IBM Midrange System DS4000 Series Hardware Manual page 147

– Required capacity.
– Required redundancy levels.
– Type of data protection needed.
– Current data growth patterns for your environment.
– Is the current data more read or write based?
– Backup strategies in use (Network, LAN-free, or Server-less).
– Premium features required (FC/SATA Intermix, Partitioning, FlashCopy, Volume Copy,
Enhanced Remote Mirroring, and Drive Encryption).
– Number of host connections required.
– Types of hosts and operating systems that will connect to the SAN.
– What zoning is required?
– Distances between equipment and sites (if there is there more than one site).
2. Produce a hardware checklist. It should cover such items that require you to:
– Make an inventory of existing hardware infrastructure. Ensure that any existing
hardware meets the minimum hardware requirements and is supported with the
DS5000 storage subsystem.
– Make a complete list of the planned hardware requirements.
– Ensure that you have enough rack space for future capacity expansion.
– Ensure that the power and environmental requirements are met.
– Ensure that your existing Fibre Channel switches and cables are properly configured.
3. Produce a software checklist to cover all the required items that need to be certified and
checked. It should include such items that require you to:
– Ensure that the existing versions of firmware and storage management software are up
to date.
– Ensure host operating systems are supported with the DS5000 storage subsystem.
Check the IBM System Storage DS5000 interoperability matrix available at this Web
site for more information:
http://www.ibm.com/servers/storage/disk
This list is not exhaustive, but the creation of the statements is an exercise in information
gathering and planning; it gives you a greater understanding of what your needs are in your
current environment and creates a clear picture of your future requirements. The goal should
be quality rather than quantity of information.
Use this chapter as a reference to help you gather the information for the statements.
Understanding the applications is another important consideration in planning for your
DS5000 storage subsystem setup. Applications can typically either be I/O intensive (high
number of I/O per second (IOPS)), or characterized by large I/O requests (that is, high
throughput or MBps).
Typical examples of high IOPS environments are Online Transaction Processing (OLTP),
databases, and Microsoft Exchange servers. These have random writes and fewer reads.
Typical examples of high throughput applications are data mining, imaging, and backup
storage pools. These have large sequential reads and writes.
Chapter 4. IBM System Storage DS planning and configuration
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