Storage has evolved from a peripheral to the foundational technology in IT. Data (and therefore, the protection of that data) underpins the internet, Cloud and internal datacenters worldwide. Having storage systems that allow users to scale up in performance, scale out in capacity, and scale deep to leverage existing investments are the key tenets on which next generation datacenters are founded. IBM, in its announcement of the Storwize V7000 has taken all these into account. The V7000 meets all three scaling needs, is feature packed. It is also a clear example of how leveraging industry standards can yield high return for both IBM and its customers.

1. WHITE P APER
A New Era in Midrange Storage
Sponsored by: IBM
Benjamin Woo
December 2010
IDC OPINION
Storage has evolved from a peripheral to the foundational technology in IT. Data (and
www.idc.com
therefore, the protection of that data) underpins the internet, Cloud and internal
datacenters worldwide.
Having storage systems that allow users to scale up in performance, scale out in
F.508.935.4015
capacity, and scale deep to leverage existing investments are the key tenets on which
next generation datacenters are founded.
IBM, in its announcement of the Storwize V7000 has taken all these into account. The
V7000 meets all three scaling needs, is feature packed. It is also a clear example of
P.508.872.8200
how leveraging industry standards can yield high return for both IBM and its
customers.
SITUATION OVERVIEW
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA
An opportunistic market
IDC research shows that external storage systems in price bands five through eight
(representing storage systems that have an average selling price between
US$25,001 and US$250,000) have a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of
7.3% between 2009 and 2014. These price bands are often considered by the
industry as representing midrange storage systems.
This represents a CAGR that is more than 20% more aggressive than the external
storage market, and nearly a 45% improvement on the total storage market in the
same period. Contrasting this positive news, in the highest two price bands that
represent those external storage systems costing more than US$250,000, that market
is expected to show a 2.6% decline over the same period.
With these forecasts in hand, it is obvious that a focus on the midrange storage
market will yield the most opportunities for any storage vendor.

2. FIGURE 1
2009 IBM Marketshare, Midrange Systems for External FC
Storage Systems
Source: IDC, 2007
In 2009, IBM held the leadership in terms of vendor share (with 19.5% of the market)
for midrange storage systems as defined above for external fibre channel storage
systems. For the last several years, IBM has served this market with a plethora of
offerings – the DS3000, DS4000 and DS5000. In the most recent year IBM has been
consolidating the number of offerings in this space. But what IBM needed was a new
architecture that can parallel and scale with the data and information management
messaging it has been pursuing throughout 2009 and 2010.
What a next generation midrange storage
system needs
Next generation storage systems are built on three critical premises:
Scalability
Efficiency
Simplicity
Each of these elements help to define whether a storage system will meet the ever-
growing and ever-changing demands of end-users.
Scalability
Scalability can be measured in three different ways:
Scale Up
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3. Scale Out
Scale Wide
Scaling Up
Traditionally, storage systems have ridden atop Moore's Law. As processors improve
in performance and capabilities, storage systems vendors have simply leveraged
these improvements in subsequent generations of storage systems or in larger
versions of existing storage systems.
The benefit of scaling up is that as systems scale, there are few interruptions to
operations, and in many cases, components within a storage system can be
repurposed in subsequent generations or upgraded versions of a given family of
storage system.
The challenge however, is that scale-up storage systems have typically been
proprietary, particularly in monolithic storage systems. Historically, even in modular
midrange systems, proprietary components and the software which drives the storage
system is typically written to operate with a fixed number (usually two) controllers in
mind, and as such limits the potential scalability of these storage systems
Scaling Out
In more recent years, there has been a tremendous focus on scaling out. The concept
is simple, rather than leveraging proprietary hardware, rewrite the software code to
take advantage of many industry standard server platforms and leverage the
collective performance of these relatively inexpensive, yet (potentially) infinitely
scalable hardware platforms.
Scale out systems can also benefit from scaling up. As newer generations of industry
standard servers are released, the benefits of these servers can be integrated with
existing platforms to create a larger, more powerful storage server pool while
protecting the investment made in existing storage server nodes.
Scaling Wide
While scale out architectures can assist in protecting investment in storage server
and storage capacity elements of an existing storage system in the same family, it
cannot provide the same investment protection to other third party storage systems
(even if they are from the same vendor).
This is where scaling wide has benefits. The ability to integrate third party storage
systems behind a scale-out architecture (i.e. scaling wide), now provides all the
benefits of the relatively simple, low-cost approach to scaling storage systems while
being able to leverage external third party storage systems to extend the life of
existing storage investments and/or to take advantage of specialized cost or features.
Efficiency
The most critical features and functions for storage systems today address storage
efficiency. These technologies include:
©2010 IDC #225882 3

4. Automated storage tiering
Space efficient backups (snapshots)
On-site and Off-site Data Replication
Transparent migration
Automated storage tiering
One of the major challenges as it relates to the efficient use of storage media is the
need to put the right data (typically the most accessed) on the right price/performance
data storage medium.
Solid state storage technologies can help. Solid State Disks (SSDs) that leverages
NAND Flash technologies to provide ultra-high performance, when used to target
performance sensitive data should be deployed to address these needs. In most end-
user environments, investment in ultra-high performance capacity does not need to
exceed 10% of the storage capacity.
The balance of the capacity should leverage serial-attached SCSI drives (SAS). SAS
combines the cost effectiveness of serial-ATA (SATA) drives with the enterprise
features, such as dual interface ports, of fibre channel (FC).
With this infrastructure in place, the biggest challenge for end-users is ensuring that
the right data is in the right tier of storage.
The most effective approach is to let the storage system make that determination
based on the actual I/O that it is reading and writing. As such, having automated
storage tiering becomes critical in terms of meeting performance service levels while
minimizing cost.
Space efficient backups (snapshots)
Managing the cost of storage capacity is not limited to primary, in-use data. Backups
and snapshots also need to be efficient. Particularly where an end-user leverages its
storage system in a mixed-use environment, being able to make space efficient
backups for testing or for data recovery can end up being a big portion of a data
storage investment.
Additionally, these capacity efficient backups must also be fully integrated into
mission critical applications – not only to eliminate backup windows but to ensure the
integrity of the data during backups.
On-site and off-site replication
The ability to provide on-site and off-site replication is critical to the protection of
digital assets. Storage systems need to incorporate the ability to create an almost
instant copy of active data, which can be used for backup purposes or for parallel
processing activities. To improve efficiencies, storage systems should also
incorporate the ability to support incremental copies, copying only the portions of the
source or target volume that have been updated.
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5. The combination of thin provisioning technologies along with efficient copy
technologies results in end-users using only a fraction of the amount of storage
needed for a full physical copy to improve overall storage utilization.
These functions are only relevant and useful, if they can be managed within an
overall management platform, preferably from a single pane of glass to maximize
productivity.
When creating data protection policies that go beyond a single storage system, it is
necessary to leverage systems that can create remote mirroring capabilities between
systems at different locations to help create copies of data for use in the event of a
catastrophic event at a data center. Given the prevalence of VMware, these functions
should ideally be designed to support VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manage to help
speed disaster recovery.
Transparent Migration
Data migration, is perhaps the riskiest activity that goes on in a datacenter, and is one
of the most common causes of planned downtime. The ability to create transparent
migrations between existing platforms and future platforms will mitigate these risks.
These functions should ideally occur while maintaining access to the data. The data
migration function might be used, for example, when replacing older storage with
newer storage, as part of load balancing work or when moving data in a tiered
storage infrastructure.
There are economic benefits to transparent migration functions that can can provide
efficiency and business value. This can speed time-to-value from weeks or months to
days, minimize downtime for migration, eliminate the cost of add-on migration tools,
and may help avoid penalties and additional maintenance charges for lease
extensions.
Simplicity
Given the number of data intensive functions with which storage systems are
involved, from RAID calculations to automated data tiering, the management of
storage systems can get quite involved.
Nonetheless, with the focus of end-users being placed squarely on the delivery of
service levels to support business applications, a simple management interface is
critical. Ideally, the management interface can be integrated with an enterprise
storage management platform, and ultimately with a data center wide management
platform.
Overall, storage systems need to provide as much reactive information as well as
proactive recommended actions to the storage administrators. While some storage
administrators desire to see intricate details regarding what a storage system is
doing, others simply want to know that the prescribed tasks are completed.
Finding this balance can sometimes be a difficult challenge for storage management
software. But it is a necessary one.
©2010 IDC #225882 5

6. FUTURE OUTLOOK
IBM is addressing the next generation midrange disk storage systems need with its
Storwize V7000. The Storwize V7000 has taken appealing aspects of its XIV and
DS8000 storage systems and SVC gateway and combined it into a single solution.
With the introduction of the Storwize V7000, IBM will enable its customers to start
from a minimal number of disk drives and ultimately scale up to nearly 240TB of
storage. To fulfill its "scale wide" promise, IBM has also designed the Storwize V7000
to attach other external storage systems to extend the capacity even further.
To maximize the density of the Storwize V7000, IBM is leveraging a consistent
compact 2U form factor. It has also included a number of premium features that will
be included with each Storwize V7000. These include:
IBM's EasyTier automated data tiering
FlashCopy
Nondisruptive data movement
Thin Provisioning
Leveraging the success of the XIV storage system, IBM has adapted the XIV GUI to
the Storwize V7000. The Storwize V7000 can also be managed by IBM's Tivoli
Storage Productivity Center and IBM's Systems Director Storage Control.
On the backend, IBM is one of the first leading storage vendors to leverage the
Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) Working Group's SBB 2.0 architecture. The use of SBB by
IBM makes a lot of sense. An SBB platform is essentially an x86 industry standard
server blade plugged into storage shelf. This means that IBM can accelerate
development and deployment of advanced storage services via software.
It will also decrease the development and testing costs associated with bringing next
generation features and functions to market. One such use may be to leverage its
recently acquired compression technology to improve efficiency and reduce costs
even further..
IBM could also develop (or migrate) almost any relevant x86-based application to the
Storwize V7000. In essence, IBM could conceivably develop the system as a storage
application platform.
Overall the Storwize V7000 represents a highly scalable platform for IBM customers.
Finally, IBM is able to deliver a storage platform that can help it address its small and
medium business (SMB) customers through to its high end medium sized business.
The consistency in interface between the Storwize V7000 and XIV enables IBM
customers to seamlessly evolve to the larger platform.
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7. CHALLENGES/OPPORTUNITIES
Despite the efficiency and consolidation efforts made by IBM in the last 18 months, the
DS series of block based storage solutions has been too fragmented and confusing.
The Storwize V7000 and XIV define truly a new generation and approach from IBM. It
also demonstrates IBM's commitment to R&D, and reflects IBM's innovation in storage.
With that said, the market into which the Storwize V7000 is being deployed is already
very mature with many well regarded competitors. The Storwize V7000 is a departure
from its DS family of storage solutions, and IBM will need to take care not to isolate
those existing customers while evolving those customers to the new platform.
Secondly, IBM may need to change the way it markets the N series to take advantage
of the Storwize V7000. It may benefit IBM greatly to leverage the gateway solution
from its partner NetApp in front of a Storwize V7000.
With the exponential growth of fixed content and unstructured data, the Storwize
V7000 should allows potential customers to leverage the Storwize V7000 and then
virtualize existing storage investment as an archive.
It behooves IBM to demonstrate to its customers the many use cases that the
Storwize V7000 can be deployed. It needs to also advise its customers about the
short to midterm roadmap for the Storwize V7000. Customers will want to understand
where the Storwize V7000 will scale and at what time so they can understand when
an XIV solution may be more suitable.
The IBM midrange storage systems have been due for a significant refresh. The
Storwize V7000 is an appropriate response, and builds the right platform for IBM to
once again be a technology leader in the storage market.
Sponsored by IBM
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©2010 IDC #225882 7