This IBM® Redbooks® publication addresses host attachment and interoperability considerations for the IBM System Storage® DS8000® series. Within this book, you can find information about the most popular host operating systems platforms, including Windows®, IBM AIX®, VIOS, Linux®, Solaris, HP-UX, VMware, Apple, and IBM z/OS® The topics covered in this book target administrators or other technical personnel with a working knowledge of storage systems and a general understanding of open systems. You can use this book as guidance when installing, attaching, and configuring System Storage DS8000. The practical, usage-oriented guidance provided in this book complements the IBM System Storage DS8000 Host Systems Attachment Guide, SC26-7917.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication addresses host attachment and interoperability considerations for the IBM System Storage® DS8000® series. Within this book, you can find information about the most popular host operating systems platforms, including Windows®, IBM AIX®, VIOS, Linux®, Solaris, HP-UX, VMware, Apple, and IBM z/OS® The topics covered in this book target administrators or other technical personnel with a working knowledge of storage systems and a general understanding of open systems. You can use this book as guidance when installing, attaching, and configuring System Storage DS8000. The practical, usage-oriented guidance provided in this book complements the IBM System Storage DS8000 Host Systems Attachment Guide, SC26-7917.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides information for attaching the IBM XIV® Storage System to various host operating system platforms, including IBM i. The book provides information and references for combining the XIV Storage System with other storage platforms, host servers, or gateways, including IBM N Series, and IBM ProtecTIER®. It is intended for administrators and architects of enterprise storage systems. The book also addresses using the XIV storage with databases and other storage-oriented application software that include: IBM DB2® VMware ESX Microsoft HyperV SAP The goal is to give an overview of the versatility and compatibility of the XIV Storage System with various platforms and environments. The information that is presented here is not meant as a replacement or substitute for the Host Attachment kit publications. It is meant as a complement and to provide readers with usage guidance and practical illustrations.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides guidance about how to configure, monitor, and manage your IBM DS8880 storage systems to achieve optimum performance, and it also covers the IBM DS8870 storage system. It describes the DS8880 performance features and characteristics, including hardware-related performance features, synergy items for certain operating systems, and other functions, such as IBM Easy Tier® and the DS8000® I/O Priority Manager. The book also describes specific performance considerations that apply to particular host environments, including database applications. This book also outlines the various tools that are available for monitoring and measuring I/O performance for different server environments, and it describes how to monitor the performance of the entire DS8000 storage system. This book is intended for individuals who want to maximize the performance of their DS8880 and DS8870 storage systems and investigate the planning and monitoring tools that are available. The IBM DS8880 storage system features, as described in this book, are available for the DS8880 model family with R8.0 release bundles (Licensed Machine Code (LMC) level 7.8.0).

This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes the concepts, architecture, and implementation of the IBM DS8870. The WhitepaperRedpaperbook provides reference information to assist readers who need to plan for, install, and configure the DS8870. The IBM DS8870 is the most advanced model in the IBM DS8000® series and is equipped with IBM POWER7+TM based controllers. Various configuration options are available that scale from dual 2-core systems up to dual 16-core systems with up to 1 TB of cache. The DS8870 features an integrated High-Performance Flash Enclosure (HPFE) with flash cards that can deliver up to 250,000 IOPS and up to 3.4 GBps bandwidth. A High-Performance All-Flash configuration is also available. The DS8870 now features 16 Gbps host adapters. Connectivity options, with up to 128 Fibre Channel/IBM FICON® ports for host connections, make the DS8870 suitable for multiple server environments in open systems and IBM zTM Systems environments. DS8870 Release 7.5 brings new and enhanced IBM z SystemsTM synergy features. These features are covered in detail in IBM DS8870 and IBM z Systems Synergy, REDP-5186. The DS8870 supports advanced disaster recovery solutions, business continuity solutions, and thin provisioning. All disk drives in the DS8870 storage system have the Full Disk Encryption (FDE) feature. The DS8870 also can be integrated in a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) infrastructure. The DS8870 can automatically optimize the use of each storage tier, particularly flash drives and flash cards, through the IBM Easy Tier® feature, which is available at no extra charge. This edition applies the IBM DS8870 Release 7.5.

Booting servers from a storage area network (SAN) is being used increasingly in complex data center environments today, due to its significant benefits over the traditional method of booting from local disks. SAN Boot enables organizations to maximize consolidation of their IT resources, minimize their equipment costs, and realize the considerable management benefits of centralizing the boot process. In SAN Boot, you can deploy diskless servers in an environment where the boot disk is located on (often RAID-capable) storage connected to the SAN. The server (initiator) communicates with the storage device (target) through the SAN using the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA). The system downtime is greatly minimized in case a critical component such as a processor, memory, or host bus adapter fails and needs to be replaced. The system administrator needs to swap only the hardware and reconfigure the HBA's BIOS, switch zoning, and host-port definitions on the storage server. The system image still exists on the logical drive, therefore the server is fully operational after the hardware swap and configuration change is completed. This IBM® Redbooks® publication can help you with the SAN Boot implementation. We present various SAN Boot scenarios using IBM System Storage® products that include DS5000, DS8000®, XIV®, and SVC. The operating systems that are covered include Windows 2008, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and VMware.