DS4700, DS4800 and DS5000
disk storage systems support an
intermix of high performance Fibre
Channel drives and high capacity
SATA drives, enabling tiered storage
in a single system. Combined with
storage partitioning, tiered storage
allows storage classes to be
created that better match storage
characteristics to application
requirements. One such example
is to use one partition for production
data while a second partition is
used for backup or data protection
purposes. Such storage classes
can lower storage costs while
meeting application performance
requirements. Together, tiered storage
and partitioning promote storage
consolidation, lower storage costs,
and can raise Virtual Machine
service levels in a VMware
Infrastructure.
•Enhancedavailability.Besides
typical availability features such
as RAID (including RAID 6),
redundant/hot-swappable parts,
online firmware upgrades, controller
failover, the DS4000 Series offers
additional capabilities that help
enhance the availability of storage
in a VMware Infrastructure.
• DynamicCapacityExpansion
allows disk drive expansion units
to be added for capacity and
performance scaling without
impacting Virtual Machines and
the applications they host.
• DynamicRAIDLevelMigration
permits the RAID level of an
array group to be changed for
performance tuning without
interrupting user access to data.
• DynamicSegmentSize
Migration allows the data stripe
size of an array group to be
changed nondisruptively in order
to further tune performance.
The advanced availability features
of the DS4000 Series can help raise
Virtual Machine service levels in a
VMware Infrastructure. They also
contribute to “pay as you grow”
cost savings.
•Outstandingperformance.The
DS4000 and DS5000 series
features end-to-end 4 Gb Fibre
Channel technology for faster data
access and faster migration of
Virtual Machines to different
physical servers.
No modular storage system performs
better in a VMware Infrastructure
than the DS5000—it is the perfor-
mance leader as demonstrated by
industry-standard IOPS and MB/s
benchmarks.
The DS4000 Series is designed to
provide outstanding performance
for transaction processing, data
streaming and high performance
computing.
DS4000 and DS5000 Business Value in a
VMware Infrastructure
With IBM System Storage DS4000,
you can solve the business challenge
of achieving more VMware benefits
because you’ll have the right storage
solution working for you. The benefits
of a DS4000/DS5000 shared storage
foundation for VMware are real and
significant, as summarized below.
•AchieveGreaterOptimizationof
Your VMware Infrastructure. Ability
to lower overall costs of your
VMware storage foundation by (1)
consolidating storage through a
SAN infrastructure, (2) enabling
a “pay as you grow” storage
upgrade strategy, (3) leveraging
server virtualization with virtual
storage systems, and (4) simplifying
•Extensiveupgradability,impressive
scalability. The DS4000/DS5000
series is a modular family of disk
storage systems that has a common
management interface, uses a
common drive enclosure, and
provides identical functionality across
models. Utilizing industry-unique
DACstore technology, data written
by one controller is recognized by
all other controllers in the family,
which enables data-intact
reconfigurations, migrations and
upgrades. This means the smallest
DS4200 can be upgraded with data
intact to a 224-drive DS5000 that
features up to 168 TB of physical
storage capacity, 32 or 16 GB of
controller cache, sixteen host (SAN)
ports and sixteen drive ports. The
extensive upgradability of the DS4000
and DS5000 series allows you to
“pay as you grow” in a VMware
Infrastructure.
The powerful DS5000 was designed
for balanced performance capable
of handling numerous applications
that demand mixed transaction and
sequential workloads. As Virtual
Machines proliferate, you can add
drives to scale I/O performance,
throughput and capacity since the
DS5000 never becomes controller
bound. This impressive scalability
feature further enhances your ability
to “pay as you grow” in a VMware
Infrastructure while maintaining
service levels.
•Virtualpartitioning,cost-effective
tiering. DS4000 and DS5000 storage
partitioning allows the DS5000 to
logically function as 512 virtual
storage systems with up to 131,000
logical drives. Virtual storage systems
leverage the virtualization capabilities
of VMware by simplifying the mapping
of Virtual Machines to storage.
