This IBM® Redbooks® publication captures several of the preferred practices and describes the performance gains that can be achieved by implementing the IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller and IBM Storwize® V7000 powered by IBM Spectrum Virtualize™ V8.2.1. These practices are based on field experience. This book highlights configuration guidelines and preferred practices for the storage area network (SAN) topology, clustered system, back-end storage, storage pools and managed disks, volumes, remote copy services, and hosts. Then it provides performance guidelines for SAN Volume Controller, back-end storage, and applications. It explains how you can optimize disk performance with the IBM System Storage Easy Tier® function. It also provides preferred practices for monitoring, maintaining, and troubleshooting SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000. This book is intended for experienced storage, SAN, and SAN Volume Controller administrators and technicians. Understanding his book requires advanced knowledge of the SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000 and SAN environments. Important: On 11th February 2020 IBM announced the arrival of SAN Volume Controller SA2 and SV2, and IBM FlashSystem® 7200 to the family. This book was written specifically for prior versions of SVC and Storwize V7000; however, most of the general principles will apply. If you are in any doubt as to their applicability then you should work with your local IBM representative. This book will be updated to comprehensively include SAN Volume Controller SA2 and SV2 and FlashSystem 7200 in due course.

IBM® Real-time Compression™ software that is embedded in IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and IBM Storwize® V7000 solution addresses all the requirements of primary storage data reduction, including performance, by using a purpose-built technology called . This IBM Redpaper™ publication addresses the key requirements for primary storage data reduction and gives real world examples of savings that can be made by using compression. SVC and Storwize V7000 is designed to improve storage efficiency by compressing data by as much as 80% through supported real-time compression for block storage. This process enables up to five times as much data to be stored in the same physical disk space. Unlike other approaches to compression, IBM Real-time Compression is used with active primary data, such as production databases and email systems. This configuration dramatically expands the range of candidate data that can benefit from compression. As its name implies, IBM Real-time Compression operates as data is written to disk, avoiding the need to store data that is awaiting compression.

Abstract This IBM® Redbooks® publication is a detailed technical guide to the IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller, which is powered by IBM Spectrum Virtualize™ Version 7.8. IBM SAN Volume Controller is a virtualization appliance solution, which maps virtualized volumes that are visible to hosts and applications to physical volumes on storage devices. Each server within the storage area network (SAN) has its own set of virtual storage addresses that are mapped to physical addresses. If the physical addresses change, the server continues running by using the same virtual addresses that it had before. Therefore, volumes or storage can be added or moved while the server is still running. The IBM virtualization technology improves the management of information at the "block" level in a network, which enables applications and servers to share storage devices on a network.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication is a detailed technical guide to the IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller Version 7.4. The SAN Volume Controller (SVC) is a virtualization appliance solution, which maps virtualized volumes that are visible to hosts and applications to physical volumes on storage devices. Each server within the storage area network (SAN) has its own set of virtual storage addresses that are mapped to physical addresses. If the physical addresses change, the server continues running by using the same virtual addresses that it had before. Therefore, volumes or storage can be added or moved while the server is still running. The IBM virtualization technology improves the management of information at the “block” level in a network, which enables applications and servers to share storage devices on a network. This book is intended for readers who want to implement the SVC at a 7.4 release level with minimal effort.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication is a detailed technical guide to the IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller (SVC) Version 6.1.0. SAN Volume Controller is a virtualization appliance solution which maps virtualized volumes that are visible to hosts and applications to physical volumes on storage devices. Each server within the storage area network (SAN) has its own set of virtual storage addresses that are mapped to physical addresses. If the physical addresses change, the server continues running using the same virtual addresses that it had before. Therefore, volumes or storage can be added or moved while the server is still running. The IBM virtualization technology improves the management of information at the “block” level in a network, thus enabling applications and servers to share storage devices on a network. This book is intended for readers who need to implement the SVC at a 6.1.0 release level with a minimum of effort.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication is a detailed technical guide to the IBM System Storage™ SAN Volume Controller (SVC), a virtualization appliance solution that maps virtualized volumes that are visible to hosts and applications to physical volumes on storage devices. Each server within the SAN has its own set of virtual storage addresses, which are mapped to physical addresses. If the physical addresses change, the server continues running using the same virtual addresses that it had before. This capability means that volumes or storage can be added or moved while the server is still running. The IBM virtualization technology improves the management of information at the "block" level in a network, enabling applications and servers to share storage devices on a network. This book is intended to allow you to implement the SVC at a 5.1.0 release level with a minimum of effort.