IBM FlashSystem 900 with System Storage TS7650G ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway
This chapter introduces the IBM FlashSystem storage product, its core value, benefits, technological advantages, and configuration steps to use it with the IBM System Storage TS7650G ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway (TS7650G).
This chapter contains the following topics:
8.1 Introduction to flash technology
Flash technology in the data center is too relevant to be ignored for a few simple reasons:
•Since its introduction, flash memory has improved across all metrics, offering higher performance, density, and reliability, all of which translate to improved business efficiency.
•Flash cost per capacity and cost per transaction relative to hard disk-based storage make it very attractive to businesses that are attempting to maintain pace in a 24x7 competitive marketplace.
•Flash is easily integrated into existing data center environments, and provides an instant boost to the mission critical applications.
While flash in storage is pervasive in the data center, its implementation varies considerably among competitors and technologies. Some use it as a simple cache accelerator, and others implement it as yet another permanent data tier. The reality is that flash only matters when two conditions in the data center are met:
•Flash eliminates input/output (I/O) bottlenecks and generates higher levels of application efficiency (improved performance).
•Storage economics are improved by its use. It provides lower total cost of ownership (TCO), reducing costs, and faster return on investment (ROI) to the existing environment, enabling new business opportunities.
IBM FlashSystem™ storage delivers high performance, efficiency, and reliability for shared enterprise storage environments. It helps clients address performance issues with their most important applications and infrastructure. FlashSystem storage provides a hardware-only data path that unleashes all of the potential of flash memory. These systems are different from traditional storage systems, both in the technology and usage.
Figure 8-1 shows more details about FlashSystem 900 integrated with a TS7650G model DD5.
Figure 8-1 IBM FlashSystem with IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER Gateway
 
Note: Ensure that your host hardware is listed as supported on the IBM SSIC and ProtecTIER ISV Support Matrix. For more details, see Appendix B, “ProtecTIER compatibility” on page 457.
8.2 IBM FlashSystem overview
Flash technology has fundamentally changed the paradigm for IT systems, enabling new use cases and unlocking the scale of enterprise applications. Flash technology enhances performance, efficiency, reliability, and design of essential enterprise applications and solutions by addressing the bottleneck in the IT process (data storage), enabling truly optimized information infrastructure.
The FlashSystem shared flash memory systems offer affordable, high-density, ultra low-latency, high-reliability and scalable performance in a storage device that is both space-efficient and power-efficient. IBM Flash products, which can either augment or replace traditional hard disk drive storage systems in enterprise environments, empower applications to work faster and scale further.
In addition to optimizing performance, the FlashSystem family brings enterprise reliability and macro efficiency to the most demanding data centers, allowing businesses to accomplish the following tasks:
•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, thereby enhancing the pace of business
•Improve usage of existing infrastructure
•Compliment existing infrastructure
•Mitigate risk
When used with the ProtecTIER System, FlashSystem can provide additional improvements and benefits:
•With the addition of data deduplication, the amount of disk storage (FlashSystem storage) that is required to store data and keep it online can be reduced.
•Performing restore operations from FlashSystem products can be faster than any currently existing storage device (disks or physical tapes).
•Running an environment with ProtecTIER and FlashSystem adds the ability to implement a robust disaster recovery process using the ProtecTIER Replication functionality.
•Running an environment with ProtecTIER and FlashSystem as back-end storage adds the ability to use other applications, such as Virtual Tape Library (VTL) or File System Interface (FSI).
From the client business perspective, FlashSystem provides focused benefits and value on four essential areas:
Extreme Performance Enable business to unleash the power of performance, scale, and insight to drive services and products to market faster.
IBM 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 information technology (IT) staff, IT applications and IT equipment due to the efficiencies flash brings to the data center.
Enterprise Reliability Durable and reliable designs that use enterprise class flash and patented data protection technology.
The IBM FlashCore™ technology, used in IBM FlashSystem 900, employs several new and patented mechanisms to achieve greater capacity and throughput, at a lower cost than the previous IBM FlashSystem 840. Figure 8-2 shows the three major areas within IBM FlashCore technology and the unique IBM attributes of each one.
Figure 8-2 IBM FlashCore technology
8.3 General FlashSystem considerations
To make their backup environments faster and more efficient, IBM clients can have IBM FlashSystem integrated to the IBM TS7650 ProtecTIER Gateway. In this topic, the FlashSystem works as the back-end storage for the TS7650G ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway, adding all its benefits to the backup environment that ProtecTIER provides.
IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER also provides disaster recovery capabilities that can be used by FlashSystem clients by replicating backup data to a different location. The ProtecTIER Internet Protocol (IP) replication function provides a powerful tool that can be used to design robust disaster recovery architectures. You electronically place backup data into vaults with much less network bandwidth, thus changing the paradigm of how data is taken off-site
for safekeeping.
For VTL clients, the ProtecTIER IP replication feature can eliminate some of the expensive and labor-intensive handling, transport, and securing of the real tapes for disaster recovery (DR) purposes. For FSI clients, they can implement enhanced functionality only possible with disk, and avoid the limitation of tape emulation.
The IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER backend storage array is configured with two types of logical unit numbers (LUNs): Metadata and user data. Metadata LUNs are used to record where data is kept, and user data LUNs are used to store the actual data. Metadata LUN performance is critical, and 15,000 revolutions per minute (RPM) hard disk drive (HDD) spindles in a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID10) 4+4 configuration are commonly used.
IBM FlashSystem 900 can be used by the IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER Gateway as the back-end storage device for metadata and user data LUNs.
A common use case for IBM FlashSystem 900 is for the IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER metadata LUNs. Compared to the cost of dozens of 15,000 or 10 kilobits (Kb) HDD spindles, using FlashSystem products for the IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER metadata LUNs can be more cost-effective. Also a more cost-effective approach might be to use FlashSystem for the entire IBM TS7650G ProtecTIER repository if high performance, but small capacity is needed.
 
Note: If FlashSystem is used day one for metadata, then all metadata expansions must be with FlashSystem storage. Plan for growth from the beginning.
For LUNs, plan for maximum metadata (2500 megabytes per second, or MBps) with fastest 15,000 8+8 configuration in the ProtecTIER Planner Tool. For more information about the ProtecTIER Planner Tool, see 7.1.1, “ProtecTIER Planner tool” on page 102. FlashSystem 900 is configurable with 2 - 48 terabytes (TB) of usable capacity for increased flexibility, which should cover most metadata configurations.
8.4 Deploying the IBM FlashSystem 900 with IBM ProtecTIER
The process to set up the environment to integrate the IBM ProtecTIER system and the FlashSystem 900 consists of the following steps:
1. Create the user data and metadata Volumes in the FlashSystem.
2. Map the volumes to the ProtecTIER System.
3. Create the File Systems and build the ProtecTIER repository.
For details about the initial setup for the FlashSystem 900, such as how to create the volumes and host mapping in the FlashSystem 900, see Implementing IBM FlashSystem 900, SG24-8271.
8.4.1 Creating user data and metadata volumes
Before creating the volumes that ProtecTIER will use for metadata and user data, consider that the suggested number of metadata RAID groups (managed disks, or MDisks) is determined by the Capacity Planning Tool during the pre-sales process. This number can be in the range of 2 - 10, based on repository size, factoring ratio, and performance needs.
The following steps describe the process of creating volumes and defining host access for the FlashSystem 900. Create each one of the metadata or user data volumes as follows:
1. Log in to the FlashSystem graphical user interface (GUI).
2. Select the Volumes option from the left navigation menu (Figure 8-3 on page 116).
Figure 8-3 Opening Volumes menu on the IBM FlashSystem 900
3. Select the Create Volume option.
4. Provide the details for the new volume: Name, Capacity, and Quantity (Figure 8-4).
5. Click OK.
Figure 8-4 Creating volumes on the IBM FlashSystem 900
6. Complete the previous setup parameters and repeat the same process until you have created all volumes for the MDisks that ProtecTIER will use for metadata or user data according to the ProtecTIER Capacity Planning Tool.
8.4.2 Mapping the FlashSystem Volumes to the ProtecTIER System
To map the FlashSystem volumes created in the previous section to the ProtecTIER system, perform the following steps.
 
Note: Before continuing, consider that you will need to update your storage area network (SAN) zoning configuration, and make sure that the IBM FlashSystem 900 is part of the same zone as the ProtecTIER system. In this environment, the host is the ProtecTIER system, and we assume in this section that you already created the host that will be attached to the required volumes in the FlashSystem 900.
Follow these steps:
1. Log in to the Flash System GUI web interface,
2. Select the Hosts → Volumes by Host (Figure 8-5).
Figure 8-5 Opening the Volumes by Host menu in the IBM FlashSystem 900
3. Expand the Unmapped Volumes section.
4. Right-click the volume that you want to map and select Map to Host (Figure 8-6).
Figure 8-6 Open the Map to Host menu in the IBM FlashSystem 900
5. In the Select the Host list, select the host that you want to map and then click Map (Figure 8-7).
Figure 8-7 Select host in the IBM FlashSystem 900
8.4.3 Creating file systems and building the ProtecTIER repository
To create the file systems with ProtecTIER, complete the following steps:
1. Verify that the ProtecTIER node recognizes the volumes that are presented by the IBM FlashSystem. The multipath -ll command shows the LUNs and the paths that are connected to the storage subsystem. If the LUNs do not appear to be mapped to the storage, you must run a rescan on the Fibre Channel (FC) adapters, or restart the node.
 
Note: You can scan the FC adapters by running the following command:
echo "- - -" > /sys/class/scsi_host/<host??>/scan
In this command, <host??> should be replaced by each FC adapter port.
2. You can also filter to see only part of the data, as shown in Example 8-1. The first command filters only the volumes of type FlashSystem. The second command shows the details of one of the devices.
Example 8-1 multipath command output
[root@lbsdedup1a ~]# multipath -ll | grep FlashSystem
[root@tepic ~]# multipath -ll | grep FlashSystem
mpath2 (20020c24008123fff) dm-2 IBM,FlashSystem
mpath1 (20020c24007123fff) dm-1 IBM,FlashSystem
mpath0 (20020c24006123fff) dm-0 IBM,FlashSystem
mpath3 (20020c24009123fff) dm-3 IBM,FlashSystem
 
[root@tepic ~]# multipath -ll | grep -A11 mpath0
mpath0 (20020c24006123fff) dm-0 IBM,FlashSystem
[size=2.0T][features=0][hwhandler=0][rw]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=1][active]
\_ 19:0:0:6 sdb 8:16 [active][ready]
\_ round-robin 0 [prio=1][enabled]
\_ 21:0:0:6 sdf 8:80 [active][ready]
.....
3. In the ProtecTIER Service menu, select the options 1) ProtecTIER Configuration (...) and then 6) File Systems Management (...), as shown in Example 8-2.
Example 8-2 ProtecTIER configuration menu
[root@lbsdedup1a ~]# su - ptconfig
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ProtecTIER Service Menu running on vela |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1) ProtecTIER Configuration (...) |
| 2) Manage ProtecTIER services (...) |
| 3) Health Monitoring (...) |
| 4) Problem Alerting (...) |
| 5) Version Information (...) |
| 6) Generate a service report |
| 7) Generate a system view |
| 8) Update ProtecTIER code |
| 9) ProtecTIER Analysis (...) |
| |
| E) Exit |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Your choice? 1
 
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ProtecTIER Service Menu running on vela |
| ProtecTIER Configuration (...) |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1) Configure ProtecTIER node |
| 2) Recover Configuration for a replaced server |
| 3) Configure machine serial number for a replaced server |
| 4) Configure RAS |
| 5) Update Time, Date, Timezone and Timeserver(s) |
| 6) Scan storage interconnections |
| 7) File Systems Management (...) |
| 8) Configure replication (...) |
| 9) IP Network configuration (...) |
| 10) Update Firmware (...) |
| 11) Update the System's name |
| 12) Validate configuration |
| 13) Single Node - code upgrade (For Support Use ONLY) |
| 14) OS images Management (...) |
| 15) Replace SAS Drive |
| |
| B) Back |
| E) Exit |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Your choice? 6
4. In the File Systems Management menu, you have options to display information about the devices or file systems configuration as shown in Example 8-3
You can configure the file systems on all available devices (Example 8-3), or for a single device.
Example 8-3 File Systems Management menu
------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| ProtecTIER Service Menu running on lbsdedup1a |
| ProtecTIER Configuration (...) |
| File Systems Management (...) |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1) Configure file systems on all available devices |
| 2) Create file system(s) on a single unused device |
| 3) Extend a file system with a new unused device |
| 4) Update /etc/fstab |
| 5) Display configured devices |
| 6) Display unused devices |
| 7) Display GFS repository file systems |
| 8) Display unused GFS file systems |
| 9) Increase capacity completion (applicable for a second cluster node) |
| |
| B) Back |
| E) Exit |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Your choice? 1
Begin Processing Procedure
Devices to be configured
...
Please confirm:? (yes|no) y
Creating physical volume [ Done ]
Creating volume group [ Done ]
Creating logical volume [ Done ]
Creating file system [ Done ]
...
End Processing Procedure Successfully
5. After you create the file system for all of the devices that are needed, you can go to the ProtecTIER Manager, add the node to it, and then select the Repository menu to create the repository.
For more information about how to create the repository from the ProtecTIER Manager GUI, see the topic about creating a repository for TS7650G Gateway in IBM System Storage TS7600 with ProtecTIER Version 3.3, SG24-7968.
8.5 General preferred practices integrating FlashSystem 900 with ProtecTIER
This section describes some preferred practices that you can use when working with ProtecTIER and IBM FlashSystem 900:
•Make sure that you use ProtecTIER v3.3.5.2 or later.
•Always use RAID 5 Configuration with FlashSystem 900.
•The suggested zoning is to use four paths between each FlashSystem volume and each ProtecTIER Server.
Deploy FlashSystem according to your environment needs:
•ProtecTIER metadata only:
 – Use any number of supported FlashSystem 900 modules in RAID 5 configuration according to the required repository metadata capacity.
 – Determine metadata capacity and layout based on ProtecTIER Metadata Planner tool.
•High I/O per second (IOPS) host structures and ProtecTIER metadata.
•Entire ProtecTIER repository (user data and metadata):
 – Use 12-module FlashSystem 900 in a RAID 5 configuration.
 – Create at least 40 user data volumes of equal size. User data volumes map to repository file systems:
 • Max 170 file systems in a ProtecTIER deduplication repository.
 • Ensure file systems take into account future growth considerations.
 – Create metadata volumes according to the ProtecTIER Metadata Planner output.
For more details about IBM FlashSystem 900, see the following publications:
•FlashSystem 900 Product Guide, TIPS1261
•Implementing IBM FlashSystem 900, SG24-8271
8.5.1 ProtecTIER Metadata Planner preferred practices for FlashSystem 900
The following preferred practices are for FlashSystem and the ProtecTIER Metadata Planner:
•Use 4+4 15,000 RPM FC drives as input for the Metadata Planner.
•Provide binary repository capacity input to the Metadata Planner.
•Determine and configure the FlashSystem 900 volumes according to the Metadata Planner output.
 
Example: Considering a 750 tebibytes (TiB) repository, and 10:1 deduplication ratio, the FlashSystem 900 would require 16,204.8 gibibytes (GiB; 8 x 4 TB module). See Figure 8-8 for more details.
Figure 8-8 ProtecTIER Metadata Planner
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