IBM Midrange System DS4000 Series Hardware Manual page 121

IBM System Storage DS planning
Chapter 4.
and configuration
Careful planning is essential to any new storage installation. This chapter provides guidelines
to help you with the planning process, and then allow a correct implementation.
Choosing the right equipment and software, and also knowing what the right settings are for a
particular installation, can be challenging. Every installation has to answer these questions
and accommodate specific requirements, and there can be many variations in the solution.
Having a well, thought-out design and plan prior to the implementation will help you get the
most out of your investment for the present and protect it for the future.
During the planning process, you need to answer numerous questions about your
environment:
What are my host connection requirements?
What additional hardware do I need?
What reliability do I require?
What redundancy do I need? (For example, do I need off-site mirroring?)
What compatibility issues do I need to address?
Will I use any storage virtualization product such as IBM SAN Volume controller?
Will I use any unified storage product like the IBM System Storage N series?
What operating system am I going to use (existing or new installation)?
What applications will access the storage subsystem?
What are the hardware and software requirements of these applications?
What will be the physical layout of the installation? Only local site, or remote sites as well?
What level of performance do I need?
This list of questions is not exhaustive, and as you can see, some go beyond simply
configuring the DS5000 storage subsystem.
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