IBM XIV Storage consulting services & sales by Abtech Systems

Does your current storage solutions leave you thinking that you invested a lot of bread and didn’t get much meat?

In the old days (last year), when you wanted expandable storage, you would buy an array with a powerful controller head unit and as many expansion trays as the controller could handle. There were some very good solutions with good expandability but they always topped out when the controller couldn’t keep up with demand. Some of the choices had very sophisticated tools for provisioning, LUN set up and growth. Some have tools for snap-shots and mirrors and thin provisioning. Unfortunately, those tools are additional cost and generally get more expensive as you add more capacity. That method might work fine for the general computing environment but, either tops out in capacity and performance or tops out your budget way before the enterprise clients has a meaningful solution.
 

If you manage an enterprise environment and need thin provisioning, snap shots, self-healing architectures and enterprise performance where could you turn? All of those tools are available through various manufactures but at a price tag that increases exponentially as you add capacity. And, often all of these tools are not available from the same manufacturer.

Step into XIV and get more meat for a lot less bread!
IBM puts it all together and bundles ALL of the features you need for storage in an enterprise data center. No more headaches, no more finger pointing. Just petabytes of reliable storage that can be managed through a single pane of glass.

What makes XIV special?
The IBM XIV Storage System integrates the latest technology advances and an innovative design to deliver a grid-based storage system in an extremely easy-to-manage environment. It is a fully scalable, high-end system that delivers an excellent TCO-benefit ratio in the enterprise space.
 

XIV technology translates into a totally new experience in storage management. It achieves this breakthrough on several fronts and by numerous means:

• Performance – Innovatively using mass parallelism, a unique caching design, and perfect load-balancing, the XIV system delivers outstanding performance and maintains consistent high performance through any failure

  • Benefit – Tier one performance at Tier two pricing

   

• Reliability – The system's grid architecture and revolutionary redundancy scheme immunize against any single failure and greatly reduce double-failure risk

  • Benefit – lower ownership costs as compared to normal support pricing

   

• Single-architecture storage – The XIV system delivers first-class performance, reliability and features, at low TCO, eliminating the need for ILM or tiered storage management

  • Benefit – No need to manage multi-tier systems architectures reducing overall ownership pricing

   

• Large capacity drives for enterprise – The XIV system extracts high-end performance from SATA drives while granting its users their cost, density and power savings benefits

  • Benefit – SATA drives lower drive pricing dramatically compared to SAS and FC while delivering better performance

   

• Snapshots – The XIV system combines revolutionary replication technology with huge CPU and cache power to offer endless differential snapshots with performance intact

  • Benefit – most arrays price snapshots as an additional feature with high additional costs – not only does XIV blend this feature into the base product price – there is no additional charge for nearly unlimited snapshots

   

• Thin provisioning – The XIV system allocates physical disk space per actual storage used rather than per storage space defined, reducing capital and operational costs

  • Benefit – thin provisioning eliminates unused space allocation – less space – lower costs

   

• Scalability – The XIV system scales to petabytes of storage and provides linear scalability with respect to CPU power, cache, and bandwidth

  • Benefit – scalability can be achieved in numerous ways but when you can scale to petabytes under a single pane of glass, you can also manage under a single pane of glass which drastically reduces management costs

   

• 100% standard components – The XIV system runs entirely on off-the-shelf hardware, such as standard Intel-based servers and gigabit Ethernet switches, offering an exceptionally cost-effective and future-proof solution

  • Benefit – eliminating proprietary hardware significantly reduces the entry price of a solution providing lower overall cost

   

• Grid architecture – Built from a grid of components connected via any-to-any topology, the XIV system offers exceptional scalability, performance and reliability

  • Benefit – the grid provides superior performance without the need for a proprietary architecture – once again – lower cost

   

• True virtualization built-in – The XIV system separates logical and physical entities, and applies all volume to all disks, for top performance and easy management

  • Benefit – managing the overall system in a simple to use yet powerful GUI provides less headaches in administering the array – less headaches – well, less headaches
    
     

  SATA Drives for High-End Storage
  The XIV system leverages the revolutionary technology of SATA disks, providing an enterprise storage system that features huge capacities, high density, and low power consumption — and at reduced TCO and outstanding performance levels.
   

  The key factor in the dramatic increase in capacity density is "perpendicular recording" — a new technology that revolutionizes how bits are encoded on magnetic media. This technology has already reached the amazing density of 1 TB per disk drive and promises much more.
   

  Traditional storage architecture is unable to handle well this quantum leap in disk capacity. Using standard mirroring or RAID-5 protection schemes leads to huge rebuild times. Another problem of traditional architecture is that the relatively slow rotational speed of SATA drives (7200 RPM, rather than 10K and 15K RPM) causes major performance problems.
   

  The XIV system provides the highest levels of performance and reliability based on large SATA drives, achieving this feat by employing a unique architecture, mass parallelism and a special caching scheme. Using the XIV system, IT teams can actually improve performance while saving on power, cooling, and space and, as such, meet their budgetary and “green” objectives.
   

  Specifically, the XIV system uses 7200 SATA drives with vertical recording, out-performing systems based on 15K RPM FC drives.
  
  XIV Manages Data in a Revolutionary Fashion
  The XIV system manages data across the RAID array in a revolutionary fashion. Contact your Abtech Systems, Inc. sales representative today for more information on how to gain the benefits of tier 1 storage, performance and features at a cost of tier 2 equivalents.

   

  Optimizing Enterprise Storage Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with IBM XIV (PDF 639 KB)

  Cost/benefit case for IBM XIV System Storage (PDF 641 KB)