Helps reduce the number of storage systems needing management by enabling workload consolidation
Incorporates a simple mechanism for managing performance of consolidated environments
Allows increased capacity and processing utilization per storage system with virtually no impact to critical applications
Easily customized to address performance requirements of different environment workloads
The challenge: Consolidating storage while maintaining priority control over important workloads
As consolidation of data becomes more prevalent in the enterprise, being able to prioritize applications is essential to providing the right balance of service level and cost. In order to host multiple disparate workloads on a single storage system, administrators need tools to help them assign the right resource priority to the most business-critical applications. At the same time, they need the flexibility to change priorities so that the dynamic needs of the business can be met.
The solution: IBM System Storage N series with FlexShare software
IBM System Storage™ N series with FlexShare™ software is a powerful tool to provide storage administrators with control of service for N series storage systems. FlexShare is designed to host multiple workloads on a single N series system and assign individual priorities to each. FlexShare gives storage administrators the ability to leverage existing infrastructure and increase processing utilization without sacrificing the performance allocated to business-critical tasks. Using FlexShare, administrators can consolidate disparate applications, prioritize specific data sets, and dynamically adjust priorities if business needs change.
FlexShare is enabled when storage systems become fully loaded and require prioritization of resources. Five priority levels are available and are allocated by volume. Since system operations such as backup are time-critical, the highest priority levels can be assigned to specific workloads to meet business deadlines. The result is that you can get the benefits of storage consolidation without sacrificing performance and customer service.
