IBM XIV STORAGE SYSTEM Manual

V®

Optimizing Enterprise Storage

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

with IBM XIV

White Paper | June 2009

TCO Reinvented

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TCO Reinvented

Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................1

IBM XIV: Designed for Low TCO ............................................................................ 2

Acquisition Costs....................................................................................4

Single-tier architecture advantages ........................................................................ 5

Commodity hardware ............................................................................................ 5

Very High Density Slower Rotation (VHDSR) disk drives........................................... 6

Built-in thin provisioning ........................................................................................ 6

Optimal capacity use ............................................................................................. 7

Simple pricing, with all-inclusive features................................................................ 9

Summary: How to reduce acquisition costs ........................................................... 10

Environmental Costs ............................................................................. 10

Power and cooling consumption........................................................................... 10

Floor space use................................................................................................... 11

Summary: How to reduce environmental costs ..................................................... 11

Administration and Management Costs....................................................... 12

Less management overhead ................................................................................ 12

Summary: How to reduce management costs ....................................................... 13

Downtime Costs ................................................................................... 13

Less failure to be managed.................................................................................. 13

Less human intervention and error....................................................................... 14

High availability and non-disruptive changes......................................................... 14

Hot, online, intra- and inter-family code upgrades................................................. 14

Summary: How to reduce downtime costs ............................................................ 15

Backup/Restore Costs ............................................................................ 15

Summary: How to reduce backup costs ................................................................ 15

Conclusion.......................................................................................... 15

Appendix: Cost Savings Formulas ............................................................. 17

Floor space savings ............................................................................................. 17

Power and cooling savings................................................................................... 18

TCO Reinvented

Introduction

A high-end storage system’s total cost of ownership (TCO) is like an iceberg: the vast

majority of costs are hidden from view. Comparing systems by looking at obvious factors,

like capacity and box price, may be easier. But taking a fuller look at the factors impacting

IT budgets over a system’s lifetime will yield a more accurate TCO assessment and,

ultimately, a more informed decision as to which system is truly more favorable to the

company's bottom line.

The chart below shows a fuller set of storage array cost factors and their generally

recognized relative impact on a system’s overall cost.*1

Figure 1: Typical TCO costs of enterprise storage arrays

1In “Governance Dashboard for Enterprise Storage” (Information Management Magazine, May 2006), Dick

Benton of GlassHouse Technologies Inc. notes that Gartner and Forrester attribute as much as 60-70% of

overall storage TCO to the Administration factor. This large figure likely comes from grouping Administration

together with Backup/Restore and other cost factor categories. Here, we break them out separately.

TCO Reinvented

In short, a thorough TCO assessment needs to take into account the cost of:

►Buying, implementing, running, cooling, and expanding the system

►Managing, integrating, and testing the system

►Ensuring the system’s reliability and availability

►Downtime caused by routine maintenance or unexpected equipment failure

►Savings opportunities lost during the time it takes the system to integrate newly

available, cost-reducing technologies

►Software licensing –at time of purchase and upon each capacity increase

The IBM XIV®Storage System has been architected to address all these cost issues. This

paper looks at the true total cost of owning an enterprise-class storage system and the

XIV system’s winning, truly cost-reducing approach.

It should be stated that it is inaccurate and even impractical to compare overall cost of

the XIV system with other storage systems using all VHDSR drives or current-

generation enterprise-class systems using a significant number of 1 TB drives. This is

because these systems, unlike IBM XIV, do not use 1 TB drives for tier 1 or even

tier 2 storage; rather, for archiving and other needs that do not require high

performance or high reliability. The XIV system provides enterprise-class performance

and reliability for all data at all times. In short, the quality of the storage is different.

It goes without saying that the huge cost advantage resulting from XIV ease of

management and software features is relevant in any comparison.

IBM XIV: Designed for Low TCO

Architected to deliver high reliability and performance at exceptionally low TCO, the IBM

XIV Storage System is:

►A fully virtualized, self-managed, self-healing system that balances load perfectly

at all times, optimizing capacity use and minimizing human intervention and error

►Complete with a built-in features set, including differential snapshots, remote

mirroring, and thin provisioning

►Easily managed through a simple graphical user interface (GUI) that minimizes

storage management overhead

►Built entirely of standard components, including low-cost, very high density slower

rotation disks (VHDSR)

►Fully hardware redundant, lowering risk of failure to negligible levels and enabling

disks to be added and replaced on the fly without a performance hit or downtime

►A single-tier platform based on a grid architecture, for easy scaling

TCO Reinvented

Environmentals

Reduced power and

cooling

Minimized space

footprint

Integral UPS

The XIV system is designed to comprehensively tackle each storage TCO factor, in

multiple ways, as delineated below:

Figure 2: How XIV storage reduces TCO

The result is that the XIV system succeeds in dramatically improving each TCO factor

(with the exception of fixed factors, such as hardware maintenance) while other storage

systems typically focus on reducing only one or two cost factors. For example, even if a

system’s upfront cost is largely discounted, its TCO will still be high due to ongoing

administration and maintenance costs; a system with improved performance often has

higher environmental costs.

By taking a balanced and comprehensive approach to reducing all cost factors, the XIV

system succeeds in dramatically reducing TCO where other systems fail.

Backup/Restore

Snaps with no

performance impact

Differential snaps

VSS support

Simple migration

Consistency groups

Acquisition

Single-tier architecture

Commodity hardware

Lower hardware costs

Just-in-time purchasing

Efficient thin provisioning

Optimal capacity use

All key aspects scalable

All software included; no licensing

Downtime

Less hardware to fail

Integral UPS

Less human intervention

Easy to monitor

Rapid self-healing and scrubbing

All components redundant

Free and flexible volume replication

Administration

Fast deployment

Simplified storage

management

Space reclamation

Self-tuning

Rolling upgrade

Transparent scaling with

no hidden costs

Environmentals

Reduced power and cooling

Minimized space footprint

TCO Reinvented

Figure 3: Overall TCO: Traditional Tier-1 storage vs. XIV storage

Acquisition Costs

The IBM XIV Storage System is designed to be cost-efficient in all aspects, while

delivering outstanding and consistent performance. The XIV system’s:

►Single-tier architecture supports all kinds of storage in one environment and

makes scaling easy

►Use of off-the-shelf components makes customized hardware unnecessary and

makes it possible to integrate newer, state-of-the-art hardware as soon as it

becomes available and without delay

►Innovative use of highly economical disk drives [Very High Density Slower

Rotation (VHDSR) drives] offers excellent capacity-for-cost value while meeting

enterprise performance standards

►Built-in thin-provisioning allows the acquisition and installation of additional

capacity to be delayed until needed, making it possible to defer capital purchases

and take full advantage of future hardware and price-point improvements not

currently available

TCO Reinvented

►Automatic and perfect load-balancing, self-healing capability, and other

architectural features provide tier-1 enterprise-level performance while using fewer

disk drives and, ultimately, much less capacity than traditional architectures

►Simple pricing includes all features, making purchasing simple and eliminating

software licensing fees. There are no software licensing fees, neither upon initial

purchase, nor over time when capacity is added.

Single-tier architecture advantages

Most IT centers today use Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and similar practices

to cut costs. These efforts involve multi-tiering, which adds a substantial degree of

complexity and cost to system management. A multi-tier storage solution typically

involves a number of different architectures, each requiring a different kind of know-how

to manage. Moving the data between tiers requires effort and planning, and involves

hardware and operating expenses for each tier. As each environment grows at its own

pace, equipment must be added to one tier or another. Since this growth is typically

unpredictable, acquisitions are often not cost efficient.

The single-tier XIV architecture eliminates the complexity and cost of migrating data from

tier to tier, and of maintaining different architectures for different tiers. The XIV system

offers further cost efficiencies by enabling scaling of all components –capacity,

interfaces, cache, CPU power, and internal bandwidth –on the same platform. As such,

the XIV system helps organizations curtail and minimize hardware costs while offering the

ability to grow at any time, and only as much as needed.

Commodity hardware

Traditional enterprise-class storage systems are usually built from proprietary hardware.

This typically makes them costly due to the huge investment in their development and

version testing –but, more importantly, creates a built-in rigidity that makes such systems

unable or slow to integrate new technologies.

The XIV system minimizes costs and provides exceptional flexibility by treating hardware

as an interchangeable commodity. Built entirely of off-the-shelf hardware components,

the XIV system is designed to integrate the latest disks, modules, interconnects, and

The Taneja Group: "Based on what we’ve seen of its design and

architecture, XIV remains unstoppable like the best of enterprise

storage, but may be fundamentally more extensible, scalable, and

adaptable as technologies evolve. Without a doubt, it brings a new

set of economics to the table for enterprise-level storage."

Taneja Group brief on the XIV system, Nov. 2008

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

TCO Reinvented

Figure 4: Comparison of typical space utilization

Optimal capacity use

As every storage manager knows, as much as 70% (or more) of a storage system’s total

storage capacity goes unused. Whether economic times are good or bad, that’s a

troublesome scenario of capacity waste.

Why is it so hard for systems based on current-generation technology to use disk space

better?

►Burden of buying capacity early. Pre-allocating storage requires the presence

of the defined physical capacity in the system, even if years go by before its use.

Upfront purchases commit capital unnecessarily and waste IT resources in

managing the unused capacity. Upfront capacity purchases also deprive the

organization of benefiting from advances in technology, cost improvements and

other advantages at the time the capacity is used.

►Management overhead. Storage teams often over-allocate volumes to avoid the

time-consuming task of resizing them later. Reclaiming unused space is

cumbersome, requiring time and skill –purchasing more capacity is often

considered the lesser evil. (Of course, extra capacity also requires management

overhead.)

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