Systems Hardware Data Sheet

Highlights

• Simplify storage withconsistent capability andmanagement

• Complement on-premisesstorage of all types withhybrid multicloud

• Use encryption to helpimprove data security

• Apply data reduction forefficiency and lower cost

• Move data among storagesystems withoutdisruptions

• Implement multi-siteconfigurations for highavailability and datamobility

• Optimize tiered storageeffortlessly with IBM EasyTier

• Strengthen your defensesagainst cyberattacks

IBM SAN Volume Controller |Data Sheet

Simplify and enhance your infrastructurewith software-defined storage

Most users (93%) report that they are very or somewhatsuccessful at using data to create or discover significant newrevenue opportunities or to increase value, whichdemonstrates that they regard data as a strategic asset thatis critical to their core business. Nonetheless, multi-vendorstorage deployments supporting that data introducecomplexity and cost into the data center.

As a result, hardware cost, data protection, management andoptimization of data placement, rapid growth, and data

migration are the top five concerns of storage users.1

These concerns delay deployment of new storagetechnologies, limit flexibility, and increase costs.

The right software-defined storage is the answer. IBM® SANVolume Controller, built with IBM Spectrum® Virtualizesoftware, simplifies infrastructure and eliminates differencesin management, function, and even hybrid multicloudsupport.

SVC introduces a common approach to storage management,function, replication, and hybrid multicloud that isindependent of storage type. It's the key to modernizing andrevitalizing your storage, but is as easy to understand as A, B,C ...

Agility: Move data without disruption among storage systems

Use different storage systems for different tiers ofstorage

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

Manage all your storage in a consistent way with common tools

Bridging: Bridge to new storage technologies or application areas such as containers

Ease adoption of new technology so you get benefit quickly

Easily add new storage systems and migrate data without disruption

Support containers and Red Hat OpenShift with the storage you already have

Cloud: Add hybrid cloud capability to your storage

Deploy a unified cloud capability across all storage types and different clouds

Enjoy hybrid multicloud that is simple, consistent, and comprehensive

Data Reduction: Store more data on the storage you already own

Support growing volumes of data

Avoid or delay new purchases, reducing capex needs

Encryption: Improve cyber resiliency by encrypting data at rest

Apply consistent encryption and key management across storage systems

Make cyber resiliency simpler and more dependable

In the era of hybrid cloud, big data and analytics, and mobile and social computing,organizations need to meet ever-changing demands for storage while also improving dataeconomics. IT must deliver more services faster and more efficiently, enable rapid insight andsupport more customer interaction. All while maintaining high levels of data resiliency includingcyber security.

Building an effective infrastructure starts with software-defined storage, which frees data fromphysical storage and provides better access to applications.

Built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize software—the software at the heart of IBMFlashSystem family—IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) helps organizations achieve better dataeconomics by supporting these new workloads that are critical to their success. SVC systemscan handle the massive volumes of data from mobile and social applications, enable rapid andflexible cloud services deployments and deliver the performance and scalability needed to gaininsights from the latest analytics technologies.

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

A proven industry-leading storage solution, SVC has been delivering availability, reliability,flexibility and efficiency for more 18 years. Its innovative capabilities, built with IBM SpectrumVirtualize, also provide the foundation for the IBM FlashSystem family and VersaStackintegrated solutions.

Enhancing storage function

SVC includes IBM Spectrum Virtualize technology to help insulate applications from physicalstorage. This enables applications to run without disruption, even when changes are made tothe storage infrastructure.

IBM SAN Volume Controller Engines

SVC helps make new and existing storage more effective and includes many functionstraditionally deployed separately in storage systems. SVC standardizes functions across storagesystems for greater flexibility and lower costs.

IBM Spectrum Virtualize functions in SVC benefit all supported storage, more than 500 systemsfrom IBM and others. For example, Easy Tier and compression help improve performance andincrease effective capacity; encryption helps improve data security; and high-performance thinprovisioning helps automate provisioning. These benefits can help extend the useful life ofexisting storage assets, helping to reduce costs. And since these functions are integrated intoSVC, they can operate smoothly together, reducing management effort.

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

Hybrid cloud

The challenge for organizations deploying storage for hybrid cloud is how to take advantage ofhybrid cloud technology without the expense of replacing current storage with cloud-capablestorage systems or the complexity of different cloud solutions from different storage vendors.IBM Spectrum Virtualize in SVC and the cloud enables a common cloud solution for allsupported storage regardless of vendor. IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud enables newuse cases including cloud DR, DevOps and analytics, cyber resiliency, and workload migration.

Data reduction for enhanced efficiency

SVC can apply data reduction to new or existing storage to significantly increase usable capacitywhile maintaining application performance. This can help eliminate or drastically reduce costsfor storage acquisition, rack space, power, and cooling, and can extend the useful life of existingstorage assets. SVC data reduction includes compression, deduplication, thin provisioning, andSCSI unmap.

Tiered storage

Automated storage tiering with IBM Easy Tier® can help improve performance at a lower cost byenabling more efficient use of flash storage, storage-class memory (SCM) or multiple tiers ofdisk drives. Easy Tier automatically identifies more active data and moves that data to flash.

Easy Tier can use any supported flash storage to benefit data on any other storage. Thisapproach delivers greater benefits from flash storage than tiering systems that are limited tojust a single storage system.

Rock solid data resilience

Moving data is one of the most common causes of planned downtime. The IBMSpectrum Virtualize technology within IBM SAN Volume Controller enables data movement fromone storage system to another, or between arrays while maintaining access to the data. Thisfunction can be used when replacing older storage with newer storage, as part of load-balancingwork, or when moving data in a tiered storage infrastructure from disk drives to flash.

Should an SVC engine fail, a “hot spare” capability enables the system to rapidly switch to astandby engine, restoring full redundancy and performance in seconds.

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

IBM HyperSwap® function supports storage and servers in two or three data centers. Inthis configuration, IBM SVC enables servers at each data center to access data concurrently,with automated switch-over in case of failure. When it is implemented by IBM Lab Services, IBMcan guarantee 100% availability. When combined with server data mobility functions such asVMware vMotion or IBM PowerVM® Live Partition Mobility, HyperSwap technology enables non-disruptive storage and virtual machine mobility between data centers that can be up to 300 km(186 miles) apart.

As systems became linked with external networks, organizations adopted a “defense-in-depth” security mode so that if the perimeter was breached, there were additional layers ofsecurity to protect critical information. IBM SAN Volume Controller provides advancedcapabilities that can help maximize data protection, security, and high availability to significantlyreduce the risk of disruption and financial losses due to user errors, malicious destruction, orransomware attacks.

With Safeguarded Copy, IBM protects your valued data form cyberattacks with immutableand isolated copies that are hidden, non-addressable and cannot be altered or deleted. In theevent of an attack, these copies can be quickly restored to support recovery. In addition,physical isolation layers can also be created by storing sensitive copies in immutable storage,cloud environments or off-line write-once read many (WORM) tape devices to provide physicalair-gap protection.

And with more organizations looking to adopt data resilience solutions that go beyondsimple data backup and recovery, the IBM Spectrum Protect portfolio is the perfect complementfor IBM SAN Volume Controller. It provides unified end-to-end workload protection, both on-premises and in the cloud, including applications, VMs, file systems, SaaS workloads, AWS EC2instances, and containers.

Simplified management

IBM Spectrum Virtualize software delivers a modern user interface for centralized management.With this single interface, administrators can perform configuration, management and servicetasks in a consistent manner over multiple storage systems—even from differentvendors—vastly simplifying management and helping reduce the risk of errors. Plug-ins tosupport Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, VMware vCenter, and Red HatAnsible help enable more efficient, consolidated management in these environments. Theinterface is consistent with other members of the IBM Spectrum Storage family, to simplifytasks for administrators and help reduce the risk of error.

Gain storage visibility, insight and control

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

As the resource on which your business depends, data is paramount. Your storage systems takeon even greater importance. IBM Storage Insights and IBM Storage Insights Pro provide criticalcapabilities that enhance your experience throughout that data’s lifetime:

A single dashboard so you can see the status of all your IBM block storage at a glance

Trend information about capacity and performance so you can make better and more informeddecisions

Storage health information that helps you bring your configuration in line with best practices

When support is needed, the ability to easily open a ticket, upload log information, and viewopen tickets

Detailed configuration data available to IBM specialists to help close tickets quickly

Delivered as a service from IBM Cloud® at no charge, Storage Insights is quick and easy to set upand requires no ongoing software maintenance. IBM Storage Insights Pro is an upgrade thatprovides more detailed information and additional capabilities including support for cloudstorage managed by IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud.

Complement server virtualization and containerization

IBM Spectrum Virtualize in SVC complements server virtualization with technologies such asPowerVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere, Red Hat OpenShift, and Kubernetes.

Similar to virtualized servers, provisioning with SVC is achieved with software and with thinprovisioning and is designed to become an almost entirely automated function. Without SVC,server provisioning could be slowed by the need to provision storage.

Containerization is a key enabling technology for flexibly delivering workloads to private andpublic cloud and DevOps. SVC enables any supported storage to be used as persistent storage incontainer environments with support for the Container Storage Interface (CSI), improvingflexibility, simplifying deployment and helping to lower costs while offering clients theconfidence of deploying stateful containers using highly available storage with enterprisecapabilities.

Many organizations run mixed environments with a variety of virtualized and non-virtualizedservers and expect to do so for years to come. SVC offers an external storage solution to provideconsistent services for all attached servers, whether or not those servers are virtualized.

Scalability and performance

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

SVC is an integrated, modular highly scalable system. SVC engines are deployed in pairs for highavailability; a system contains one to four pairs. SVC systems can be upgraded withoutdisruption with more engines for greater performance. Two engine models are available to suitdiffering price/performance needs. Available networking options include 32 Gbps fibre channel,10 Gbps ethernet, and 25 Gbps ethernet. SVC supports iSCSI, fibre channel, FC-NVMe, iWARP,and RoCE protocols.

Foundation for cloud deployments

Improving efficiency and delivering a flexible, responsive IT infrastructure are essentialrequirements for any cloud deployment. Technologies for delivering this infrastructure includevirtualization, consolidation and automation.

With its robust storage capabilities, high-availability architecture and compatibility withPowerVM, Hyper-V, VMware, Red Hat OpenShift, and Kubernetes, SVC complements virtualizedand containerized servers that are at the heart of cloud deployments.

1 “ESG Research Report: Data Storage Trends in an Increasingly Hybrid Cloud World,” March2020. https://www.esg-global.com/research/esg-research-report-data-storage-trends-in-an-increasingly-hybrid-cloud-world

IBM SAN Volume Controller at a glance

Shared SMP processor configuration perengine

Model SA2: Dual 8-core 2.1GHz Intel Xeon 4208 (CascadeLake) processors with 128-768GiB memoryModel SV2: Dual 16-core 2.3GHz Intel Xeon 5218 (CascadeLake) processors with 128-768GiB memory

Processor memory per engine 128 to 768 GiB

Host adapter interfaces per engine • Up to twelve 32-Gbps Fibre Channel ports (FC or FC-NVMe)• Up to six 25-Gbps optical (SFP+) Ethernet ports for (iSCSI,iWARP, RoCE)• Four 10-Gbps copper (RJ45) Ethernet ports

Maximum storage capacity Up to 32 PB usable capacity

Storage and server attachment Fibre Channel, FC-NVMe, and iSCSI

Storage system support More than 500 flash, hybrid and disk storage systems fromIBM and other vendors

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

Why IBM?

IBM offers services to help speedimplementation and improve return oninvestment. IBM storage specialists areavailable to conduct storage solution andinfrastructure reviews that can help prepareand speed installation. And IBM GlobalServices can examine your infrastructure tohelp determine sizing and performanceneeds. In addition, you can choose from arange of service and subscription offeringsdesigned to keep your infrastructure up-to-date and running smoothly.

For more information

For more information about IBM SAN VolumeController, please visit our solutions page, orcontact your IBM representative or IBMBusiness Partner. If you don’t yet have anIBM representative or business partner, youcan fill out this form to schedule a consultwith our storage experts.

For the complete and latest supportinformation, visit the SVC support page.

Additionally, IBM Global Financing providesnumerous payment options to help youacquire the technology you need to growyour business. We provide full lifecyclemanagement of IT products and services,from acquisition to disposition. For moreinformation, visit: ibm.com/financing

Systems Hardware Data Sheet

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