IBM Systems and TechnologyIBM XIV Storage System series

IBM XIV Storageand VMwareOptimal storage for end-to-end virtualization

Highlights● Virtualized storage for stellar perform-

ance, cloud agility and scalability● Controlled self-service storage provi-

sioning and powerful managementwith a vCenter plug-in

● VAAI support that leverages VMware’sbest storage practices

● Monitoring and policy-based storagedeployment with a VASA provider

● Automated, reliable storage failoverwith the XIV adapter for SRM

Thousands of organizations are discovering that the IBM® XIV®

Storage System series, with a virtualized storage architecture, is a perfectfit with VMware environments. In fact, the lion’s share of customersdeploy XIV together with VMware, benefitting from consistently highperformance, game-changing ease of use, low TCO and a deep integra-tion that specifically addresses VMware scenarios.

Stellar storage performance with VMwareThe XIV grid architecture and advanced caching algorithms keep thetypical random I/O produced by VMware hosts away from the spindles.Balanced XIV resource utilization helps ensure high performance that isstubbornly consistent and predictable, without manual or automatedmaintenance.

Game-changing ease of managementThe single-tier XIV design performs powerful automated load-balancing,eliminating the possibility of hotspots. With XIV Gen3, simple host-oriented I/O sharing control can ensure consistent quality of service.

XIV features a simple, superior user interface—the same interface that’snow a standard for the IBM storage portfolio. Flexibility gains new mean-ing, with the IBM XIV Mobile Dashboard delivering up-to-the-minuteXIV monitoring virtually anywhere, anytime via the Apple iPad oriPhone.

Consolidation and host performanceXIV support for VAAI (VMware APIs for Array Integration) significantlyincreases vSphere’s consolidation capabilities. It allows customers to easilyapply VMware best storage practices by off loading storage tasks to XIV,helping eliminate unnecessary VM lockdown (caused by VMFS-levelSCSI reservation contention, which VAAI resolves).

Storage visibility and automationThe IBM Management Console for VMware vCenter (vCenter plug-in) givesVMware administrators the ability to monitor storage easily from withinvCenter. The plug-in provides comprehensive detailed XIV LUN andpool information down to the status of mirrors and snapshots, with achoice of VM, host, cluster, datacenter and datastore contexts.

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The IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA (VMware APIs for StorageAwareness) enables vSphere to monitor and automate XIV storage-related operations. The XIV VASA provider delivers information aboutstorage topology, capabilities and state, as well as events and alerts.

Self-service storage provisioningThe IBM vCenter plug-in provides an option for pool-level, storage-administrator-controlled delegation of storage provisioning tasks toVMware administrators. Working within vCenter, the VMware adminis-trator can easily create, map and modify XIV LUNs on demand—eitherregularly or thinly provisioned—limited only by the capacity allocated viathe delegated pools. The storage administrator is freed from ad hoc provisioning, and benefits from more realistic storage consumption tracking and more accurate capacity planning.

FailoverThe XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter SRM enables VMware administra-tors to automate XIV failover in sync with VMware Site RecoveryManager failover.

Backup and hardware snapshotsThe IBM Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy® Manager (FCM) vCenter plug-inprovides scheduled XIV datastore-level hardware snapshots. In addition,when combined with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), the snapshotscan be used to back up and restore individual VMs and virtual volumes,or files within a virtual volume.

VMware vCloud deploymentsFor cloud deployments that demand a pre-specified reliable level of serv-ice on a large scale, XIV storage is an ideal, highly-dependable, low-risk,low-TCO choice. XIV helps deliver hotspot-free consistent high performance, host-oriented QoS and simple provisioning.

Top-tier IBM-VMware partnershipAs a trusted VMware Technology Alliance Partner,IBM offers one of the world’s leading comprehensivesuites of differentiating solutions for VMware users.IBM, a longstanding VMware collaborator, is one ofthe few vendors co-developing storage integrationwith the next version of VMware. XIV storage system series is used at the VMware ReferenceArchitecture Lab, contributing to the development,testing and release of progressive VMware featuresand robust IBM XIV storage solutions.

Optimal virtualization, realbenefitsWith XIV storage, VMware customers gain a power-ful, strikingly easy-to-manage storage complement tothe VMware environment—with consistent highperformance and low TCO.

For more informationTo learn more about IBM XIV and VMware, pleasecontact your IBM marketing representative orIBM Business Partner, or visit the following website:ibm.com/storage/disk/xiv

IBM XIV integration points with the VMware Infrastructure

StorageManagement

Plug-in

DataProtection

Plug-in

TivoliFlashCopyManagerXIV

VMwarevCenter

VMware InfrastructureVirtual Datacenter OS from VMware

Application

vServicesAvailability Security Scalability

InfrastructurevServices vCompute vStorage vNetwork

.Net SaaS Windows Linux J2EE Desktop App

Site RecoveryManager

StorageReplication

Adapter

VASA VADP VAAI

XIV XIVTivoliStorageManagerXIV

On-premise Cloud Off-premise Cloud

CloudvServices

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012Route 100Somers, NY 10589

Produced in the United States of AmericaJanuary 2012

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, FlashCopy, Tivoli and XIV aretrademarks of International Business Machines Corporation inthe United States, other countries or both. If these and otherIBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrencein this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), thesesymbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarksowned by IBM at the time this information was published.Such trademarks may also be registered or common lawtrademarks in other countries. A current list ofIBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright andtrademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml

Other company, product or service names may be trademarksor service marks of others.

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