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IBM Systems and Technology 

Technical White Paper 

IBM XIV Storage and VMware: An ideal it

Contents

2  XIV core features

5  XIV-VMware integration

 7  Performance and scalability

10 Failover/recovery (SRM)

12  XIV management in vCenter

14 Storage visibility (VASA)

14 Self-service provisioning

14 Backup/recovery (VADP)

17  Success stories/Conclusion

 Overview The IBM® XIV® Storage System has revolutionized the high-end storage

landscape with quantum-leap architecture that puts to rest the traditional

trade-off between performance and functionality over TCO. XIV storagehelps deliver consistently high performance, is designed for five-nines

availability and comes with powerful built-in functionality, featuring

ease of use and price-performance superior to other enterprise storage

offerings.1 Propelled by a highly autonomic grid architecture that 

supports diverse heterogeneous workloads, XIV offers an ideal storage

platform for virtualized VMware environments.

 The large majority of XIV customers are using VMware to virtualize

their server environments. In growing numbers, these customers are

attesting to the many benefits that tightly VMware-integrated XIV 

solutions bring to their deployments, including high performance,

business continuity and operational agility.

 This paper, geared toward IT decision makers, storage specialists and

 VMware administrators, describes the unique features and advantages of 

the XIV system. It then gives a high-level walkthrough of XIV-VMware

integration and dives in for a closer view of the integrated solutions. The

paper covers how:

● Core XIV storage features and architecture can add significant value

to VMware environments.●  Tight IBM-VMware cooperation engenders continual improvements

in the XIV-VMware fit.● Integration with XIV features designed for VMware benefits

customers.

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XIV core features and advantages At the root of almost every advantage that XIV brings to

 VMware deployments are its unique architecture and features.

 This section brief ly describes the core characteristics of XIV.

Note: VMware administrators, if you opt to skip this section,

here is one takeaway—with XIV, your storage administrators

can provide consistent Tier 1 storage performance and fast 

change-request cycles because they need to do very little

planning and maintenance to keep performance levels high

and storage provisioned.

Please note the reference hyperlinks throughout and in

 Appendix A of this paper.

The power o the XIV grid architecture

 XIV storage is a grid in a box. It consists of six to 15 modules

that symmetrically distribute data, caching, CPUs, memory and

spindle access and parallelize SAN connectivity across interface

modules.

 The grid design, a core element of the architecture, stripes data

across all modules and spindles, incorporating data redundancy,

so I/Os are physically distributed in parallel to system modules

and spindles. The industry-leading design creates a powerfully 

load-balanced, higher-utilization execution to help enable

consistent and predictable performance without hotspots,

human intervention or maintenance. The XIV grid architecturesupports seamless, autonomous and fast fault recovery. For

instance, XIV disk rebuild ordinarily takes minutes, instead of 

hours typical of traditional storage.

Optimal capacity utilization

Storage administrators need not manage or hoard capacity 

reserves for the sake of performance because XIV can consis-

tently deliver high performance independent of capacity. It is

normal to reach 90 percent capacity utilization of XIV storage

 without noticing performance degradation, whereas traditional

storage architectures typically require a 60 percent utilization

safe zone to accommodate space reshuffling and avoid tiering

policy violations.

 The manual space allocation approach, storage hoarding and

tiering methodologies of traditional storage systems can often

leave a fair amount of unused and orphaned space—which

typically translates to inefficient use of expensive storage

resources. Sophisticated XIV storage distribution, space

reclamation and thin provisioning can enable a new level

of enterprise storage capacity efficiency and lower TCO,

 which is in direct alignment with virtualization objectives.

Thin provisioning trailblazer 

 XIV provides an agile, internally monitored thin provisioning

function to optimize storage utilization and consolidation in

 virtualized environments. With thin provisioning, the XIV 

system presents a fully sized LUN to the hosts yet can allocate

only the physical capacity that is actually necessary. VMware

administrators can provision more capacity as needed to

accommodate natural data growth and help reduce the risk 

of running out of physical space. Users manage the thin-

provisioned capacity through XIV storage pools that track 

the allocated logical and physical space against actual usage.

In elastic virtualized environments, where VMware datastoresare added and deleted dynamically, XIV thin provisioning

helps VMware datastores take up less space when initialized.

 An organization as a whole can benefit from thin provisioning,

 which can defer storage purchases, allowing space to be

allocated when capacity is truly required, thus helping avoid

unnecessary outlays.

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Despite the significant advantages of reduced storage manage-

ment and improved cost savings, thin provisioning deployed

in traditional storage systems typically has limitations that can

make IT teams curb its use. These include the need to manage

the inherent risk of capacity overcommitment, the risk of per-

formance degradation and the challenge of tracking capacity.

 XIV helps eliminate performance degradation issues, and capac-

ity can be monitored easily, allowing storage administrators tofocus on usage trending as a natural storage management risk 

in meeting needs.

Simple managementUniorm hardware that promotes predictable high

perormance

 XIV storage is designed to target the storage requirements

of high-end enterprise environments. The system is turnkey,

 with minimal setup and configuration, exemplified by point-

and-click storage provisioning. The highly parallelized, evenly 

utilized XIV grid architecture and effective distributed caching

enable XIV to use large, uniform and industry-standard high-

density disk drives—without diminishing performance and

 without administrative overhead. In contrast, traditional storage

architectures are often burdened by tier management overhead

such as ongoing cross-tier data movement which can cause

unpredictable performance; XIV administrators, in contrast,

are spared from this ordeal.

Stellar XIV graphical user interace

 The XIV GUI has received high scores from users and analysts,

 who see it as a game-changer in storage management and a

new benchmark in the industry. In fact, the XIV GUI has influ-

enced the design of the browser-based GUI now available in

other IBM storage portfolio products. The ease of use and user-

oriented flexibility provided by XIV extend to mobile devices,

including tablets and phones; the XIV Mobile Dashboard can

enable near-real-time XIV monitoring from anywhere, at any 

time, via the Apple iPad and iPhone as well as Android devices.

 The inherent ease-of-use of its management software makes

 XIV one of the simplest storage products in its class to master.

In fact, novice and veteran storage administrators alike praise

 XIV for just how quick management training is thanks to the

simple XIV GUI.2,3 

Minimal maintenance

 The autonomic XIV system leaves very little to maintain.

Steady high performance across all applications, powerfully 

balanced utilization and evenly distributed physical usage

over identical drives help eliminate the logistical stress of 

maintaining storage.

Note that XIV system performance does not rely on automated

maintenance. The system uses mathematical processing and

distribution algorithms that help make extreme performance

fluctuations rare.

 Figure 1: Clear and simple monitoring shows capacity across storage pools,thin provisioning characteristics—including soft and hard provisioning—and

actual data usage

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 Automated space reclamation or improved consolidation

 An automated XIV process helps increase available physical

capacity by recapturing and consolidating space available for

reclamation. The process reclaims space by converting ranges

of unused space populated with zeroes—with no noticeable

impact on performance.

 Autonomous data recovery

Since hardware faults occur, effective planning is essential. XIV 

storage features an early warning system, which is designed to

detect problematic hardware automatically, and alert adminis-

trators and support personnel prior to hardware failure. When

a physical drive or whole module fails, XIV storage can reduce

risk and administrator involvement by rebuilding the disk from

data stored redundantly across the grid—at high recovery 

speed. A disk drive can be recovered in minutes in comparison

to the hours required by traditional storage. The data center

can then follow up with a non-urgent, seamless hardware

replacement, in which the data is near instantly re-balanced

across the XIV grid, again, with no noticeable system impact.

For customers using the XIV event notification feature,

the recovery process can automatically generate a service

request for hardware replacement, further helping reduce

administrative overhead. Except for overall monitoring that 

includes recovery process monitoring, when necessary, XIV 

storage administrators can focus on higher-value IT tasks.

Hands-ree XIV Gen3 model SSD caching or aperormance boost

 XIV Gen3 includes an option of using solid state drives (SSDs)

as a random-read caching layer across the XIV grid. Adding

SSDs is a simple matter of plug and play—XIV can automati-

cally put the added capacity into use without manual configura-

tion. Deploying XIV SSD Caching can increase performance

up to three times for transaction processing and other active

applications.4 

Host-mapped QoS

 To drive differential quality of service for clouds and other

environments, the simple host-based XIV QoS feature stratifies

storage performance priorities using differentiated performance

levels. Administrators can assign hosts to one of four defined

QoS levels; each level is configured to limit its hosts by an

aggregate maximum of IOPS and an aggregate maximum

bandwidth. Unassigned hosts remain unlimited. This ability 

is achieved without the overhead of maintaining storage tiers,

trending performance degradation, managing hotspots or

tracking I/O-intensive internal data migrations. Both with and

 without QoS, XIV administrators can focus on straightforward

capacity planning and monitoring.

Easy acquisition, ast deployment

Inherent XIV simplicity can provide benefit immediately 

upon acquisition, in the form of straightforward pricing and

ultra-simple deployment—one of the easiest and fastest in the

high-end storage market. XIV system software is all-inclusive,

replete with the GUI, advanced functions and host attachment 

kits, making licensing simple and transparent. This straightfor-

 ward approach is designed to eliminate procurement limita-

tions, hassles and delays.

Here are the steps for deploying an XIV system:

Purchase: After defining storage requirements, choose the

drive size—either two or three terabytes for XIV Gen3—and the number of system modules ranging from six to 15.

 Together, these two factors determine the total capacity. The

rest of the hardware is included in the box and is not configured

or ordered separately, obviating complexity and compromised

storage needs. A set of advanced functions, including thin

provisioning, snapshots and mirroring, is provided with the

 XIV management software at no additional charge.

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 Take delivery and plug in: After taking delivery, all you need

do is connect. You are now ready to provision high-end storage

service. The whole process can be as short as a few hours, with

IBM experience showing that one day should be more than

sufficient.

 Migrate data: Connect your new XIV system to your servers

and your legacy storage array to the XIV machine. The XIV 

system is designed to start up seamlessly, migrating your data

in the background with unnoticeable performance impact.

Go live: Start using XIV storage in production.

Later: Add connections, modules or SSD cache to scale

smoothly. Employ additional software functionality at no

additional charge.

Upgrade: Install XIV microcode upgrades seamlessly with

no downtime or noticeable performance impact.

Forget: Put an end to individual drive layouts, intricate

tier configurations and multi-week, risky implementations.

Forget about downtime, complex planning for future expan-

sions and upgrades and complicated licensing schemes.

Superb random I/O perormance

 The key business driver for server virtualization is hardware

consolidation. It is not uncommon to find dozens of workloadprocesses on a single VMware host. More often than not,

due to virtualization, a VMware host produces a near-random

pattern of consolidated I/O, even though the individual guest 

operating systems produce mostly sequential I/O. And, highly 

random I/O requires frequent direct spindle access, leading

to heavy processing and burdening the storage array.

 The XIV grid handles random I/O better than typical storage

architectures in several ways:

1. Distributed cache can keep random I/O away from spindles:

 XIV distributes cache among the modules, helping provide

more bandwidth and cache processing per memory unit. This

smart cache processing design can propel more data in and

out of cache, keeping random I/O away from the spindles

and thereby yielding more effective, powerful data processing

compared to centralized-cache architectures.

2. Extreme parallelism for extreme multi-tasking: The I/O

is processed in parallel by multiple modules (six to 15) and

is uniformly distributed among the underlying (72 - 180)

spindles, load sharing, which helps expedite processing.

Robust XIV integration with VMwareCustomers appreciate the benefits of the unique XIV grid

architecture, including consistent high performance with

random I/O in heterogeneous environments. In addition,

deep collaboration-based integration between XIV storage

and VMware provides a wide range of benefits.

Long-term top-tier IBM-VMware partnership

 As a trusted VMware Technology Alliance Partner, IBM offers

one of the world’s leading comprehensive suites of differentiat-

ing solutions for VMware users. IBM, a longstanding VMware

partner, is one of the few vendors co-developing storage

integration with forthcoming versions of VMware. The XIV system is at the forefront of that development, installed

at the VMware Reference Architecture Lab, and actively con-

tributing to the development, testing and release of progressive

 VMware features, resulting in robust IBM storage solutions.

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Overview: IBM-VMware integration points

 VMware vSphere exposes multiple integration points, particu-

larly for storage empowerment. A brief description of XIV 

integration with VMware is included here, with more detail

provided in the following section.

1. vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) 

 XIV  VAAI support can significantly increase the consolidation

capabilities of vSphere. It helps customers conveniently 

apply VMware’s best storage practices by offloading storage

tasks to XIV storage, helping eliminate unnecessary virtual

machine (VM) lockdown, boost performance and deliver

better business continuity.

2. vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)  

 The IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA helps vSphere

easily monitor and automate XIV storage-related operations,such as Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

management functions. The IBM VASA Provider conveys

information from XIV storage about storage topology,

capabilities, and state, as well as events and alerts.

3. vCenter Server Plug-in  

IBM plug-ins offers rich management functionality: The

IBM vCenter plug-in (IBM Storage Management Console for

 VMware vCenter) provides an option for pool-level, storage-

administrator-controlled delegation of storage provisioning

tasks to VMware administrators. Working within vCenter,

the VMware administrator can create, map and modify XIV 

LUNs on demand, regular or thin-provisioned, limited only by the capacity allocated through the delegated pools. The

storage administrator is freed from ad-hoc provisioning, and

benefits from more realistic storage consumption tracking

and more accurate capacity planning.

 The IBM Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy® Manager Data Protection

for VMware vCenter plug-in can provide scheduled

datastore-level XIV hardware snapshots. XIV storage

offers datastore-level snapshots in conjunction with

 Tivoli FlashCopy Manager (FCM). For more information

see below.

4. vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP):

 Tivoli FCM can integrate hardware snapshot management 

and synchronize the backup process with vSphere, helping

reduce backup times and promoting backup consistency and

recoverability.

  Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments (TSM for VE)

can perform block-level incremental backups of VMware

guests using VADP. The IBM TSM Data Protection for

 VMware Recovery Agent can mount snapshots to enablefile-level and instant volume restores.

5. Site Recovery Adapter for VMware Site Recovery 

 Manager: 

 The XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 

(SRM) can help VMware administrators automate

 XIV failover in sync with VMware’s SRM failover.

6. Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA): 

PSA helps storage vendors directly manage the VMware

ESX storage I/O path. The XIV system uses native storage

I/O path subsystems for each platform, including VMware.

 As a result, with XIV storage, PSA integration and a special

multipath driver are unnecessary.

In-depth XIV storage integration with VMware is provided

at no additional charge, as part of XIV licensing. Integration

 works either out of the box, such as VAAI with vSphere 5.0,

or with simple software plug-ins or drivers, which can be

downloaded here .

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Optional, separately-licensed Tivoli products can provide

additional VMware data protection integration.

 The following section describes each XIV-VMware integration

point in-depth with a focus on customer use and benefit.

StorageManagement

Plug-in

 XIV 

DataProtection

Plug-in

TivoliFlashCopyManager 

.Net SaaS Windows Linux  J2EE Desktop App

 Application

vServicesAvailability Security Scalability

 VMware InfrastructureVirtual Datacenter OS from VMware

Infrastructure

vServices vCompute vStorage vNetwork Cloud

vServices

 VMware

 vCenter 

Site RecoveryManager 

StorageReplication

 Adaptor 

 XIV 

 VASA 

 XIV  XIV 

 VAAI VADP

TivoliStorage

Manager 

On-Premise Cloud Off-Premise Cloud

 Figure 2: XIV integration points with VMware

Increased vSphere performance and

scalability (VAAI) XIV storage is VAAI-capable out of the box. Beginning

 with VMware vSphere version 5.0, ESX hosts are designedto automatically detect XIV machine VAAI capability, adopting

it by default.

 XIV support or VMware storage architectureand VAAI

SCSI is a standard storage command and control protocol

for block devices. A vSphere datastore is the VMware storage

model for block (SCSI) storage. A Virtual Machine Disk File

(VMDK) is the image file of a virtual machine disk. Each datas-

tore presents a Virtual Machine File System (VMFS), which

contains VMDK files, to VMware. VMware can allocate

storage space for the datastore from one or more selected

LUNs that are mapped to the ESX hosts.

 To comply with VAAI requirements, XIV storage (a SCSI

device) applies an additional set of standard SCSI interfaces.

 VMware vSphere v5.0 and later versions can automatically 

detect VAAI-capable storage devices and can use these

interfaces as demonstrated in the use cases below.

Full Copy The XIV system copies a specified source range

(XCOPY) of blocks to a location in a specif ied target LUN.

Block Zeroing  XIV can wipe out a range of blocks with zeroes.

(WRITE_SAME)

 ATOMIC TEST  XIV can lock a specific range of blocks and write

 AND SET (ATS) to that range exclusively.

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 XIV-VAAI optimized use cases

 These commands may seem very basic at first glance, but to

appreciate the impact of VAAI, read the real-world VMware use

cases below and how they compare with and without VAAI.

Use Case #1: Storage vMotion datastore move 

 Move a 40 GB guest VMDK from datastore A to datastore B.

 Without VAAI With VAAI

The VMware ESX host reads The VMware ESX host sends a

40 GB of data from datastore A series of Full Copy commands to

and writes 40 GB of data to XIV storage, specifying various

datastore B. block ranges that need to be

moved.

During the operation, 80 GB of Data moves internally within the XIV

data tax the total I/O band- system, with negligible ESX CPUwidth, a significant portion of and I/O tax, and without memory

the CPU cycles is allocated to tax. The operation completes

control the operation, and a more quickly due to faster XIV I/O

significant amount of memory internal connectivity (XIV Gen3 uses

is temporarily allocated to hold InfiniBand connectors) and parallel

the copy buffers and caching. grid processing.

Summary: With the VAAI Full Copy command, Storage

 vMotion is much faster and has negligible I/O, CPU and

memory impact. The ESX host is insignificantly impacted

by the operation.

Use Case #2: Create a new 40 GB VM 

 As part of the VM initialization process, the VMware

host wipes out the designated VM space.

 Without VAAI With VAAI

The host writes When the administrator chooses eager-

40 GB of zeroes to zero thick provisioning, the host sends a

the designated space. WRITE_SAME command, which has no I/O

During this relatively impact. The XIV architecture stores zeroed

long operation, 40 GB segment information as metadata, barely

of zeroes tax the total consuming any storage space. The operation

I/O bandwidth. completes almost instantly.

Summary: With the VAAI WRITE_SAME command,

creating a new VM is faster and has negligible I/O, CPU 

and memory impact. The ESX host is essentially not impacted

by the operation.

Use Case #3: Powering up a VM 

 To power up a guest VM, the VMFS file system requiresexclusive access to the guest VMDK file.

 Without VAAI With VAAI

The VMware ESX host uses

SCSI reservation commands—

PERSISTENT RESERVE IN and

PERSISTENT RESERVE OUT—to

obtain exclusive access to

the whole LUN on which the

particular VMDK data resides.

The VMware ESX host uses the

SCSI ATOMIC TEST AND SET

command to obtain exclusive

access to the exact block range

that the guest VMDK occupies.

 As long as exclusive access is

required, VMDK files that happen

to be stored on the same LUN

cannot be accessed, even if they

are not related to the operation.

 As a result, applications using

the unrelated VMs experience

unnecessary latency.

By giving access to VMDK files

that share the LUN but reside

on blocks outside the exclusive

range, XIV helps prevent them

from being impacted by the

operation. These applications

proceed as usual with no latency.

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Summary: With the VAAI ATOMIC TEST AND SET com-

mand, powering up a VM does not have any I/O impact on

other VMs. Note: The same benefit applies to the additional

use cases—including creating a template from a VM, deploying

a VM from a template, migrating a VM, growing a VMware

thin-provisioned VMDK file and modifying or deleting a

datastore.

Customer value

 VAAI can help improve the responsiveness of a virtualized

environment, consolidate more application workloads within

a single infrastructure, and promote high performance.

Consolidation

 With the key benefit of virtualized infrastructure being server

consolidation, the VAAI-capable XIV infrastructure helps

customers apply VMware best practices without compromise,

consolidating more without causing latency or increasing risk.

 With VAAI-enabled XIV storage, customers can:

● Use larger LUNs to create or expand datastores.● Use fewer LUNs to create larger datastores, simplifying

storage management.● Introduce more guests to existing datastores.● Potentially increase the number of VMs running on a

host or cluster.●  Migrate VMs between datastores without host impact.● Copy VMs and create templates without host impact.●  Adding guests on each ESX host without impacting

other guest performance.

Perormance

 VMware does not provide formal benchmarks to measure VAAI

improvements. However, VAAI-enabled XIV performance

improvements can be significant on individual operations.

For example, it is easy to demonstrate the time and resource

savings of identical VM migrations before and after VAAI is

applied. VMware can be configured to disable individual VAAI

capabilities, which can be useful for this type of lab testing.

 The overall performance improvement with VAAI depends onseveral factors; the impact is generally greater with high-density 

clusters or hosts. The performance increment also hinges on

the performance baseline, including raw network strength and

host configuration.

VMFS Datastore LUNs XIV

 VM

 VM

Provisioning

 Figure 3: The relationship between XIV LUNs and VMware datastores

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Eort, risk and cost

 VAAI capability is enabled by default from XIV Storage System

Software version 10.2.4 and above. For VMware version 4.1

only, the IBM Storage Device Driver for VMware VAAI is

required on each host. Starting from VMware vSphere 5, VAAI

does not require driver software installation.

 The XIV VAAI implementation is based on standard SCSI

commands, certified by VMware and supported by IBM.

For more inormation on VAAIFor more information on VAAI, go to:

●  VMware VAAI page: http://www.vmware.com/products/ 

vstorage-apis-for-array-integration/overview.html

● Search for updated XIV VAAI information on ibm.com here ● IBM Storage Device Driver for VMware VAAI to install the

driver on ESX servers and utilize VAAI with vSphere 4.1.

Automated storage failover/recovery

using the storage replication adaptor Overview

 VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM), VMware’s

native disaster recovery product, is tightly integrated with

 VMware vSphere. Customers use the product to fully automate

failover from a primary protected site to a secondary recovery 

site. SRM provides an elaborate management application for

creating, testing and executing failover sequences, helping

simulate disaster recovery prior to an actual event. Starting

 with VMware v5.0, Site Recovery Manager also can automate

failback to the primary site.

End-to-end failover and failback automation includes coordi-

nated storage and server failover. The SRM architecture

enables the integration of storage products through a third-party storage replication adapter (SRA), such as the XIV 

 Adapter for VMware vCenter SRM for the XIV Storage

System.

Customer value

 The XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter SRM is designed

to enhance SRM with the several capabilities, spanning

configuration, failover and failback, and monitoring:

Confguration

●  Add and remove XIV arrays from the SRM configuration.●

Create recovery plans for XIV-based datastores.● Create and manage protection groups for XIV-based

datastores.● Enable, disable and view the connectivity status.●  Manage mirroring status between volumes and consistency 

groups.

 Figure 4: Field examples of performance improvements with VAAI Full

Copy (Source: VMware vSphere 5 and XIV Gen3 end-to-end virtualizationlab report )

Customer  Test Before VAAI After VAAITime

Reduction (%)

Major 

Financial

Electric

Company

Petroleum

Company

2 VMs

2 VMs

40 VMs

433 Sec

944 sec

1 hour

180 Sec

517 Sec

20 min

45%

67%

59%

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Failover and ailback 

● Fail the operation over to the recovery site by reversing

mirroring, designating the Recovery LUNs as primary 

for updates and mapping them to new primary hosts.● Fail back by reversing mirroring from the recovery site

 XIV arrays to the protected site XIV arrays.

Test

● Create and use XIV snapshots of target mirror LUNs in

failover testing without interrupting the replication.● Create backup LUN snapshot replication points before

they become mirroring targets and are overwritten.

 This applies to both failover and failback scenarios.● Perform cleanup by deleting snapshots.

Monitor and manage

● Query XIV array details and connectivity health status.● Detect and display paired XIV arrays, for example, mirrored

relationships.

Eort, risk and cost

 The XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter SRM is certified by 

 VMware and supported by IBM. It is available for download at 

no additional charge and installed once on the SRM server.

Servers Servers

Site A (Primary) Site B (Recovery)

 VM VM VM VM VM VM  VM VM VM VM VM VM

 VMware vCenter Server 

Site Recovery

Manager 

 VMware vSphere VMware vSphere

 VMware vCenter Server 

Site Recovery

Manager 

Failover 

Failback 

Mirroring

 Figure 5 : SRM/XIV replication including failover and failback 

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XIV storage management in vCenter Overview

 VMware vCenter plug-in architecture allows software and

hardware vendors to infuse management support for their

products directly into vSphere’s management server and help

expose the storage management user interface through the

 vSphere client.

Te IBM Storage Management Console 

for VMware vCenter (vCenter plug-in) was developed for both VMware administrators and IBM stor-

age administrators to resolve cross-management issues while

supporting tested management boundaries. The plug-in helps

manage XIV storage and other IBM storage products within

the VMware environment.

Customer valueBetter storage visibility

Out of the box, VMware vSphere offers limited storage

management visibility; it can display standard meta-data,

but cannot display advanced, native storage information.

 The vCenter plug-in is designed to enhance IBM storage

 visibility by displaying, through a native IBM storage tab,

detailed LUN information in context when viewing data

centers, clusters, hosts or VMs. For each datastore, VMware

administrators can see a quick list of associated LUNs with

native IBM storage attributes. This detail includes a capacity 

usage graph, volume name, pool name, serial number, consis-

tency group and snapshot and mirroring information.

 Figure 7 : IBM vCenter plug-in screen showing XIV-stored LUNs

 Figure 6 : Cloud, VMware, backup and storage administrators share acommon user interface via VMware vCenter

Cloud

 Administrator

VMware

 Administrator

Backup

 Administrator

Storage

 Administrator

Common UI using VMware vCenter 

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Storage visibility (VASA) The IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA is an alternative

tool for viewing information about the XIV Storage System

available in vCenter, including:

● Near-real-time disk status.● Near-real-time alerts and events.● Support for multiple vCenter consoles and multiple

 XIV Storage Systems.

 Adding vSphere 5 VASA support can deliver actionable storage

insights, such as availability, alerts and events, to VMware and

cloud administrators for enhanced storage infrastructure

management.

Self-service vCenter-operated storage

provisioning (vCenter plug-in)In addition to providing VASA visibility, the XIV Storage

System vCenter Plug-in for vSphere 4 and vSphere 5 extends

storage management to VMware-administrator-enabled

provisioning, mapping and monitoring of replications,

snapshots and capacity.

Easy to learn

 The intuitive plug-in is simple to access from within

 vCenter Server and straightforward to learn.

Eective low-risk delegation to VMwareadministrators

 The plug-in can empower storage administrators, putting an

end to the worry of traditional storage management delegation.

● Self provisioning is controlled through pools and quotas,

and can be monitored continually for proactive capacity 

management.● Self provisioning is optional.●  The in-balance XIV architecture ensures that VMware

administrators do not cause hotspots.

Virtual machine backup and recovery

(VADP)Large-scale VMware vSphere environments with hundreds or

thousands of VMs are at high risk without a solid backup and

recovery solution that complies with organizational recovery 

time and recovery point service level agreements. IBM offers a

 wide-ranging suite of products that can enable customers to

effectively protect and recover data and manage retention while

controlling costs.

By integrating with the VMware data protection framework—

 vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP)—and leveragingadvanced XIV storage snapshot technology, Tivoli Storage

FlashCopy Manager (FCM) can provide high-powered

data protection with stellar performance, and simplified

management for VMware environments. VMware VADP

integration is supported by vSphere 4.x and 5.x.

 Figure 9: vSphere client view with powerful XIV storage information surfaced

through VASA 

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FCM-captured XIV snapshots can be retained on the XIV 

system for fast and reliable restores. Customers can also take

advantage of the powerful data protection and data reduction

capabilities available in the TSM-FCM integration through

 Tivoli Storage Manager for the Virtual Environment (TSM for

 VE). The wide range of integrated functionality with VMware

includes content-aware backup, changed block tracking (CBT),

data deduplication, progressive incremental backup, LAN-free

backup, hierarchical storage management and centrally man-

aged policy-based administration.

Simplifed backup and recovery management

 With Tivoli data protection functionality, organizations can

empower vSphere administrators with greater control over VM

backup and recovery processes. The web-based FCM and TSM

plug-in expands the familiar vSphere client to include various

management processes, from incremental backups of individual

 VMs for long-term TSM storage pool retention to leveraging

space-efficient XIV snapshots for higher-speed datastore

backups.

Snapshot retention policies can be defined separately for

datastore snapshots managed by FCM and for VM backups

sent to TSM.

Command Line Interace (CLI)

 The Tivoli Data Protection for VMware command line inter-

face (CLI) offers a powerful common front-end for Tivoli

Storage FlashCopy Manager for VMware and Tivoli Storage

 Manager for Virtual Environments. The CLI can correlate

backups created by FCM and TSM, combining multiple

backup runs into one logical backup. It also offers a simple

backup scheduler to configure recurring backup tasks. The

CLI features robust custom scripting and specialized external

scheduling capabilities.

Single-pass backup

 Through TSM and FCM, XIV backups can be scheduled

or performed on an ad hoc basis. Tivoli VM backup software

covers all major operating systems; therefore, OS-specific

agents are not needed.

FCM helps protect entire vSphere environments by leveraging VADP to create snapshots of LUN-level VMFS datastores with

a single backup server. These snapshots can restore individual

 VM images, virtual volumes owned by a VM or individual files

from a particular VM.

 Figure 10: Tivoli vCenter plug-in for managing backup schedules

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Integrated XIV snapshots taken in VMware by FCM promote

easy recovery. When taking an XIV snapshot of a datastore in

 vCenter:

● FlashCopy Manager initiates a VMware software snapshot of 

the VMs residing on the datastore through the vSphere API●  VMware snapshots trigger application quiescence for

individual virtual machines, helping ensure application

backup consistency ● FlashCopy Manager determines the XIV LUNs that are

associated with the datastore● FlashCopy Manager invokes a hardware snapshot, creating a

persistent copy of the virtual disks and associated VMware

snapshots●  The hardware snapshot is retained for restore until specified

for deletion

 With optional TSM integration through TSM for Virtual

Environments, XIV snapshots can be mounted and VM data

can be moved or copied into TSM storage pools for long-term

retention, disaster recovery purposes or compliance objectives.

 When moving data to TSM, customers can leverage advanced

data protection and data reduction capabilities from both

 VMware and TSM to reduce backup size and backup time

for processes. These capabilities include content aware backup,

changed block tracking, data deduplication, progressive incre-

mental backup, LAN-free backup, hierarchical storage manage-ment and centrally-managed, policy-based administration.

Flexible recovery options

Customers can choose multiple XIV snapshot recovery options.

Individual VMs can be restored from an XIV hardware snap-

shot of VMFS datastores or from an offloaded TSM backup—

to either the original or an alternate VMFS datastore—under

the original or a new name. The Tivoli vCenter plug-in can

present a unified view of all available FCM- and TSM-based

backups, both XIV snapshots and TSM storage pool backups.

For pinpoint recovery, FCM provides the flexibility to selec-

tively restore one or more individual virtual disks, without the

need to restore an entire VM. Individual files can be restored

by attaching one or more virtual disks from a datastore snap-

shot to a guest VM.

 The TSM for Virtual Environments recovery agent accesses

the migrated storage pool data directly in TSM, offering similar

robust recovery options. TSM VE recovery agent applies

 TSM storage pool access rules, supporting authorized recovery 

initiation by helpdesk personnel, backup administrators or

application owners.

Eective backup and restore progress monitoringand historical reporting

 The FCM and TSM plug-in expands the vSphere client to

drive quick and easy monitoring of in-progress backup and

restore activities as well as historic reporting of past backup

and recovery operations.

 The rich TSM monitoring and reporting functionality 

features—summary views with detailed drill-down analysis,

important backup and restore statistics, and managed-capacity 

reporting—facilitate effective data protection strategies and

promote timely and accurate restores.

Sophisticated XIV snapshots to reduce overhead

 The XIV Storage System performs snapshots with virtually 

no overhead using redirect-on-write technology instead of the

traditional latency-causing copy-on-write snapshot processing

used by other vendors. Supplementing this efficiency, XIV 

incremental backup snapshots are optimally configured just 

like primary volumes, helping ensure enterprise-class read

and write performance while reducing the need for processing

and space overhead.

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 Customer success stories

Enterprises across various industries derive benefits from

deploying XIV storage with VMware, achieving optimalperformance, cost-saving consolidation and measureable

results worth sharing. Below are several noteworthy

examples.

EllisDon: “We selected IBM XIV Storage System as the

key enabler for the whole cloud concept. It allows us to get

all the f lexibility advantages of virtualization without any

performance issues: XIV and VMware fit per fectly together.”

(Construction, Canada)

Tallink : “Hands-on testing proved to us that XIV really offers

the performance and functionality that IBM promised. We

also spend far less time managing storage, because the

 XIV interface is so intuitive.” (Shipping, Estonia)

 Wiberg: “When it comes to performance, support and system

maintenance, the IBM XIV Storage System is simply per fectly

designed.” (Consumer products, Austria)

TCCT: “The XIV systems gave us the protection, availability,

scalability and performance we needed for data storage.”

(Computer services, USA)

CNAM: “The IBM XIV Storage System met all our require-

ments: scalability, per formance, rapid migration, data

protection and ease of management in a compact solution.”

(Education, France)

For a full inventory of customer case studies on XIV-VMware

integration, please visit the success stories area of ibm.com.

 Conclusion As VMware server virtualization adoption penetrates enter-

prises, potentially reaching VMware’s projected target levels

of 66 percent system virtualization by 20125 organizations

continue to strategically rely on virtualization to reduce costs

and infuse efficiency into their growing IT infrastructures.

 Traditional storage has often been the weak link in the virtual-

ization lifecycle, hampering deployments with performance,

agility and complexity issues that have limited the full potential

of enterprise server virtualization.

 The XIV storage architecture can significantly reshape this

landscape—with performance-boosting integration and a

revolutionary virtualized architecture that can work in synergy 

 with highly virtualized VMware environments—in addition toa strategic VMware alliance that helps keep XIV development 

in lock-step with emerging VMware product introductions.

 With the XIV system as the VMware environment storage

foundation, enterprises are better positioned to achieve high,

hotspot-free performance and reach better consolidation and

continuity levels. Furthermore, enterprises can meet long-term

low TCO objectives to attain optimal benefits from their

 VMware deployments.

Appendix A - Additional resources

 These additional documents and videos may help further yourunderstanding of XIV solutions for VMware:

 XIV Storage System ●  XIV Data Sheet: http://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/ 

cgi-bin/ssialias?subtype=SP&infotype=PM&appname=

STGE_TS_DS_USEN&htmlfid=TSD03057USEN&attachment=

TSD03057USEN.PDF

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●  XIV system information center: 

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp

●  XIV system pre-installation network planning guide: 

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/topic/ 

com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/GA52-1328-04.pdf  ● Publications: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/ 

r2/index.jsp

 XIV-VMware integration ●  XIV and VMware: An ideal fit (video): 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORBn5WoI5YA 

●  VMware data protection for XIV (video): 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vecOap-qwbA 

 XIV-VMware end-to-end virtualization ●

 VMware vSphere 5 and IBM XIV Gen3 end-to-end virtualization lab report: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ 

ssi/ecm/en/tsw03122usen/TSW03122USEN.PDF

●  XIV host attachment guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/ 

infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/ 

IBM_XIV_HAK_1.7.1_HAG.pdf 

Site Recovery Manager ● Data sheet: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/ 

SRM/VMware-vCenter-Site-Recovery-Manager-with-

vSphere-Replication-Datasheet.pdf 

●  VMware SRM webpage: http://www.vmware.com/ 

products/site-recovery-manager/ ● Download: http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/ 

infrastructure_operations_management/ 

vmware_vcenter_site_recovery_manager/5_0

 vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)●  VAAI overview: http://www.vmware.com/products/ 

vstorage-apis-for-array-integration/overview.html

●  VAAI brochure: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/ 

vsphere_enterprise_datasheet.pdf 

● IBM Storage Device Driver for VMware VAAI

installation guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ 

ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/ 

IBM_DD_for_VMware_VAAI_1.2.0_IG.pdf 

 VMware vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)●  VASA overview: http://www.vmware.com/products/ 

datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/storage-apis-for-storage-

awareness/overview.html

● IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA installation 

guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ 

ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/ 

Storage_Prov_for_VMware_VASA_1.1.0_IG.pdf 

 VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection ●  VADP Overview: http://www.vmware.com/products/ 

vstorage-apis-for-data-protection/overview.html

IBM Storage Management Console for VMware vCenter ● System download: http://www-933.ibm.com/support/ 

fixcentral/swg/selectFixes?parent=Enterprise+Storage+

Servers&product=ibm/Storage_Disk/XIV+Storage+System+

(2810,+2812)&release=All&platform=All&function=all#IBM Storage Management Console for VMware vCenter

● User guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/ 

r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/ 

IBM_MNG_for_VMware_VC_2.6.0_UG.pdf 

● Release notes http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ 

ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/ 

xiv_pubsrelatedinfoic.html

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 VMware best practices●  VMware vCenter Server Performance and Best 

Practices: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/ 

vsp_41_perf_VC_Best_Practices.pdf 

● Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.1: 

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ 

Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere4.1.pdf 

 VMware technical resources●  Technical website: http://www.vmware.com/ 

technical-resources

●  VMware knowledgebase website: http://kb.vmware.com

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager ● Storage Manager for Virtual Environments Data

Protection for VMware Installation and User’s Guide:http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tsminfo/v6r2/topic/ 

com.ibm.itsm.ve.doc/b_ve_inst_user.pdf 

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager ● IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for 

 VMware Installation and User’s Guide: 

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tsminfo/v6r3/topic/ 

com.ibm.itsm.fcm.vm.doc/b_fvm_guide.pdf 

For more information To learn more about the IBM XIV Storage System, please

contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business

Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com /xiv

 Additionally, IBM Global Financing can help you acquire the

IT solutions that your business needs in the most cost-effective

and strategic way possible. We’ll partner with credit-qualified

clients to customize an IT financing solution to suit your busi-

ness goals, enable effective cash management, and improve yourtotal cost of ownership. IBM Global Financing is your smartest 

choice to fund critical IT investments and propel your business

forward. For more information, visit: ibm.com /financing

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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012

IBM Systems and Technology GroupRoute 100Somers, New York 10589

Produced in the United States of America August 2012

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, XIV, Tivoli, and FlashCopy are trademarksof International Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarksof IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks isavailable on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com /legal/copytrade.shtml

 Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarksof Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

 This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates.

 The performance data discussed herein is presented as derived underspecific operating conditions. Actual results may vary. It is the user’sresponsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any other productsor programs with IBM products and programs.

 THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED“AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIESOF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR 

PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OFNON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to theterms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.

 The client is responsible for ensuring compliance with laws and regulationsapplicable to it. IBM does not provide legal advice or represent or warrant that its services or products will ensure that the client is in compliance withany law or regulation.

 Actual available storage capacity may be reported for both uncompressedand compressed data and will vary and may be less than stated.

1 International Technology Group Management Brief: Cost/Benefit Case for

IBM XIV Storage, Comparing Cost Structures for IBM XIV and EMC VMAX/ 

EMC VMAXe Systems . In six representative installations in large andmidsize organizations, three-year costs for use of XIV systems average

69 percent less than for VMAX equivalents equipped with FC drives.2 “The interface is simple and hides all the complexity from the user.” , Tom DeJuneas, IT Manager, Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated

 

Please Recycle

3 “The solution’s unparalleled ease of management and efficiency translate

into lower operational costs.”, Joe Jagodich, Vice President and CIO,EllisDon

4

Results were achieved in an OLTP workload test with 70 percent read,30 percent write and 50 percent read hit operations. Customer resultsmay vary depending on operating environment.

5 Business and Financial Benefits of Virtualization, VMware White Paper