3 step path to storage cloud services using ibm system storage

Silverton Consulting, Inc. StorInt™ Briefing Introduction

From the individual using a much advertised public cloud service to the global, enterprise class IT shop using a custom private cloud, more and more companies are switching to use cloud technology. In todayʼs troubled economy, there is an increasing demand for information, unfortunately coupled with a decreasing ability to afford additional resources. Cloud services can help with this problem. In fact, cloud capabilities have the potential to:

• Be more elastic - able to expand or contract capacity or service on demand, as business requirements dictate, responding better to a changing economy.

• Be more economical – able to be billed for on a unit cost or service consumed basis (GB/month, Server/hour, etc.) saving capital expense.

• Be self managed – able to be end-user provisioned, reducing or eliminating altogether administration delay for provisioning storage.

Both public and private cloud services can provide all of these benefits and more. But because the hardware and software of public clouds are owned and run by external, independent companies, potential security issues likely would eliminate them from being a viable alternative for larger, more data intensive entities. Consequently, many enterprise shops have turned to private cloud services to solve public cloud security concerns. Through IBM® System Storage extensive product line, and technologies such as IBM Active Cloud Engine™, IBM can readily help these companies. Private clouds are provided internally and can be either computing or storage services. Private cloud computing services commonly include both server resources and storage resources residing at multiple locations, but whose services can be accessed from any Internet connected location. In contrast, private cloud storage services generally only contain storage resources that can

3 Step Path to Storage Cloud Services Using IBM System Storage

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be accessed from Internet locations; server resources are located elsewhere. It is this latter type of private cloud services which will remain the focus of this paper.

Ineffective approaches to private storage clouds In the rush to enjoy the much touted benefits of cloud technology, companies have sometimes gone to “cloud-in-the-can” solutions. These “one size fits all” products claim to provide an easy entry into private cloud offerings. However, many of these solutions are essentially reproductions of public cloud offerings, modified for private use and rarely can be implemented without considerable effort and disruption. Additional problems with these products can include:

• They do not really help improve current data center effectiveness enabling only future services to use the cloud.

• They often package together cloud computing with storage but there are few that offer storage cloud services alone.

• They offer limited O/S support and usually of only Linux and/or Windows environments.

• They typically donʼt offer high availability solutions, often depending on generic server hardware using DAS with redundancy as the only failure recovery alternative.

• They often require substantial modifications to current operations and applications to access and use their cloud services.

Thus, many of these solutions are unsuitable for enterprise level data centers. Another, often ill-conceived alternative used by companies to quickly adopt cloud technology is to try to use traditional storage solutions in cloud services. This approach is fraught with some serious problems of its own. In particular, traditional storage is often:

• Hard to configure, taking hours to days to provision new storage for new client applications

• Hard to tune, sometimes taking dedicated personnel to maintain/improve storage performance

• Difficult to scale, frequently requiring complete system swap-out to increase capacity and/or improve performance.

None of these attributes is conducive to cloud deployment and may, in fact, make using cloud services more difficult and costly. As should be obvious, the above-discussed paths to storage cloud services are unrealistic and unsuitable solutions for enterprise class data centers. Not only do




they not improve current data center capabilities, but in general, they canʼt really deliver on the promises of cloud. At this stage in cloud technology, a more deliberate, pragmatic approach is warranted. Specifically, such an approach allows a data center to take more measured, incremental steps to change current storage infrastructure to something more suitable to cloud storage yet still realize tangible, immediate benefits. This prudent, evolutionary approach can effectively help a data center convert to cloud technology in better shape and much more quickly overall than one, massive step. A deliberate approach lets the data center enjoy immediate advantages as well as time to formulate a customized plan to migrate toward a fully efficient, autonomous and optimized storage cloud environment. Ultimately, the resulting cloud storage domain should be:

• Expandable and contractible as workloads dictate • Self-tuned by the system in response to diverse workloads • More economical because the system automatically moves data to the

lowest cost appropriate storage • Metered and billed automatically as required storage is used by

business units • Self-provisioned by users when new storage is needed to meet

application requirements. • Automated and managed: to achieve better utilization through cloud

storage

Steps to private cloud storage At a minimum, a step-by-step approach should have at least three phases including:

• A transformation of current infrastructure into hyper-efficient storage by using advanced storage efficiency and virtualization features

• A transition of hyper-efficient storage into an automated and managed environment by using advanced software solutions combined with new and innovative storage capabilities

• A conversion of the automated environment into optimized storage services by using self-service provisioning and state-of-the-art distributed data/global file access capabilities.




Step 1: Highly efficient or “hyper-‐efficient” storage The problems with many traditional storage systems include:

• Performance tuning is tedious and difficult. • Allocated storage is frequently wasted. • Operations and provisioning are often complex. • Overall storage utilization is usually poor to mediocre. • Increasing performance and/or capacity often requires a complete

hardware swap-out. As pointed out before, IBM has a vast array of disk and tape products to ease the incremental approach and provide hyper-efficient storage to assist in migrating to private cloud storage services. For pure block storage, IBM has its storage virtualization management (Tivoli

Storage Productivity Center or TPC) and the storage virtualization platform (the SAN Volume Controller or SVC) which together construct a storage hypervisor that can be used to move data and dramatically improve IT storage efficiency. The IBM DS series of storage spans from the low-end DS3500 to their enterprise class DS8000® product family and IBM XIV® offers a scalable grid with extreme

ease-of-use architecture that spans mid-range to enterprise storage environments. Also, IBM Storwize® V7000, introduced in 2010, provides both block services and virtualization for a pool of external storage systems. For file data, IBM has a full gamut of products from their low-end to midrange N-series storage to their Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) system addressing the big data, massive capacity needs. This sophisticated offering is based on their leading edge GPFS clustered and shared file system and is designed to support high performance along with policy managed file data. Recently, IBM enhanced their midrange V7000 product by adding SONAS




capabilities to create a new Storwize V7000 Unified system, which supports both file (i.e., NFS or CIFS) and block virtualization services on the same platform. Specific advanced storage features of these IBM product offerings to combat the problems associated with traditional storage include:

• Easy Tier – a capability available on DS8000 and Storwize V7000 that automatically places data on storage tiers which can provide IO rates required by the application.

• Storage thin provisioning – an advanced storage capability available on SVC, DS8000, Storwize V7000 & V7000 Unified, XIV, SONAS and all N-Series storage which can free up allocated but unused storage for other application use.

• Extreme ease of use – available originally on XIV but now also available on the DS8000, Storwize V7000 & V7000 Unified as well as SONAS making managing a heterogeneous IBM storage environment look like a homogeneous storage pool.

• Storage virtualization – available in SVC and Storwize V7000, which can be used to non-disruptively migrate data from one subsystem to another and improve utilization or refresh technology.

• Scaleability – systems that can scale both capacity such as SONAS which expands from a few TBs up to 21.6PB capacity or scale performance available with SONAS, XIV and StorwizeV7000 independently or in combination without requiring a disruptive hardware swap-out.

• Deduplication– available on IBM ProtecTIER series of nearline appliances and Tivoli® Storage Manager software, removes or does away with storing non-unique or duplicate data, saving capacity.

• Compression – available on IBM tape storage, IBM Real-time Compression system and Tivoli Storage Manager software, which considerably reduces the storage footprint for highly repetitive data.

• High-density disks – 3TB drives are now available on all IBM disk storage systems, which can be used to more economically support the PBʼs of storage often required by the cloud.

In addition, ideal for archive clouds, IBM's TS1140 tape systems now provides the fastest tape data transfer available and the IBM TS3500 tape library connection provides more library slot counts, unmatched in the industry.

Step 2: Automated and managed storage services The second step previously enumerated in the incremental, evolutionary path to the cloud is automation of infrastructure using sophisticated software and new storage capabilities. By doing this, an efficient, stratified storage environment is created thatʼs easy to deploy, bill for, manage and protect.




IBM Active Cloud Engine

IBM has introduced a new storage capability called the IBM Active Cloud Engine available on its SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified storage solutions. This new capability supports a heretofore unheard of lightening fast file scan, able to examine millions to billions of files in a matter of minutes and then take an action based on the policy rules, such as:

Identify files for backup or replication Detect files better served from another tier of storage including tape in a

TSM hierarchy Recognize expired or unwanted files

The automated policy capabilities of IBMʼs Active Cloud Engine further astound. Armed with the file information discussed above, this remarkable offering and its automated policy capabilities can be used to backup and/or replicate unprotected file data, migrate aged and infrequently accessed file data to other, more appropriate storage, and/or delete files based on mandated expiration dates. As such, this feature can simplify storage protection while at the same time automating much of the storage management process. More automated, stratified, efficient and thus generally more economical storage, results.

SAN Volume Controller (SVC) Stretched Clusters

IBM also has introduced its stretched cluster technology to facilitate automation of disaster avoidance for two data centers. This capability permits a single cluster of SVC nodes to connect two distinct data centers up to 300km apart and stretch the virtual storage environment across these two locations. Thus, a stretched cluster allows multiple applications to execute across two data centers and access the same block storage, regardless of the actual data location. With VMware Vmotion or PowerVM Live Partition Migration and the stretched cluster feature, an application workload can move from one data center to another and thereby mitigate the effects of slow developing disasters like hurricanes or other outages. Moreover, such features, when used in a more ongoing fashion can create a virtual data center environment that spans physical locations, Advanced capabilities like disaster avoidance and virtual data centers can supply state-of-the-art resilient operations required by any private storage cloud.

Tivoli Product Family

IBMʼs extensive product lines also include its Tivoli family of software. The Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is the storage virtualization management component of the storage hypervisor. The Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager now integrates space efficient snapshots of both its Storwize V7000 and the SVC storage hypervisor platform with VMware APIs to support instantaneous data protection for virtual machines. In fact, an administrator could easily and selectively restore individual files, virtual volumes or even entire VMs.




Moreover, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) Suite for Unified Recovery can provide automatic, policy based archive storage management for data that spans online storage, nearline disk storage and/or tape storage. With TSM, data thatʼs infrequently referenced can be migrated off high-priced storage to a more economical storage tier such as deduplicated disk or compressed tape storage. Here again, this capability to automate is an indispensible element of cloud services.

Step 3: Optimized storage services Optimizing the data centerʼs storage service is the final step on its path to cloud storage. Taking this final step provides the data center a truly cloud-ready storage environment. As IT grows from a single data center to system services hosted around the world, the optimization of storage services becomes ever more critical. For example, one major consideration is what data must be accessible at each location. Often data is improperly situated between sites, and resolving such difficulties wastes storage and bandwidth. With multiple data centers, customer requests also quickly proliferate. When this occurs, even automated provisioning may not be sufficient. Further optimization of the storage system is necessary to remove any administrative activity from the provisioning critical path.

SONAS Active Cloud Engine distributed data with global access

Once again IBM Active Cloud Engine in SONAS successfully transitions a companyʼs storage from a single site data center to a planet-wide, service network. This new feature joins together multiple SONAS clusters into a solitary global, unified name space with distributed file data access that allows a single file to be read and processed from a joined SONAS cluster anywhere around the world. Thus, using SONASʼs distributed file with global access, the storage cluster recognizes the current location of the file data being accessed and moves it automatically to the requestor thereby saving both bandwidth and storage. With these new capabilities SONAS can:

Distribute files to multiple sites, globally Localize data to improve file performance and reduce network costs Provide a global namespace that can fuse multiple SONAS sites into a

single file system Allow collaboration on information exchange across multiple sites while

still retaining ownership of data




In addition and as mentioned before, IBM Active Cloud Engineʼs file scan capability is turbo charged. As such, with automated policy management, file data can be prepositioned at any number of SONAS cluster locations and thus yield quicker access to the prepositioned global data. Even more remarkably, the SONAS Active Cloud Engine automatically maintains the highest integrity and consistency for its file data by restricting write access if another cluster is editing a file; once saved, any joined SONAS location can access the newly updated file data. All of the advanced capabilities of the IBM Active Cloud Engine are vital to provide optimal, global cloud storage services. In fact, the IBM offering is leading edge technology in providing a global network of connected data centers and true private cloud services. For example, universities, R&D centers, and healthcare companies may require data to be accessible outside their organizations. For instance,

• Hospital MRI images may need to be sent to doctor offices. • University research may need to be distributed to multiple institutions. • R&D lab results may need to be shared with other groups around the

globe Not only does Active Cloud Engine provide impressive worldwide connectivity of SONAS file data, but it also does it efficiently and cost-effectively, saving clients thousands of dollars on network costs. IBM Storwize V7000 Unified will




incorporate the global file management capabilities of Active Cloud Engine in the near future.

Additional Tivoli product capabilities

IBM has introduced its Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Standard Edition to help data centers efficiently provision their pooled block storage. The administrator defines categories of storage, selecting from the different storage attributes on hand such as thin provisioning, performance capabilities, and data replication options. After this input, Tivoli software provides a unique service catalog for these classes of storage. Customers select a pre-defined storage type and specify the capacity needed using the catalog and then Tivoli provisions the storage. IBMʼs Tivoli Storage Productivity Center also automatically measures and records block and file storage use. This information is then delivered to Tivoli Usage and Account Manager to invoice business units and/or other customers for storage use. Such capability is important for any future storage cloud services.

IBM Global Services

In addition to IBMʼs imposing lineup of hardware and software, IBM Global Services can help resolve many other problems of a company on the road to private storage cloud services. For example, the service group can work with data center personnel to custom design a self-service portal into the cloud that automates the allocation, provisioning and deployment process. IBM Global Services can also maintain and manage private cloud environments for clients.




Summary The path to a smooth transition to private cloud storage services generally is not a quick one as promised by the “cloud-in-the-can” solutions; rather the process should be an evolutionary one involving thoughtful steps. Hyper-efficient storage, automation and management and optimization are all critical in the move. As an established industry front-runner, IBM System Storage provides leading edge technology products and capabilities ready to simplify and streamline the transition. Capabilities like storage thin provisioning, Easy Tier, and storage virtualization can help make a data centerʼs storage more hyper-efficient. The Tivoli family of software solutions combined with Storwize V7000 storage can automate VMware vSphere data protection. IBM Active Cloud Engine allows effective and automated management of immense file data accumulations. IBMʼs SONAS with Active Cloud Engine provides global scale file management and access to distributed data at multiple, distinct locations. And finally, IBM Global Services can help assist companies on their path to private cloud storage services.

Silverton Consulting, Inc. is a Storage, Strategy & Systems consulting services company, based in the USA offering products and services to the data storage community. Disclaimer: This document was developed with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) funding. Although the document may utilize publicly available material from various sources, including IBM, it does not necessarily reflect the positions of such sources on the issues addressed in this document.

3 step path to storage cloud services using ibm system storage

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