Announcement : DS8870 Release 7.1

Today there were two announcements for the DS8870. One on hardware : 'IBM System Storage DS8870 (machine type 2421, 2422, 2423, and 2424) delivers advanced Easy Tier capabilities, enhanced resiliency, and business continuity functions (ZP13-0060)' and one on related software functionalities : 'IBM System Storage DS8870 (Machine type 2396, 2397, 2398, and 2399) Function Authorizations for advanced Easy Tier Server capabilities (ZG13-0055)'.

Apart from every one putting more and more focus on Flash, I think a large part of this announcement is about Easy Tier V5. But not everything applies to System z. The first feature is only applicable to Power systems : Easy Tier Server, which allows to copy some of the hottest data to SSD disks on the Power server. These SSD disks serve as a cache and should give you much faster response times by overcoming latency of the SAN. This remains of course managed by Easy Tier itself.

Easy Tier Application gives the administrator some influence over the Easy Tier automatic processes as he can sort of overrule them for specific cases. It "is an application-aware storage application programming interface (API) to help deploy storage more efficiently through enabling applications and middleware to direct more optimal placement of data by communicating important information about current workload activity and application performance requirements. In this release, the new Easy Tier Application feature also enables clients to assign distinct application volumes to a particular tier in the Easy Tier pool, disregarding Easy Tier's advanced data migration function". It also gives better insight in the working of Easy Tier.

The Easy Tier Heat Map Transfer utility "is able to provide whatever the data placement algorithm is on the Metro Mirror/Global Copy/Global Mirror (MM/GC/GM) primary site and reapply it on the MM/GC/GM secondary site(...). With this capability, DS8000 systems can maintain application-level performance at an application secondary site when it takes over in supporting a workload after a failover from the primary to secondary site". The last two features are of course platform independent.

What else ? I won't sum up everything but I just want to mention two other things

• Prevention of accidental loss of data when initializing a z/OS volume with ICKDSF INIT or REFORMAT. Ability to determine what z/OS Systems a volume is online to.
• There's a low cost entry class configuration option which comes down to more drives per device adapter

The software announcement is about the Function Authorizations which "are for billing purposes only". The new function which is introduced is for the Easy Tier Server function : IBM System Storage Easy Tier Server indicator (feature number 7084).

And for all the rest of the goodies ? Well, just check out the announcements ?

Two white papers on DS8700 and Easy Tier

I wanted to mention these two documents in one post as they are sort of related. The second one however didn't show up on Techdocs until last week.

The first one is titled 'IBM DS8000 Storage Virtualization Overview Including Storage Pool Striping, Thin Provisioning, Easy Tier' and it was already published in 2009. But, now it's been largely enhanced covering subjects like Storage Pool Striping function, Thin Provisioning facility, Quick Initialization function, Easy Tier facility. It really gives you a great introduction and lots of practical information on all of these topics. And do not immediately associate Easy Tier with SSD only. You can also already do great stuff with the Manual Mode.

The second one is 'IBM System Storage DS8700 Performance with Easy Tier'. As you can see, this is specifically concentrating on Easy Tier (unfortunately DS8700 only). It discusses performance with automatic and with manual Easy Tier modes. And it also discusses the use of the Storage Tier Advisor Tool. So, you can already ask yourself the 'What If' question : what if I had SSD installed. What would be the performance boost for me ?

So, two documents definitely worth checking out if you're even only remotely interested in Easy Tier. And while I was browsing through Techdocs, I also found this presentation on Easy Tier which was only added last Tuesday : 'Accelerate with ATS: Easy Tier Webinar'. No audio for the moment, but it will perhaps be added in the coming days.

Sampling Techdocs : April - June 2009

It's been a while, but here we are again with some new and interesting reading material from TechDocs.

• White Paper : IBM System Storage DS8000 with SSDs An In-Depth Look at SSD Performance in the DS8000 and An Assessment of SSD Performance in the IBM System Storage DS8000
  Two recent white papers on the use, best practices and performance of SSDs (Solid State Drives).
  
  
• Presentation (with notes) : IMS Data Sharing
  "IMS data sharing allows multiple IMS systems to share databases with full update capability from all systems. IMS data sharing may be used to improve availability, increase capacity, and simplify applications. This presentation provides potential users with an explanation of data sharing and information on implementing it."
  
  
• Technical Document : OSA-ICC experiences. Usage guide for z/OS and z/VM
  This is a very nice document for any one who wants to install the OSA-Express Integrated Console Controller (OSA-ICC) support of the 1000BASE-T card. It really takes you by the hand through chapters like OSA-ICC definitions on HMC, OSA-ICC VTAM Definition on z/OS, Implementing an OSA-ICC connection for z/VM and Connect to TSO using PCOMM & OSA-ICC.
  
  
• White Paper : Software Requirements for Running SAP on System z
  Thinking about a consolidation of SAP on System z ? Here's a short 10-page introduction on what is required to run System z as the database server and Linux on System z as the application server.
  
  
• Presentation : z/OS System Initialization Logic (IPL)
  We're closing with a verrrrry nice presentation from Riaz Ahmad : "This presentation describes general processing involved initializing z/OS System from the IPL process until the system is ready to start JES2 or JES3"
  

Well that's it for now. As I always say : just check them out !

Short Takes

Here are some more short takes

• CA, Datacom and zIIP
  Last week, CA announced that the newest release of CA Datacom now also makes use of the zIIP engine. I must admit I have the feeling I lost a bit track of how many products now use specialty engines. But I guess that's a good thing : more and more ISVs use them because every one realizes it's a great way to help reduce cost for the clients ànd at the same time keep the mainframe alive and kicking. The counter for CA seems to be at 14 products now. Still recently, they gave an overview over here.

• zPrime
  Talking about saving money : a couple of weeks ago I received this mail from Neon Enterprise Software about zPrime. What is zPrime ? I don't know and they're not going to tell you straight away, so if you want to take a guess yourself, take a look at the zPrime Site. Here's the initial explanation in the mail : "zPrime is a radical new technology in mainframe computing. It cuts the cost of mainframe computing significantly and immediately. No new budgets, no complicated projects, no expensive consultants, no new equipment purchases. Want to know more? Go to www.zPrime.com and learn about zPrime -- and have some fun and maybe win some prizes at the same time". We'll just have to wait and see. Oh, you can also follow zPrime on Twitter !

• When will I use Solid State Drives ?
  I know I'm a bit late with this. One very interesting presentation on the System z Conference some weeks ago was the one of Pat Artis of Performance Associates on SSD. According to Pat Artis the question is not whether we will switch to SSD but when. He expects that very soon every one will only use SSD drives for production data. Interested ? You can now find the slides and the video if this presentation on their site.
  

Should I start using SSD drives ?

I just heard I've been writing about a tool that evaluates whether it might be useful to start using SSD (Solid State Dsik) drives. Well, that's a little too much credit, because I didn't even know such a tool existed.

First of all, if you're interested in SSD drives and their performance with DB2 for z/OS, there's a Redguide that appeared last week : 'Ready to Access DB2 for z/OS Data on Solid-State Drives'. It discusses the following topics :

• Get to know the solid-state drives in z/OS environments
• Compare performance when accessing DB2 for z/OS data. This elaborates on DB2 synchronous I/Os, DB2 sequential I/O, DB2 list prefetch, DB2 list prefetch with striping and DB2 synchronous I/O using one or two RAID ranks
  
• Understand requirements and applicability

The Redguide also mentions the tool for identifying candidate volumes to move to SSD : "New z/OS SAS-based tooling analyzes the SMF 42-6 and SMF 74-5 records to produce a report that identifies data sets and volumes that can benefit from residing on SSD technology". You can download the tool from the Z/OS downloads web page.