IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center

Built-in efficiency

• Pool your storage resources from multiple vendors to improve load balancing, increase storage capacity use and improve data availability.
• Use thin provisioning features to automate provisioning processes to help simplify capacity management.
• Work with a GUI that can reduce storage administration time and complexity.
• Identify duplicate data, potentially expired data and allocated but unused storage.

Self-optimizing storage

• Move the most active data to the fastest storage tier automatically, making the best use of available resources to run applications significantly faster.
• Enable migration of less active data to lower-cost storage tiers.
• Provide performance metrics and advanced analytics for improved storage-tier decisions.
• Reduce the unit cost of storage by deploying analytics-based “right tiering” throughout the data center.

Agile cloud storage

• Enable an agile, cloud-based, service-oriented approach to storage without replacing existing storage systems.
• Adapt to the dynamic storage needs of applications hosted on virtual servers.
• Provide automated storage provisioning through application programming interfaces (APIs).
• Integrate with IBM SmartCloud Cost Management and other chargeback systems to enable flexible usage accounting for storage resources.

Near-instant backup and restore capabilities

• Copy data to remote sites as data changes, enabling faster failover and recovery.
• Augment daily backups with advanced data protection capabilities that can reduce the risk of data loss, with little or no impact on application performance.
• Perform application-aware snapshot backups frequently throughout the day.
• Enable near-instant restore of files, applications and whole systems.

Advanced technology and administration tools

• Includes the complete set of advanced functions available in IBM Tivoli® Storage Productivity Center software for SAN and Storage Resource Management.
• Includes all the functions available with the virtualization, remote-mirroring and IBM FlashCopy® capabilities of IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller software.
• Includes all the capabilities of IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager.
• Includes the ability to integrate with additional add-on storage optimization products such as the IBM SmartCloud Cost Management, IBM Intelligent Storage Services Catalog and IBM Real-time Compression.
• Includes the ability to choose storage virtualization hardware platforms: Either System Storage SAN Volume Controller or IBM Storwize® storage systems that support external virtualization.