of POWER8 processor options, from DS8888 48-core to a DS8884 single 6-core. Each system covers a wide range of performance and cost options.
•Memory configurations are available ranging from 64 GB up to 2 TB. The DS8880 family introduces a new POWER8 central processor complex (CPC) unit for each member. The DS8888 uses a model E850 processor complex that performs at greater than twice the performance of a DS8870. The DS8884 by using a model S822 CPC also performs better than the DS8870.
•The DS8880 is available with HPFEs in addition to Fibre Channel-attached flash drives (which are also known as SSDs). HPFEs can be installed in the base frame and the first expansion frame. Each HPFE can contain sixteen or thirty 400 GB or 800 GB flash cards.
•The POWER8 simultaneous multithreading (SMT) technology allows analytic data processing clients to achieve up to 2.5 million I/O per second (IOPS) in Database for Open environments (70% read/30% write, 4 KB IOs, 50% read cache hit) with the 16 HPFEs, 480 Flash cards, 2 TB cache, and 48-cores in the DS8888 all-flash.
•The z-Synergy Services include IBM z/OS® licensed features that are supported on the storage system. The licensed features include High Performance IBM Fibre Channel connection (FICON®) for z Systems, HyperPAV, PAV, and z/OS Distributed Data Backup.
•The DS8880 offers enhanced connectivity with four-port 16 Gbps and four or eight-port
8 Gbps Fibre Channel/IBM FICON host adapters (HAs). Each host adapter port can be configured independently, based on HA speed:
 – 16 Gbps can use Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP) or FICON protocol.
 – 8 Gbps can use Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL), FCP, or FICON protocol.
Ports that are configured for FCP can be used for mirroring.
•High Performance FICON for z Systems (zHPF) is an enhancement to IBM FICON architecture to offload I/O management processing from the z Systems channel subsystem to the DS8880 HA and controller. zHPF is an optional feature of the z Systems server and of the DS8880. Recent enhancements to zHPF include Extended Distance Facility zHPF List Pre-fetch support for IBM DB2 and utility operations, and zHPF support for sequential access methods. All DB2 I/O is now zHPF-capable, and now supports the DB2 castout accelerator function that allows the DS8000 to treat a castout as a single chain of IOs.
The 16 Gbps host adapters on the DS8880 and z Systems server IBM z13™ channels increase the write throughput by 50% or better. This improvement allow zHPF Extended Distance II to support heavy write I/Os over an extended distance of up to 100 km (62 miles).
•Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe Generation 3) I/O enclosures complement the improved I/O bandwidth that is provided by POWER8. The DS8880 includes new PCIe Gen3-based I/O enclosures. Each I/O enclosure connects to both internal servers over a pair of x8 PCIe Gen3 cables, each of which provides 8 GBps connectivity. An additional pair of PCIe connectors on the I/O enclosure provides connections to HPFEs. Each pair of I/O enclosures supports two HPFEs. The storage virtualization that is offered by the DS8880 allows organizations to allocate system resources more effectively and better control application quality of service (QoS).
•The Adaptive Multi-stream Prefetching (AMP) caching algorithm can dramatically improve sequential performance, reducing times for backup, processing for business intelligence and streaming media. Sequential Adaptive Replacement Cache is a caching algorithm that allows you to run different workloads, such as sequential and random workloads, without negatively affecting each other. For example, sequential workload does not fill up the cache and does not affect cache hits for random workloads. Intelligent Write Caching (IWC) improves the Cache Algorithm for random writes.
•The DS8880 provides a graphical management interface to configure the DS8880, query status information, and monitor the performance of the DS8880.
•Easy Tier is a no-charge feature that enables automatic dynamic data relocation capabilities. Easy Tier optimizes the usage of each tier, especially the use of flash storage. No manual tuning is required. The auto-balancing algorithms also provide benefits when homogeneous storage pools are used to eliminate hot spots on disk arrays.
•Storage Tier Advisor Tool (STAT) is used with the Easy Tier feature to help clients understand their current storage system workloads. The tool also provides guidance about how much of their existing data is better suited for the various drive types (spinning drives or flash).
•I/O Priority Manager is an optional feature that provides application-level QoS for workloads that share a storage pool. This feature provides a way to manage QoS for I/O operations that are associated with critical workloads and gives them priority over other I/O operations that are associated with non-critical workloads. For IBM z/OS, the I/O Priority Manager allows increased interaction with the host side.
•Large volume support that allows DS8880 to support logical unit number (LUN) sizes up to 16 TB. This configuration simplifies storage management tasks. In a z/OS environment, extended address volumes (EAVs) with sizes up to 1 TB are supported.
•Support for IBM System i® variable LUN adds flexibility for volume sizes. It can increase capacity usage for IBM i environments. Before, clients were limited to fixed LUN sizes of 35 GB, 70 GB, 141 GB, and 282 GB.
•The DS8880 has an Active Volume Protection feature that prevents the deletion of volumes that are still in use.
•The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF) standard is supported on IBM z Systems for Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) end-to-end data protection on fixed-block architecture (FB) LUN volumes. This support applies to the IBM Storage DS8880 unit (98X models). IBM z Systems support applies to FCP channels only.
•The Dynamic Volume Expansion simplifies management by enabling easier, online volume expansion (for open systems and z Systems) to support application data growth, and to support data center migration and consolidation to larger volumes to ease addressing constraints.
•Thin provisioning allows the creation of over-provisioned devices for more efficient usage of the storage capacity for open systems. Extent space-efficient volumes with small extents are now supported. For more information, see IBM DS8880 Thin Provisioning, REDP-5343.
•Quick Initialization provides fast volume initialization for open system LUNs and count key data (CKD) volumes. Quick Initialization allows the creation of devices, making them available when the command completes.
•Full disk encryption (FDE) can protect business-sensitive data by providing disk-based hardware encryption that is combined with external key management software (IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager or Gemalto SafeNet KeySecure). FDE is available for all disks and drives, including flash cards and flash drives (SSD). Because encryption is performed by the disk drive, it is transparent to host systems and it can be used in any environment, including z/OS.
•The DS8880 enables clients to comply with the Special Publication (SP) number 800-131a. This is a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) directive that provides guidance for protecting sensitive data by using cryptographic algorithms that have key strengths of 112 bits.
•The following specific features of encryption key management help address Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) requirements:
 – The storage system supports data encryption with external key servers. In addition to the IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager key server, DS8880 Release 8.1 and later also support the Gemalto Safenet KeySecure key servers for customers who need to use the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP).
 – Encryption deadlock recovery key option, which allows the user to restore access to a DS8880 when the encryption key for the storage is unavailable because of an encryption deadlock scenario.
 – Dual platform key server support, which is important if key servers on z/OS share keys with key servers on open systems. The DS8880 requires an isolated key server in encryption configurations. Dual platform key server support allows two server platforms to host the key manager with either platform operating in either clear key or secure key mode.
 – Recovery key Enabling/Disabling and Rekey data key option for the FDE feature:, which can help clients satisfy PCI security standards.
•Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication support, which allows single sign-on (SSO), can simplify user management by allowing the DS8000 to rely on a centralized LDAP directory rather than a local user repository. With Release 8.1 and later, LDAP can be enabled through Copy Services Manager, which is packaged with the HMC code.
•For data protection and availability needs, the DS8880 provides a rich set of point-in-time and remote mirror and copy functions. These functions provide storage mirroring and copying over large distances for disaster recovery or availability purposes. These functions are also fully interoperable with previous models of the DS8000 family.
•New with DS8880 Release 8.1, Copy Services Manager or CSM (previously known as IBM Tivoli® Productivity Center for Replication) is included with the DS8880 HMC software. In addition, CSM offers a function that can enable LDAP-based authentication for the DS8000.
•Resource groups offer a policy-based resource scope-limiting function that enables the secure use of Copy Services functions by multiple users on a DS8000 series storage system. Resource groups are used to define an aggregation of resources and policies for configuration and management of those resources. The scope of the aggregated resources can be tailored to meet each hosted client’s Copy Services requirements for any operating system platform that is supported by the DS8000 series.
•The DS8880 offers enhanced z Systems Synergy items:
 – Forward Error Correction (FEC)
FEC is a protocol that captures errors that are generated during data transmission.
Both the z Systems z13 and the DS8880 extend the use of FEC to complete end-to-end coverage for 16 Gbps links and preserve data integrity with more redundancy.
 – Fibre Channel (FC) Read Diagnostic Parameters (RDP)
FC RDP improves the end-to-end link fault isolation for 16 Gbps links on the z Systems z13 and the DS8000. RDP data provides the optical signal strength, error counters, and other critical information that is crucial to determine the quality of the link.
 – FICON Dynamic Routing (FIDR)
FIDR is a z Systems z13 and DS8000 feature that supports the use of dynamic routing policies in the fabric switch to balance load across inter-switch links (ISLs) on a per I/O basis.
 – Fabric I/O Priority
Fabric I/O Priority is an end-to-end synergy feature between the z13 - z/OS Workload Manager, Brocade SAN Fabric, and the DS8000 system to manage QoS on a single I/O level.
 
Note: For more information about the z Systems synergy features, see IBM DS8870 and IBM z Systems Synergy, REDP-5186.
•The DS8000 series is certified as meeting the requirements of the IPv6 Ready Logo program. This certification indicates its implementation of IPv6 mandatory core protocols and the ability to interoperate with other IPv6 implementations. The IBM DS8000 can be configured in native IPv6 environments. The logo program provides conformance and interoperability test specifications that are based on open standards to support IPv6 deployment globally. Furthermore, the NIST tested IPv6 with the DS8000, granting it support for the USGv6 profile and testing program.
•The IBM DS8880 supports VMware vStorage application programming interfaces (APIs) for Array Integration (VAAI). VAAI enables certain storage tasks to be offloaded from the server hardware to the storage array. Support is included for the Atomic Test and Set (ATS) primitive, the Cloning BLocks primitive, and the Zeroing BLocks primitive.
•The IBM DS8880 supports IBM Storage Management Console for VMware vCenter. IBM Storage Management Console for VMware vCenter is a software plug-in that integrates into the VMware vCenter server platform. It enables VMware administrators to independently and centrally manage their storage resources on IBM storage systems. In addition to being a virtualization-related solution, the IBM Storage Management Console is a powerful management solution for VMware administrators who want to control storage resources primarily from the VMware vSphere Client GUI.
1.2 DS8880 controller options and frames
The IBM DS8880 family consists of three distinct models:
•DS8888 Model 982 (Base) and Model 98F (Expansion)
•DS8886 Model 981 (Base) and Model 98E (Expansion)
•DS8884 Model 980 (Base) and Model 98B (Expansion)
These systems are part of the 283x machine type family.
The DS8880 includes the following features:
•IBM POWER8 processor technology
The DS8880 currently features the IBM POWER8 processor-based server technology for high performance. Compared to the IBM POWER7+™ processors that were used in models of the DS8870, IBM POWER8 can deliver at least 2x improvement in IOPS in transaction-processing workload environments.
•Nondisruptive upgrade path
A nondisruptive upgrade path for the DS8880 allows processor, cache, HAs, storage upgrades, and both model 98E and 98B expansion frame upgrades to be installed concurrently without disrupting applications.
•The air-flow system allows optimal horizontal cool down of the storage system. The DS8880 is designed for hot and cold aisle data center design, drawing air for cooling from the front of the system and exhausting hot air at the rear. For more information, see 2.6, “Power and cooling” on page 54.
•The DS8880 offers three system class options:
 – DS8888 based on POWER8 E850 architecture
Up to 480 Flash Cards, up to 48 cores, 3.02 GHz, and up to 2 TB of system memory
 – DS8886 based on POWER8 S824 architecture
Up to 1,536 drives, single 8-core or 16/24 dual-core processor configuration at 3.52 or 3.89 GHz, and up to 2 TB of system memory
 – DS8884 based on POWER8 S822 architecture
Up to 768 drives, single socket 6-core processor configuration at 3.89 GHz, and
256 GB of system memory
 
Note: The DS8884 Class configuration cannot be converted into a DS8886 or DS8888 Class configuration.
•High-Performance Flash Enclosure
The HPFE is a RAID enclosure that can support up to thirty 400 GB or 800 GB flash cards (1.8-inch form factor) in a 1U rack space. You can install up to 16 HPFEs in the DS8888 all-flash system, eight HPFEs for each DS8886 in a hybrid system, and up to four in a DS8884 hybrid system.
•Standard drive enclosures
The DS8880 configurations provide standard drive enclosure support for 24 small form factor (SFF) 2.5-inch (46 mm) drives in 2U of rack space. This option helps improve the storage density for disk drive modules (DDMs) as compared to previous enclosures.
The DS8886 configuration can support 1,536 drives, plus 240 flash cards, in a small, high-density footprint (base frame and up to four expansion frames) that helps to preserve valuable data center floor space with the 19-inch rack 40U extended to 46U.
The DS8884 configuration can support 768 drives, plus 120 flash cards in a small high-density footprint (base frame and up to two expansion frames) that helps to preserve valuable data center floor space with the 19-inch rack 40U.
As an alternative, the DS8886 and the DS8884 also support large form factor (LFF) drive enclosures with twelve 3.5-inch (89 mm) disk drives in 2U of rack space. LFF drive maximums are half of the maximums of the SFF enclosures. SFF and LFF enclosures can be intermixed within the same frame and within a DA pair, although they cannot be intermixed within a drive enclosure pair.
1.3 DS8880 architecture and functions overview
The DS8880 offers continuity with the fundamental architecture of its predecessors, the DS8800 and DS8870 models. This architecture ensures that the DS8880 can use a stable and well-proven operating environment that offers optimal availability. The hardware is optimized to provide higher performance, connectivity, and reliability.
1.3.1 Overall architecture and components
For more information about the available configurations for the DS8880, see Chapter 2, “IBM DS8880 hardware components and architecture” on page 23.
IBM POWER8 processor technology
The POWER8 processor is manufactured by using the IBM 22 nm Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) technology. Each chip is 649 mm2 and contains 4.2 billion transistors. The DS8880 now uses the PCIe Gen 3 I/O controllers and an interconnection system that connects all components within the chip. The POWER8 processors that are used in the DS8880 can run at 3.891 GHz or 3.525 GHz, depending on your configuration.
POWER8 processor advancements in multi-core and multithreading are remarkable. A significant performance opportunity comes from parallelizing workloads to enable the full potential of the microprocessor, and the large memory bandwidth. SMT allows a single physical processor core to simultaneously dispatch instructions from more than one hardware thread context. These multithreading capabilities improve the I/O throughput of the DS8880 storage server.
The DS8880 family offers four configurations of CPCs:
•The DS8888 offers two processor configurations:
 – 24-core with 1 and 2 TB memory
 – 48-core with 1 and 2 TB memory
•The DS8886 offers three processor configurations:
 – 8-core with 128 and 256 GB memory
 – 16-core with 256 and 512 GB memory
 – 24-core with 1024 and 2048 GB memory
•The DS8884 offers a single processor configuration of a 6-core with 64, 128, and 256 GB memory
A processor complex is also referred to as a storage server or CPC. For more information, see Chapter 3, “Reliability, availability, and serviceability on the IBM DS8880” on page 61.
Internal PCIe-based fabric
The new I/O enclosure pairs are PCIe Gen3-capable. The new I/O enclosure supports six PCIe adapter slots and two additional direct-attached, high-performance flash enclosure ports. The I/O enclosures are attached to the POWER8 servers by two 8x PCIe Gen3 cables. The internal transfer rate to each I/O bay is four times faster compared to the earlier model.
High-performance flash enclosure
The HPFEs connect to the I/O enclosures over a PCIe fabric, which increases bandwidth and transaction-processing capability. The HPFE is a 1U enclosure that contains integrated dual Flash RAID adapters. Each HPFE can contain 16 or 30 400GB or 800GB flash cards. HPFEs and flash cards provide up to a 4x throughput improvement compared to flash drives. For more information, see Chapter 2, “IBM DS8880 hardware components and architecture” on page 23.
Device adapters
The DS8880 Standard Drive Enclosures connect to the processor complexes through 8 Gbps four-port Fibre Channel device adapters (DAs). They are optimized for flash drive (SSD) technology and designed for long-term scalability growth. For more information, see Chapter 2, “IBM DS8880 hardware components and architecture” on page 23.
Switched Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop
The DS8880 uses an 8 Gb switched FC-AL architecture to connect the DAs to the standard drive enclosures. The DAs connect to the controller cards in the drive enclosures by using FC-AL with optical shortwave multi-mode interconnections. The Fibre Channel interface cards (FCICs) provide point-to-point 6 Gbps SAS connections to each drive and DA, providing four paths from the DS8880 processor complexes to each disk drive. For more information, see Chapter 2, “IBM DS8880 hardware components and architecture” on page 23.
Drive options
In addition to flash cards, the DS8880 offers the following disk drives to meet the requirements of various workloads and configurations. For more information, see Chapter 7, “IBM DS8880 physical planning and installation” on page 175.
•200, 400, and 800 GB and 1.6 TB flash drives (SSDs) for higher performance requirements
•300 and 600 GB 15K revolutions per minute (RPM) enterprise disk drives for high-performance requirements
•600 GB and 1.2 TB 10K RPM disk drives for standard performance requirements
•6 TB 7,200 RPM nearline LFF disk drives for large-capacity requirements
Flash drives provide up to 100 times the throughput and 10 times lower response time than 15K RPM spinning disks. They also use less power than traditional spinning drives. For more information, see Chapter 7, “IBM DS8880 physical planning and installation” on page 175.
All drives and flash cards in the DS8880 are encryption-capable. Enabling encryption is optional. It requires at least two key servers with the IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager software.
IBM Easy Tier
Easy Tier enables the DS8880 to automatically balance I/O access to disk drives to avoid hot spots on disk arrays. Easy Tier can place data in the storage tier that best suits the access frequency of the data. Highly accessed data can be moved nondisruptively to a higher tier, for example, to flash drives. Cold data or data that is primarily accessed sequentially is moved to a lower tier (for example, to nearline disks). Easy Tier includes additional components:
•Easy Tier Application is an application-aware storage utility to help deploy storage more efficiently by enabling applications and middleware to direct more optimal placement of the data by communicating important information about current workload activity and application performance requirements. It is possible for DB2 applications in z/OS environments to give hints of data placement to Easy Tier at the data set level.
•Easy Tier Heat Map Transfer (HMT) can take the data placement algorithm on the Metro Mirror/Global Copy/Global Mirror (MM/GC/GM) primary site and reapply it to the MM/GC/GM secondary site when failover occurs by using the Easy Tier Heat Map Transfer Utility (HMTU). With this capability, the DS8000 systems can maintain application-level performance. The DS8870 Release 7.5-enhanced Easy Tier HMT functions support Metro Global Mirror (MGM) to transfer a heat map automatically to a tertiary site.
 
Note: Easy Tier Server has been removed from marketing support. It is no longer available.
The following new Easy Tier controls were introduced with DS8000 Release 8.1:
•For Easy Tier to function effectively, it needs some free extents in each extent pool to be able to move around extents. A storage administrator can keep an eye on this and make sure that not all capacity is allocated. However, there is a new control to let the system reserve some space for Easy Tier extent movements. The control is available, for example by use of the chsi command specifying -etsrmode enable to enable space reservation for Easy Tier.
•Another new control is the allocation policy for new volumes. In previous implementations, new storage was allocated from Tier 1 if available and then from Tier 2, while Tier 0 was not preferred. You can change the allocation policy now according to your needs with the chsi command and the -etaomode highutil or highperf. The data allocation order can be changed between ENT → NL → SSD(highutil) and SSD → ENT → NL(highperf).
For more information about the Easy Tier features, see the following resources:
•IBM DS8000 EasyTier, REDP-4667
•DS8870 Easy Tier Application, REDP-5014
•IBM DS8870 Easy Tier Heat Map Transfer, REDP-5015
•IBM DS8870 and IBM z Systems Synergy, REDP-5186
Host adapters
The DS8880 offers 16 Gbps and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel host adapters:
•The 16 Gbps FC adapter has four 16 Gbps-capable ports. Each port independently auto-negotiates to 4, 8, or 16 Gbps link speed, and it can be configured to FCP or FICON.
•The 8 Gbps FC adapter has four or eight 8 Gbps-capable ports. Each port independently auto-negotiates to 2, 4, or 8 Gbps link speed, and it can be configured to FC-AL, FCP, or FICON.
Storage Hardware Management Console for the DS8880
The HMC is the focal point for maintenance activities and contains a version of CSM. The HMC is a dedicated workstation that is physically inside the DS8880. The HMC can proactively monitor the state of your system and notify you and IBM when service is required. It can also be connected to your network to enable centralized management of your system by using the IBM data storage command-line interface (DS CLI). The HMC supports the IPv4 and IPv6 standards. For more information, see Chapter 8, “IBM DS8880 Management Console planning and setup” on page 201.
A second HMC is available as an optional feature. The console can be used as a redundant management console for environments with high availability requirements. It also resides in the bottom primary frame and, starting with DS8000 Release 8.1, contains a copy of the CSM that also includes an LDAP proxy server.
Isolated key server
The IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager software performs key management tasks for IBM encryption-enabled hardware, such as the IBM DS8880. IBM Secure Lifecycle Manager provides, protects, stores, and maintains encryption keys that are used to encrypt information that is written to, and decrypt information that is read from encryption-enabled disks.
The DS8880 ships with FDE drives. To configure a DS8880 to use encryption, at least two IBM key servers are required. An isolated key server with dedicated hardware and non-encrypted storage resources is required. It can be ordered from IBM. For more information, see 7.3.6, “Key manager servers for encryption” on page 194.
Alternatively, starting with DS8000 Release 8.1, customers who need to comply with the KMIP have the possibility to use the Gemalto SafeNet KeySecure as the external key server. For details, see the IBM DS8880 Data-at-rest Encryption, REDP-4500.
1.3.2 Storage capacity
The physical storage capacity for the DS8880 is installed in fixed increments that are called drive sets and flash card sets. A drive set contains 16 DDMs, all of which have the same capacity and the same rotational speed. Flash drives (SSDs) and nearline drives are available in half sets (8) or full sets (16) of disk drives or DDMs. High-performance flash cards are available in sets of 16 and 14.
The available drive options provide industry-class capacity and performance to address a wide range of business requirements. The DS8880 storage arrays can be configured as RAID 5, RAID 6, or RAID 10, depending on the drive type.
1.3.3 Supported environments
The DS8000 offers connectivity support across a broad range of server environments, including IBM Power Systems, z Systems, and Lenovo System x servers, servers from Oracle and Hewlett-Packard, non-IBM Intel, and AMD-based servers.
The DS8000 supports over 90 platforms. For the current list of supported platforms, see the DS8000 System Storage Interoperation Center (SSIC) at this website:
For more information about the supported environments, see IBM System Storage DS8000: Host Attachment and Interoperability, SG24-8887.
This rich support of heterogeneous environments and attachments, with the flexibility to easily partition the DS8000 storage capacity among the attached environments, can help support storage consolidation requirements and dynamic environments.
1.3.4 Configuration flexibility
The DS8000 series uses virtualization techniques to separate the logical view of hosts onto LUNs from the underlying physical layer, providing high configuration flexibility. For more information about virtualization, see Chapter 4, “Virtualization concepts” on page 93.
Dynamic volume expansion
Dynamic volume expansion increases the capacity of open systems and z Systems volumes, while the volume remains connected to a host system. This capability simplifies data growth by providing volume expansion without taking volumes offline. Certain operating systems do not support a change in volume size. Therefore, a host action is required to detect the change after the volume capacity is increased.
Large LUN and large count key data volume support
You can configure LUNs and volumes to span arrays, allowing for larger LUN sizes of up to 16 TB in open systems. Copy Services are not supported for LUN sizes that are greater than 2 TB.
The maximum CKD volume size is 1,182,006 cylinders (1 TB), which can greatly reduce the number of volumes that are managed. This large CKD volume type is called a 3390 Model A. It is referred to as an extended address volume (EAV).
T10 data integrity field support
The DS8880 supports the T10 DIF standard for FB volumes that are accessed by the FCP channel of Linux on z Systems and IBM AIX® on Power Systems. You can define LUNs with an option to instruct the DS8880 to use the CRC-16 T10 DIF algorithm to store the data. You can also create T10 DIF-capable LUNs. The support for IBM i variable LUNs now adds flexibility for volume sizes and can increase capacity utilization for IBM i environments.
VMware VAAI support
The VAAI feature offloads specific storage operations to disk arrays for greatly improved performance and efficiency. With VAAI, VMware vSphere can perform key operations faster and use less CPU, memory, and storage bandwidth. The DS8880 supports the VAAI primitives ATS, which is also known as Compare and Write for hardware-assisted locking, and Clone Blocks (Extended Copy or XCOPY for hardware-assisted move or cloning). VAAI also supports Write Same, Site Recovery Manager (SRM), vCenter plug-in, and variable LUN size.
OpenStack
The DS8000 supports the OpenStack cloud management software for business-critical private, hybrid, and public cloud deployments. The DS8880 supports features in the OpenStack environment, such as volume replication and volume retype. The current supported release is the OpenStack Mitaka.
For more information about the DS8870 and OpenStack, see Using IBM DS8870 in an OpenStack Environment, REDP-5220.
RESTful API
With the DS8880 support of RESTful API services, DS8880 clients or cloud administrators can design and implement the DS8880 management applications by using the Representational State Transfer (REST) software architecture.
For more information about the RESTful API, see Exploring the DS8870 RESTful API Implementation, REDP-5187.
Flexible LUN-to-LSS association
With no predefined association of arrays to logical subsystems (LSSs) on the DS8000 series, users can put LUNs or CKD volumes into LSSs and make the best use of the 256 address range, particularly for z Systems.
Simplified LUN masking
In the new GUI, LUNs are directly mapped to the host, and the user cannot define volume groups. Volume groups still exist on the DS8880 systems, but they are not visible from the GUI because they are created in the background during the assignment of a volume to the host.
Thin-provisioning features
Volumes in the DS8880 can be provisioned as full or thin. When clients plan capacity, they need to consider the number of volumes in the extent pool (or overall storage system) and the degree of over-allocation that is planned for.
These volumes feature enabled over-provisioning capabilities that provide more efficient usage of the storage capacity and reduced storage management requirements. For more information, see Chapter 4, “Virtualization concepts” on page 93. For details, refer toIBM DS8880 Thin Provisioning, REDP-5343
Maximum values of logical definitions
The DS8000 features the following maximum values for the major logical definitions:
•Up to 256 LSSs
•Up to 65,280 logical devices
•Up to 16 TB LUNs
•Up to 1,182,006 cylinder (1 TB) CKD volumes
•Up to 130,560 FICON logical paths (512 logical paths for each control unit image) on the DS8000
•Up to 1,280 logical paths for each FC port
•Up to 8,192 process logins (509 for each SCSI-FCP port)
1.3.5 Copy Services functions
For IT environments that cannot afford to stop their systems for backups, the DS8880 provides IBM FlashCopy. This fast replication technique can provide a point-in-time copy of the data in a few seconds or even less.
 
Note: FlashCopy Space Efficient (based on Track Space Efficient) is not supported by the DS8880. FlashCopy targets based on Extent Space Efficient volumes with small extents are now the alternative for both Open and z/OS. For more information, see IBM DS8880 Thin Provisioning, REDP-5343.
For data protection and availability needs, the DS8880 provides Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, Global Copy, Metro/Global Mirror, and z/OS Global Mirror, which are Remote Mirror and Copy functions. These functions are also available and are fully interoperable with previous models of the DS8000 family. These functions provide storage mirroring and copying over large distances for disaster recovery or availability purposes.
Copy Services scope limiting is the ability to specify policy-based limitations on Copy Services requests. With the combination of policy-based limitations and other inherent volume-addressing limitations, you can control these objects:
•Volumes that can be in a Copy Services relationship
•Which network users or host logical partitions (LPARs) can issue Copy Services requests on which resources
•Other Copy Services operations
For more information about Copy Services, see Chapter 5, “DS8000 Copy Services overview” on page 125. You can also consult the following resources:
•IBM DS8870 Copy Services for Open Systems, SG24-6788
•IBM DS8870 Copy Services for IBM z Systems, SG24-6787
1.3.6 Service and setup
The installation of the DS8000 is performed by IBM in accordance with the installation procedure for this system. The client’s responsibility is the installation planning, retrieval, and installation of feature activation codes, logical configuration, and execution.
For maintenance and service operations, the storage HMC is the focus. The management console is a dedicated workstation that is physically inside the DS8880 where it can automatically monitor the state of your system. It notifies you and IBM when service is required. Generally, use a dual-HMC configuration, particularly when Full Disk Encryption is used.
The HMC is also the interface for remote services (call home and remote support), which can be configured to meet client requirements. It is possible to allow one or more of the following configurations:
•Call home on error (machine-detected)
•Connection for a few days (client-initiated)
•Remote error investigation (service-initiated)
The remote connection between the management console and the IBM Service organization is performed by using the Assist On-site (AOS) feature. AOS offers more options, such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security and enhanced audit logging. For more information, see IBM Assist On-site for Storage Overview, REDP-4889-01.
The DS8000 storage system can be ordered with an outstanding four-year warranty (an industry first) on hardware and software.
1.3.7 IBM Certified Secure Data Overwrite
IBM Certified Secure Data Overwrite (SDO) is a process that provides a secure overwrite of all data storage in a DS8880 storage system. Before you perform a secure data overwrite, you must remove all logical configuration. Encryption groups, if configured, must also be disbanded. The process is then initiated by the IBM service support representative (SSR). The process continues unattended until it completes. This process takes a full day to complete. Two DDM overwrite options exist.
DDM overwrite options
Two DDM overwrite options exist for SDO: Cryptoerase and three-pass overwrite.
Cryptoerase
This option performs a cryptoerase of the drives, which invalidates the internal encryption key on the DDMs, rendering the previous key information unreadable. It then performs a single-pass overwrite on all drives.
Three-pass overwrite
This option also performs a cryptoerase of the drives, then performs a three-pass overwrite on all drives. This overwrite pattern allows compliance with the NIST Special Publication 800-88r1 standard.
CPC and HMC
A three-pass overwrite is performed on both the CPC and HMC disk drives. If a secondary HMC is associated with the storage system, SDO is run against the secondary HMC after the run completes on the primary HMC.
SDO process overview
The SDO process can be summarized in these steps:
1. The client removes all logical configuration and encryption groups.
2. The IBM SSR starts SDO from the HMC.
3. SDO performs a dual-cluster restart of the CPCs.
4. SDO cryptoerases all drives and flash cards in the storage system.
5. SDO starts an overwrite method.
6. SDO starts a three-pass overwrite on the CPC and HMC hard disks.
7. When the SDO process completes, SDO generates a certificate.
Certificate
The certificate provides written verification, by drive or Flash Card serial number, of the full result of the overwrite operations. You can retrieve the certificate by using DSCLI, or the IBM SSR can offload the certificate to removable media, and provide the media to you.
1.4 Performance features
The DS8880 offers optimally balanced performance. The DS8880 incorporates many performance enhancements, such as a dual multi-core IBM POWER8 processor complex implementation in the DS8886, fast 16 Gbps and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel/FICON host adapters, HPFEs, flash drives, and the high bandwidth, fault-tolerant point-to-point PCI Express Gen3 internal connections.
With all of these components, the DS8880 is positioned at the top of the high performance category.
1.4.1 16 Gbps host adapters
Starting with Release 7.5, the DS8880 supports 16 Gbps host adapters. This connectivity reduces latency and provides faster single stream (12% - 14% improvements for zHPF) and per port throughput. These cards can work also with 8 or 4 Gbps compatibility, with no FC-AL connections. The Lights on Fastload feature avoids path disturbance during code loads on 16 Gbps host adapters.
1.4.2 Sophisticated caching algorithms
IBM Research conducts extensive investigations into improved algorithms for cache management and overall system performance improvements. To implement sophisticated caching algorithms, it is essential to include powerful processors for the cache management. With a 4 KB cache segment size and up to 2 TB cache sizes, the tables to maintain the cache segments become large.
Sequential Prefetching in Adaptive Replacement Cache
One of the performance features of the DS8000 is its self-learning cache algorithm, which optimizes cache efficiency and enhances cache hit ratios. This algorithm, which is used in the DS8000 series, is called Sequential Prefetching in Adaptive Replacement Cache (SARC).
SARC provides the following abilities:
•Sophisticated algorithms to determine the data to store in cache that is based on recent access and the frequency needs of the hosts
•Prefetching, which anticipates data before a host request and loads it into cache
•Self-learning algorithms to adaptively and dynamically learn the data to store in cache that is based on the frequency needs of the hosts
Adaptive Multi-stream Prefetching
AMP is a breakthrough caching technology that improves performance for common sequential and batch processing workloads on the DS8000. AMP optimizes cache efficiency by incorporating an autonomic, workload-responsive, and self-optimizing prefetching technology.
Intelligent Write Caching
Intelligent Write Caching (IWC) improves performance through better write-cache management and destaging the order of writes. It minimizes disk actuator movements on writes so that the disks can perform more I/O in total. IWC can also double the throughput for random write workloads. Specifically, database workloads benefit from this new IWC cache algorithm.
SARC, AMP, and IWC play complementary roles. Although SARC is carefully dividing the cache between the RANDOM and the SEQ lists to maximize the overall hit ratio, AMP is managing the contents of the SEQ list to maximize the throughput that is obtained for the sequential workloads. IWC manages the write cache and decides the order and rate to destage to disk.
1.4.3 Flash storage
To improve data transfer rate (IOPS) and response time, the DS8880 supports flash drives and high-performance flash cards, which are based on NAND technology.
The flash drives feature improves I/O transaction-based performance over traditional spinning drives in standard drive enclosures. The DS8880 is available with 200 GB, 400 GB, and 800 GB, and 1.6 TB encryption-capable flash drives.
High-performance flash cards offer even higher throughput by using the integrated Flash RAID Adapters in the HPFE, and PCI Express connections to the processor complexes. The DS8880 is available with 400 GB or 800 GB encryption-capable flash cards. Flash drives and flash cards are high-IOPS class enterprise storage devices that are targeted at Tier 0, I/O-intensive workload applications that can use a high level of fast-access storage. Flash drives offer many potential benefits over rotational drives, including better IOPS, lower power consumption, less heat generation, and lower acoustical noise. For more information, see Chapter 7, “IBM DS8880 physical planning and installation” on page 175.
1.4.4 Performance for z Systems
The DS8000 series supports the following IBM performance enhancements for z Systems environments:
•PAVs enable a single z Systems server to simultaneously process multiple I/O operations to the same logical volume, which can significantly reduce device queue delays. This reduction is achieved by defining multiple addresses for each volume. With Dynamic PAV, the assignment of addresses to volumes can be automatically managed to help the workload meet its performance objectives and reduce overall queuing. PAV is an optional feature on the DS8000 series.
•HyperPAV is designed to enable applications to achieve equal or better performance than with PAV alone, while also using fewer unit control blocks (UCBs) and eliminating the latency in targeting an alias to a base. With HyperPAV, the system can react immediately to changing I/O workloads.
•New with DS8880 release 8.1, SuperPAV allows z/OS to use an alias address from another LCU.
•Multiple Allegiance expands the simultaneous logical volume access capability across multiple z Systems. This function, with PAV, enables the DS8000 to process more I/Os in parallel, which improves performance and enables greater use of large volumes.
•I/O priority queuing allows the DS8000 series to use I/O priority information that is provided by the z/OS Workload Manager to manage the processing sequence of I/O operations at the adapter level.
•I/O Priority Manager provides application-level QoS for workloads that share a storage pool. It provides a way to manage QoS for I/O operations of critical workloads and gives them priority over other I/O operations that are associated with non-critical workloads. For z/OS, the I/O Priority Manager allows increased interaction with the host side.
•zHPF reduces the effect that is associated with supported commands on current adapter hardware. This configuration improves FICON throughput on the DS8000 I/O ports. The DS8000s also supports the new zHPF I/O commands for multi-track I/O operations, DB2 list-prefetch, sequential access methods, and DB2 castout acceleration.
•zHyperwrite is an enhancement that is provided with DS8870 R7.4. In a z/OS Metro Mirror environment, it enables DB2 log updates to be written to the primary and secondary volumes in parallel. This configuration reduces the latency for log writes, and so improving transactional response times and log throughput. The Metro Mirror primary volume needs to be enabled with IBM HyperSwap® by either IBM Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex™ (IBM GDPS®) or CSM.
For more information about performance on z Systems, see IBM DS8870 and IBM z Systems Synergy, REDP-5186.
1.4.5 Performance enhancements for IBM Power Systems
Many IBM Power Systems users can benefit from the following DS8000 features:
•End-to-End I/O priorities
•Cooperative caching
•Long busy wait host tolerance
•Automatic port queues
For more information about performance enhancements, see Chapter 6, “Designed for performance” on page 141.
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