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TCO Reinvented
other components, enabling organizations to capitalize on market advances in capacity
and cost while meeting their dynamic performance and budget requirements.
The XIV system allows integration of multiple generations of hardware – new alongside
older – on an in-production system. Component upgrades and replacements are non-
disruptive and require little management. Adding capacity with the XIV system is similarly
seamless, with the new capacity available immediately, without the need to reconfigure
and without performance degradation.
Very High Density Slower Rotation (VHDSR) disk drives
Enterprise storage systems are traditionally configured with Fiber Channel (FC) drives
generally known for speed and reliability and, consequently, high cost. The XIV system
uses only Very High Density Slower Rotation (VHDSR) disk drives – known for their very
high densities as well as comparatively low cost. The XIV system applies innovative load
balancing and other advanced algorithms to provide tier 1 performance, reliability, and
availability, coupled with the dramatic per terabyte savings, and power, cooling, and
maintenance efficiencies that result from using the capacity-rich VHDSR drives.
Gartner Inc. notes that: "...higher-capacity SATA disks generally cost less than smaller
FC or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disks on a $-per-GB basis, and consume much less
power and cooling. When the use of these high-capacity 1 TB disks reduces the overall
disk count in the storage system, relative to a system configured with FC or SAS disks, it
also reduces the frequency of disk-related repair activities."
2
For more information on XIV's high-end performance using VHDSR drives, see the
IBM XIV Performance Reinvented
white paper.
Built-in thin provisioning
Most enterprise systems now offer thin provisioning – the ability to define a system's
logical capacity as larger than its physical capacity, so as to defer physical capacity
purchases (see below). However, in many systems, this feature has been added to the
existing architecture, making it harder to manage and of limited scope. The IBM XIV
system provides thin provisioning as a core feature of its design, handily managed at the
click of a button.
Organizations can leverage XIV's easy to manage thin provisioning capability to
significantly reduce capital and operating expenses and postpone capacity purchases by
acquiring physical capacity for only the total space actually written rather than the total
space allocated. For more information, see the
IBM XIV Thin Provisioning
white paper.
2
"IBM's XIV: Next-Generation Scale-Out Disk Storage," Stanley Zaffos, Valdis Filks, Nov. 20, 2008, Gartner,
Inc. and/or its Affiliates
Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
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