Introducing IBM Spectrum Accelerate
A member of the IBM Spectrum Storage family, IBM Spectrum Accelerate is a software-defined storage solution that uses many of the features and capabilities of the IBM XIV storage software.
This chapter describes the solution and includes the following topics:
1.1 IBM Spectrum Storage family overview
The IBM Spectrum Storage family of products is a comprehensive portfolio of software offerings that are based on proven IBM technologies. It facilitates and optimizes storage management. It also helps organizations cope with substantial data growth and new workloads that arise from the cloud environment and analytics, mobile, and social networking applications. IBM Spectrum Storage increases operational agility and provides cost-effective solutions that use hardware investments and increase business agility.
The IBM Spectrum Storage family is composed of the following members that are shown in Figure 1-1:
•IBM Spectrum Control™ provides efficient infrastructure management for virtualized, cloud, and software-defined storage to simplify and automate storage provisioning, capacity management, availability monitoring, and reporting. It includes IBM Spectrum Control Base, which provides a single-server backend location and enables centralized management of IBM storage resources for different virtualization and cloud platforms.
•IBM Spectrum Protect™ improves efficiency of data protection and resiliency for software-defined, virtual, physical, and cloud environments.
•IBM Spectrum Virtualize provides storage virtualization for IBM and other manufacturers’ storage systems. The functions of IBM Spectrum Virtualize are provided by IBM SAN Volume Controller.
•IBM Spectrum Accelerate (which is the focus of this book) offers grid-scale block storage with rapid deployment that helps speed delivery of data across an enterprise and adds flexibility to cloud deployments.
•IBM Spectrum Scale™ provides flash-accelerated, highly scalable management and access to data with extreme scalability and agility for cloud and analytics.
•IBM Spectrum Archive™ facilitates movement of infrequently used data from disk to tape. The functions of IBM Spectrum Archive are provided by IBM Linear Tape File System™.
Figure 1-1 IBM Spectrum Storage family overview
1.2 IBM Spectrum Accelerate overview
IBM Spectrum Accelerate is an agile software-defined storage (SDS) solution for enterprise and cloud that builds on the customer-proven and mature IBM XIV storage grid architecture. The key characteristic of IBM Spectrum Accelerate is that it can easily be deployed and run on purpose-built or customer-chosen hardware, on-premises or off-premises.
As shown in Figure 1-2, IBM Spectrum Accelerate runs as a virtual machine under the VMware vSphere ESXi hypervisor on a pool of interconnected x86 servers of your choice (called modules) and consolidates their disk storage, which makes it available over iSCSI.
Figure 1-2 IBM Spectrum Accelerate conceptual diagram
Starting with Version 11.5.1, IBM Spectrum Accelerate introduces support for converged infrastructures. Converged infrastructure support means that the IBM Spectrum Accelerate virtual machine can run parallel to other virtual machines on the same VMware ESXi server.
1.2.1 IBM Spectrum Accelerate features
IBM Spectrum Accelerate provides the following capabilities:
•Ability to build an enterprise cloud storage by using commodity hardware
•Can use hard disk drives that are indirectly attached to the server
•Ability to obtain hot spot-free and scalable high performance and quality of service (QoS) without the need for any tuning
•Support for advanced remote replication, role-based security, and multi-tenancy
•Ability to deploy on-premises or on the cloud
•IBM Hyper-Scale management support
•Volume mobility between IBM Spectrum Accelerate clusters, with IBM Hyper-Scale Mobility (requires IBM Spectrum Accelerate V11.5.3 or later)
•VMware and OpenStack integration
•Flexible licensing
These capabilities and other characteristics are based on the same core technology that is used in the enterprise class IBM XIV storage software.
For more information about these features, see IBM XIV Storage System Architecture and Implementation, SG24-7659.
For more information about IBM Hyper-Scale, see IBM Hyper-Scale in XIV Storage, REDP-5053.
Full data redundancy and distribution across modules and disks
IBM Spectrum Accelerate software provides a pseudo-random and uniform distribution of data across all available disks of the system. Data is divided into 1 MB partitions that are distributed across all system disks. Each partition is stored twice, which results in two distinct copies with each copy stored on a different disk that is hosted in a separate hardware module for added protection.
Self-healing mechanisms: Rebuilding and redistribution
In case of disk or module failure, IBM Spectrum Accelerate software automatically identifies those partitions that are no longer redundant and places a copy of those partitions on another disk of another module. This so-called rebuild process occurs immediately upon disk failure. This automatic rebuilding of data is much faster than any conventional Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID array) rebuild.
In a disk failure or after adding modules and drives, the system also starts a redistribution to ensure that all available disks resources remain evenly used.
No load balancing required
The algorithm that places data partitions across all disks of the system ensures an even and pseudo-random distribution over all disks always. There are no hot-spots, and any workload evenly accesses all the disks and modules across the system.
Storage pools and volumes
IBM Spectrum Accelerate enables administrators to logically divide the storage into manageable entities that are called storage pools, over which different characteristics can be applied. The storage volumes are created within these storage pools.
Snapshots
IBM Spectrum Accelerate system supports multiple snapshots of volumes and consistency groups, and snapshots of snapshots. Enhanced algorithms allow the system to perform snapshots almost immediately with virtually no performance effect.
Consistency Groups
A Consistency Group of volumes enables cross-volume data consistency for snapshots that are taken of a volume group, which allows for remote replication of such a group. IBM Spectrum Accelerate also features support for cross-system Consistency Groups across
IBM XIV or IBM Spectrum Accelerate systems. The cross-system consistency is provided by IBM Hyper Scale Consistency.
IBM XIV or IBM Spectrum Accelerate systems. The cross-system consistency is provided by IBM Hyper Scale Consistency.
Thin provisioning and space reclamation
IBM Spectrum Accelerate supports storage pool thin provisioning and allows for space reclamation when notified by a host file system that disk space was deleted at the host level.
Synchronous and asynchronous remote mirroring
Remote mirroring is supported by IBM Spectrum Accelerate with another IBM Spectrum Accelerate system or an IBM XIV system. Remote mirroring can be synchronous or asynchronous. Offline initialization is also supported.
Multi-tenancy
IBM Spectrum Accelerate allows the division of the storage system into several administrative domains, in a secure and isolated manner, so that several tenants can each own part of the system capacity.
Concurrent system upgrade
IBM Spectrum Accelerator systems can be concurrently upgraded.
User access profiles and LDAP authentication
IBM Spectrum Accelerate supports role-based user access control, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) with role-based access control. Supported LDAP servers include Microsoft Active Directory and Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition.
Remote configuration management
IBM XIV GUI and IBM Hyper Scale Manager allow for remote management of an IBM Spectrum Accelerate system.
Event handling and notifications
IBM Spectrum Accelerate system can be configured to send notification through email, SMS, or SNMP for any configurable set of events.
State-of-the-art management and monitoring GUI
IBM Spectrum Accelerate uses the highly intuitive IBM XIV GUI as its management graphical user interface. It can also be managed through the Hyper-Scale Manager, which is the management tool of choice for larger installations with multiple systems.
Mobile Dashboard application for mobile devices (iOS and Android)
Health, performance, and capacity monitoring can be done by using a mobile application available for iOS and Android.
Advanced CLI management
IBM Management Tools provide a powerful command-line interface that supports complex scripting to manage, support, and configure an IBM Spectrum Accelerate system. This tool provides all of the features that are available through the IBM XIV GUI.
RESTful APIs
IBM Spectrum Accelerate supports RESTful API version 2.0, which adds functions for storage administration tasks, including Copy Services. This API allows IBM Spectrum Accelerate clients to develop their own storage management infrastructure around it, or include it into their storage cloud administration infrastructure.
For more information about RESTful API support, see Exploring RESTful API Support with XIV, REDP-5064.
iSCSI connectivity
Host attachment to an IBM Spectrum Accelerate system is over iSCSI; therefore, it does not require a dedicated Fibre Channel network.
Multiple host access
The even distribution of data across an IBM Spectrum Accelerate system allows for a steady system performance whatever the host access, which makes the system convenient for multiple host access.
IBM remote support and proactive support
IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be configured to automatically send events to IBM through the Call Home option, depending on the nature or severity of a problem. This feature allows remote monitoring and repair by IBM Support personnel.
IBM Hyper-Scale
IBM Spectrum Accelerate V11.5.3 or later supports IBM Hyper-Scale Mobility over iSCSI networks.
IBM Hyper-Scale Mobility over iSCSI networks allows transparent, nondisruptive volume mobility between IBM Spectrum Accelerate storage clusters. The ability to easily move volumes from one cluster to another allows you to balance the workload and effective resource utilization among multiple IBM Spectrum Accelerate systems.
Overall, IBM Hyper-Scale Mobility helps users use their IBM Spectrum Accelerate environment to the fullest. IBM Hyper-Scale Mobility, along with IBM Hyper-Scale Manager and IBM Hyper-Scale Consistency, can maximize scale-out of an IBM Spectrum Accelerate environment with the extreme cloud benefit of managing up to 144 instances as a single system.
For more information about IBM Hyper-Scale, see IBM Hyper-Scale in XIV Storage, REDP-5053.
1.2.2 IBM Spectrum Accelerate benefits
The use of IBM Spectrum Accelerate can offer the following benefits:
•Speed
IBM Spectrum Accelerate provides a versatile deployment feature that allows rapid deployments of more storage capacity.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate relies on commodity hardware, so it avoids lengthy procurement cycles to build a new storage infrastructure.
•Agility
IBM Spectrum Accelerate provides on-premises and off-premises deployment. It inter-operates with XIV systems. This compatibility facilitates integration with your XIV storage infrastructure.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate requires a minimum of three modules, and can easily scale to up to 15 modules without interrupting applications. IBM Spectrum Accelerate enables you to deploy high-end enterprise storage technology and features, such as advanced remote replication on existing or custom hardware, which can reduce deployment costs.
Fast provisioning, small capacity increments, and licensing flexibility enable you to easily repurpose servers, and therefore implement a shorter time-to-market, whether it be for a short-term, mid-term, or a long-term answer to your business needs.
•Simple management
IBM Spectrum Accelerate management is based on the IBM XIV Management Tools, which provide a single intuitive, ergonomic, and mobile dashboard that provides capacity planning, monitoring, and reporting externalization.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate algorithms provide autonomic features that deliver performance and availability without any need for tuning, which makes management drastically simpler.
Moreover, these algorithms ensure scalable performance as modules are added, which makes it easier to manage and plan for capacity on such storage infrastructure.
Because Spectrum Accelerate does not require proprietary storage hardware, you can decide to use the same homogeneous server hardware across the enterprise, which minimizes administration and maintenance skills requirements.
•High performance
The way that IBM Spectrum Accelerate code uniformly distributes storage data across all available internal disks of the system enables efficient, high-performance delivery of grid-scale block storage without any hot spots or any tuning required.
•Cost-effective
IBM Spectrum Accelerate provides business value in various directions, which lowers its total cost of ownership. It uses commodity hardware, which avoids an up-front, costly storage hardware investment. It provides simple management with zero tuning and a centralized, mobile, intuitive, and ergonomic dashboard, which lowers infrastructure administrative costs.
•Cloud-ready
IBM Spectrum Accelerate enables you to build your own enterprise-grade, scalable, hybrid cloud environment. Its agility speeds up cloud deployments of new workloads.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate can run on SoftLayer® self-service Infrastructure as a Service. It provides the following enterprise and cloud-ready features, among others:
– Snapshots: High-performance writable snapshots, snapshots of snapshots, and restoration of snapshots from snapshots
– Synchronous and asynchronous replication, allowing disaster recovery with IBM Spectrum Accelerate or XIV
– Multi-tenancy
– RESTful API
– OpenStack support
•Simple integration
IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be orchestrated and automated by higher management software through the XCLI, RESTful API, or OpenStack, which makes it easier to integrate with storage management infrastructure.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate is compatible with XIV systems and management, and all can be managed by IBM Hyper-Scale Manager.
•Security
IBM Spectrum Accelerate provides security features, such as LDAP authentication, iSCSI Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP), SSL connections and certificates, role-based access control, and multi-tenancy.
1.3 IBM Spectrum Accelerate technical overview
IBM Spectrum Accelerate software is a virtual appliance that runs over a hypervisor engine. Specifically, IBM Spectrum Accelerate supports the VMware ESXi hypervisor.
Although it is independent of hardware, IBM Spectrum Accelerate imposes some hardware prerequisites and requirements. The hardware must be in accordance with the guidelines that are described in 2.2.1, “Hardware requirements” on page 17.
VMware ESXi hypervisor virtualizes the server capabilities and presents the resources to the IBM Spectrum Accelerate virtual appliance as compute, network, and storage resources. This encapsulation of the IBM Spectrum Accelerate virtual appliance (VMware ESXi) and the disk storage available over the network is known as a module.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be deployed on a pool of 3 - 15 modules. The hardware of a module is composed of an x86 commodity server with 6 - 12 internal disks, which makes up the storage infrastructure. Starting with IBM Spectrum Accelerate V11.5.1, externally iSCSI attached disks are also supported. Optionally, one solid-state drive can be added to each module for read caching.
Host attachment is performed by each of the pertaining modules through an iSCSI interface. The module infrastructure is shown in Figure 1-3.
Figure 1-3 IBM Spectrum Accelerate module infrastructure overview
Each module provides processing, cache, and iSCSI interfaces to hosts, and other IBM Spectrum Accelerate and IBM XIV systems. All modules work together and concurrently as components of a storage grid architecture.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate relies on the following networks to build its storage infrastructure:
•Interconnect
This network is required to establish connectivity between different modules within the IBM Spectrum Accelerate system for all of the grid-related actions, such as read, write, and rebuild. This network can be internal to the IBM Spectrum Accelerate system.
•Management
This network allows external management and access to IBM Spectrum Accelerate system from the management workstation.
•iSCSI
This network is required to establish communication between the IBM Spectrum Accelerate system and the hosts. It provides the hosts with storage read/write operations. This connectivity also allows communication with other IBM XIV or IBM Spectrum Accelerate Systems, and for replication and migration.
This structure is shown in Figure 1-4.
Figure 1-4 Conceptual architecture of an IBM Spectrum Accelerate system
1.4 Typical use cases
Features and benefits of IBM Spectrum Accelerate bring value for the following new scenarios:
•Flexible operations
•Remote office and branch office
•Scalable and Modular Building Block
•Hybrid cloud and SoftLayer
•Disaster recovery and backup
•Application environment
•Industry specifics
1.4.1 Flexible operations
The following scenarios are made possible by IBM Spectrum Accelerate:
•Temporary: Building a short-term temporary storage infrastructure that is based on your own commodity hardware during a marketing campaign, or for development and test of a new application.
•Server repurpose: Building an enterprise storage system out of your old servers.
1.4.2 Remote and branch offices
IBM Spectrum Accelerate is well-suited for distributed organizations where the corporate headquarters is connected to many satellite locations. In such cases, the corporate data center is equipped with an IBM XIV, and remote branches run IBM Spectrum Accelerate. This setup provides such organizations with the following advantages:
•Use hardware, which allows remote and branch offices to benefit from enterprise block storage functions at lower cost, without the need for distributed storage IT resources.
•Implement storage disaster recovery at low cost, which keeps branches up and running by using data replication from IBM Spectrum Accelerate to IBM XIV.
•Centralize storage management with a single storage solution for all their locations, which reduces their storage management staffing to a single central location.
1.4.3 Scalable and modular building block
By using IBM Spectrum Accelerate, you can build a more homogeneous data center because it is based on single hardware for compute and storage resources. This characteristic enables the same hardware IT administrator to manage the entire data center stack.
Single hardware enables better standardization of network, compute, and power resources, thus simplifying maintenance.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate scalability allows you to easily manage growth without the need for any management action.
1.4.4 Bridge to the hybrid cloud
IBM Spectrum Accelerate enables connection to a public cloud, such as SoftLayer, as shown in Figure 1-5.
Figure 1-5 IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be deployed on premises or in the cloud
It is then possible to back up IBM Spectrum Accelerate data to a public cloud and recover from it, or use public cloud as temporary storage during events, such as maintenance windows.
Likewise, cloud service providers can provide IBM Spectrum Accelerate advanced features.
Customers can also engage IBM Lab Services to deploy Spectrum Accelerate on the SoftLayer Cloud. For more information, see Deploying IBM Spectrum Accelerate on Cloud, REDP-5261.
1.4.5 Typical usage by some industries
IBM Spectrum Accelerate can be deployed in the cloud. This configuration provides new possibilities to the following industries:
•Media and entertainment
Temporary enterprise storage systems can be obtained from the cloud thanks to IBM Spectrum Accelerate cloud deployment for the time of the show, which temporarily increases storage content at low cost.
•Banking
Banks can store only part of their backups in the cloud. IBM Spectrum Accelerate can offer them a secure enterprise solution.
•Telecommunications
Telecommunication regulations require companies to save their data, which can be done in a secure manner with IBM Spectrum Accelerate to the cloud.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.