Thursday, May 21, 2015

IBM announcement : DS8870 enhancements

Here's another announcement from last week specifically for the DS8870, the latest generation of the DS8000 : ' IBM DS8870 delivers expanded connectivity and extends cloud enablement support with z Synergy for integration of z Systems and Storage systems (ZG15-0098)'.
Availability date is May 22, 2015 and all "announced features and functions are supported on the IBM System Storage® DS8000 series and require DS8000 LMC 7.7.50.xx.xx (bundle version 87.50.xxx.xx), or later".

Here's an overview of the new features :

16GFC FC/FICON connectivity:
DS8870 supports 16GFC FC/FICON connectivity with an optional four-port host adapter card. Model 961 supports four adapter card pairs and Model 96E supports four additional adapter card pairs, enabling a total of sixty-four 16GFC FC/FICON ports.

New and improved z Synergy features:
  • FICON® Dynamic Routing: This feature supports Systems Business Class and Enterprise Class models and enables use of dynamic routing policies for cascaded directors in the SAN. Examples of dynamic routing policies include Brocade Exchange Based Routing (EBR) or Originator Exchange ID Load Balancing (OxID) across cascaded FICON Directors. The value of FICON Dynamic Routing is to help reduce cost by allowing Metro Mirror and FICON traffic to share the same set of ISLs. This can help reduce the number of ports required, fibers, and intercite bandwidth.
  • Forward error correction (FEC): This feature helps to correct I/O errors and improve the reliability of 16 Gbs links, encouraging the adoption of faster link speeds. This feature also protects DS8870 Metro Mirror links connected to 16GFC host adapters and FCP links connected to switches that support standard FEC negotiation protocols.
  • zHPF Extended Distance II: This feature delivers better zHPF large block write performance at longer distances (up to 100 Km) and improved FC fabric congestion management.
  • Fabric Priority for FICON, zHPF, and FCP: z Workload Manager (zWLM) will assign a fabric I/O priority for every I/O operation executed by z/OS® thus extending the scope of management into the SAN. The DS8870 exploits fabric priority by propagating it to the Metro Mirror traffic generated for write requests and by echoing back the priority to get the value on read requests. Fabric priority complements the FICON Dynamic Routing feature by insuring the FICON traffic and the Metro Mirror traffic are managed to a consistent set of policies.
  • Read Diagnostics Parameters (RDP) support: RDP enables new standard link services for obtaining diagnostic information including link speeds and power levels from FC end points and switch ports to aid in link fault isolation.
Heat Map Transfer for MGM environments:
With this release, heat map transfer supports MGM replication topology in addition to Metro Mirror/Global Copy/Global Mirror (MM/GC/GM) functions.

REST API:
This release includes support for monitoring, configuring, and controlling aspects of the DS8870 system configuration by use of an industry-standard REST API.

Performance monitoring:
The improved DS8000® Storage Management GUI provides system performance monitoring in real time. A storage administrator can view performance metrics from up to one week earlier down to one minute intervals in order to troubleshoot a wide variety of issues. Supported graphs include the following:
  • I/O, bandwidth, caching, capacity, and power/temperature monitoring at a system level
  • Back-end I/O, back-end bandwidth, and capacity monitoring at a pool level
  • Front-end I/O and bandwidth monitoring at a pool level

Simplified encryption setup:
The improved DS8000 Storage Management GUI also provides simplified encryption setup and management through a simplified encryption paradigm matching other products. This enables a storage administrator to configure encryption within five minutes of finishing system setup.

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