Power Systems Solid-State Drives

Explore the advantages of internal storage and Storage Area Networks

Internal storage and Storage Area Networks (SAN) are the most common options to provide the terabytes of capacity needed for Power System applications. While both solutions provide exceptional storage capabilities, each has its advantages. You can utilize either one or both of these storage solutions on your Power server depending upon your specific storage needs.

 Internal storage / Direct Access Storage (DAS)

Internal or DAS solutions are defined as drives (HDD and/or SSD), which are located in the system unit or in I/O drawers attached to the system unit. A number of different capacity drives are available. Offering the lowest latency storage option, these drives can also employ high-performance adapters with write cache to augment performance if needed. DAS storage can also provide the lowest cost hardware configuration.

A full set of protection options such as RAID 0, 5, 6, 10, and system mirroring help to safeguard against the possibility of drive failure. In addition, the Power System operating systems and additional backup/recovery applications are available for data center activities. Internal drives are often the lower cost option from a single server perspective and/or for a server which has a modest number of drives.

Internal or DAS drives can be either HDD and/or SSD. Assigning data to specific drives or sets of drives, performance is instantly enhanced. In fact, when using IBM i, the operating system can automatically place hot data on the SSD and cold data on the HDD. Today, IBM offers two types of internal SSD options, a SAS-bay-based option and a PCIe-based option. Either option can boost performance, while also shrinking foot print and energy consumption.

The two types of internal SSD solutions are:

• SAS bay-based
• PCIe-based

 SAN = Storage Area Network

IBM Systems Storage offers great optimization/virtualization characteristics. Supporting multiple servers, even heterogeneous servers, a SAN reduces the overall cost of storage to your business and provides a single management interface for your data. A storage area network can enhance the ability to adjust your server’s storage configuration in order to the meet the changing needs of your business. In turn, this simplifies operating your heterogeneous systems and increases flexibility.

A SAN offers advanced functions such as: creating a backup copy locally or remotely, minimizing impact to server application availability, and enhancing high availability. Designed for reliability and performance, IBM storage area networks will also protect the integrity of your server with disaster recovery capabilities. SANs are also important to the Power Systems Live Partition Mobility capability.

Though HDD remain a popular drive option, many of the newer and more powerful IBM SANs now also have SSD capability as well including the IBM DS8000, V7000, XiV, DS3000 and SVC. Plus Easy Tier capability helps HDD/SDD hybrid configuration usage on the DS8800, DS8700, V7000 and SVC.

More information on storage area networks

	Pro's	Con's
Internal	If you don’t already have SAN, Internal is lower cost & less learning Fastest – lowest latency Multiple configuration options Handles just like other internal storage	If you already have SAN, there is additional complexity of having internal plus SAN SSD Reduces value of SAN high function capabilities – remote copy, HA, partition mobility, etc
SAN	If you already have SAN, lower cost & less learning Leverages SAN well-known value proposition of manageability, control, functionality, etc DS8000, V7000, XiV Easy Tier	If you don’t have SAN, need initial SAN investment in hardware, software, skills Medium/entry SANs or older SANS don’t offer SSD