Read this guide and you’ll discover
What flash storage is and why you should be using itThe benefits of using flash storage with IBM
How using flash can transform your company
How to choose the right storage solution
Transform Your Business
Using the IBM FlashSystem
Today’s storage capacity and performance requirements are growing faster than ever before—and the costs of managing this growth are eating up more and more of the typical IT budget. Flash storage addresses your performance requirements, while software-defined storage simplifies data management, improves data security, and preserves your investments in legacy storage. And now, flash
technology and software-defined storage are available in one solution that provides flexible deployment architectures, extreme performance, simplified management, and a fast return on investment (ROI).
The market for all-flash arrays is saturated with products aiming to replace enterprise storage arrays but consistently failing to deliver the breadth of data lifecycle, storage services or the scalability delivered by incumbent solutions. Alternatively, hybrid arrays loaded with storage services consistently lack the low latency and performance scalability delivered by all-flash arrays.
What is Flash Storage?
Flash storage is the data storage technology of the future, designed to run faster, cheaper, and with higher capacity than any digital storage solution before it. Flash makes applications and data centers faster and more efficient. Where disk storage uses mechanical parts and is therefore prone to damage, flash uses electricity and will stand up against heat, wear, and even dropping. Since there are no moving parts and all materials used are incredibly durable (to withstand electrical current), flash devices can store data for decades.
Why you should be using flash storage
Durability aside, the storage capability of flash is wide and versatile. Many gigabytes can be stored in a very small amount of physical area, making it easy for you to transfer and store your data, maintain access and shareability, and deliver increased application performance.
The benefits of using flash storage with IBM
IBM offers two different FlashSystems for your business: FlashSystem 840 and FlashSystemV840. Each comes with unique benefits, all designed to fit your needs and help your business run smoothly.
MicroLatency: delivers microsecond response times to accelerate critical applications and achieve competitive advantages
Extreme performance: enables business to unleash the power of performance, scale, and insight to drive services and products to market faster
Macro efficiency: driven by consolidation of hardware and software, deployment speed, efficient use of IT staff as well as power and cooling savings
Enterprise reliability: durable and reliable designs that use enterprise class flash and patented data protection technology
IBM FlashSystem 840
IBM FlashSystem™ 840 is data center-optimized to strategically harness the value of stored data. By providing extreme performance for the most
demanding applications, including online-transaction processing and analytics databases, virtual desktop infrastructures, technical-computing applications, and cloud environments, FlashSystem 840 delivers a competitive advantage for today’s organizations. The IBM system reduces response times with
MicroLatency—that is, less than 135-microsecond access times. It is this consistent low latency that enables FlashSystem to deliver application performance improvements.
Highlights
Supports more concurrent users, improves query response times, shortens batch processes, accelerates backups and lowers virtual desktop costs with all-flash storage
Improves IT economics by improving server efficiency with IBM®MicroLatency™ data access
Reduces IT waste with extreme-performance, high-density, Energy Star-certified flash storage
Integrates with existing infrastructure with support for Fibre Channel, iSCSI, InfiniBand, and FCoE interfaces
Expands capacity and performance incrementally to match changing requirements
Improves availability with IBM Variable Stripe RAID™, redundant and hot-swappable components and concurrent code load
IBM FlashSystem V840
IBM FlashSystem™ V840 Enterprise Performance Solution merges IBM software-defined storage with the scalable performance of IBM FlashSystem storage to accelerate critical business applications and decrease data center costs simultaneously. As a result, your organization can gain a competitive advantage via a more flexible, responsive and efficient storage environment.
It uses the same MicroLatency found in FlashSystem 840, plus additional features such as Flash Copy (snapshots), space efficient copies, thin provisioning, easy tier, optional external virtualization, optional remote mirror, and optional Real-time Compression.
Highlights
Deliver all-flash storage at a comparable cost to HDDs and at up to 5 times the effective capacity with IBM® Real-time Compression™
Scale-up and -out to accelerate mixed workloads with up to 1.6 PB and 2.5 million IOPS
Integrate with VMware using vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)
Enable quality of service to deliver performance to applications that need it and use IBM Easy Tier® to migrate less frequently accessed data off your all-flash array
Protect your data with a full suite of disaster-recovery tools including snapshots, clones and replication
Achieve advanced visualization, provisioning and performance management with IBM SmartCloud® Virtual Storage Center
Boost reliability with enterprise-class flash storage and industry-leading storage virtualization technology Increase storage utilization by providing more flexible access to storage assets
How Using Flash can Transform your Company
Flash helps you do more in less time with extreme performance
Coca-Cola (CCBCC) cut data processing time by 75% without replacing a single server.
Sprint deployed nine IBM FlashSystem 820 solutions with a total of 150 TB of flash storage, virtualized through IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller. The company cut average latency by a factor of ten, and achieved a 45-times performance improvement for one application.
Macro efficiency
Flash helps you cut costs by reducing floor space, power, and cooling.
Stuttgarter Straßenbahnen AG (SSB) is the main public transport provider in Germany’s greater Stuttgart region, as well as an IT service provider for a number of medium-sized companies. SSB relies on a solid hardware backbone of IBM® Power Systems™ servers, running IBM AIX®, to deliver exceptional performance for its business-critical systems, including an extensive SAP ERP application landscape. To manage growing quantities of data and provide fast access to vital information, the company extended its existing storage environment – based on IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller – with high-performance IBM FlashSystem™ technology. Flash helped SSB cut total cost of operation of storage by 50%.
Enterprise Reliability
The innovative design of IBM’s products provide durability and reliability, so you can trust that your data is safely stored and protected from damage, loss, or theft.
RCCL speeds insights and eliminates downtime.
Advanced Management Features and Services
Faster Applications
Consolidate mixed workloads Software defined services Deep application integration Scale-up and scale-out
How to Choose the Right Storage
Most businesses and individuals seeking flash storage are doing so for one of three reasons:
Their current application is having performance failures
They have an environment that will no longer scale, such as VDI
They have outgrown their current storage capacity and are looking for a storage upgrade.
There are different types of flash storage available to suit the various needs of companies. If you are experiencing issues with your current application, a few of your host servers, or your database, a server-side SSD with caching software may be the best option for a quick fix. However, depending on how large-scale your troubled software may be, it may be time to look at a shared flash system -- either a flash-assisted array or an all-flash array. If you are simply researching your storage options for future upgrades and implementation, it is important to consider the following:
How much storage will your workloads require over time?
Would your needs be better met with server-side flash or flash in a networked storage device? Does the storage infrastructure offer the real-time speed you require?
Is your network design compatible with the storage infrastructure?
What are the read/write requirements for your applications? Is the infrastructure capable of that achieving this rate?
Get Started Today
It’s easy to join the growing list of satisfied and successful customers who use FlashSystem from IBM. Contact Aqueity today and we’ll help you every step of the way, from determining which solution is right for you, to network implementation and ongoing support.
