IBM® SmartCloud® Virtual Storage Center provides efficient virtualization and management of heterogeneous storage systems. It facilitates migration to an agile cloud architecture that can optimize storage availability and performance, while helping to reduce costs. IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center (VSC) helps convert existing storage to IBM Smarter Storage, providing more room for data growth and simplified storage administration. This IBM Redbooks® publication gives an overview of the concepts of software-defined environment (SDE) and software-defined storage (SDS), and how they work together with VSC. It explores the architecture, components, and interfaces, providing details of VSC and how to use it. It also includes practical scenarios and use cases, helpful for client VSC business environments, with a focus on the following topics: Introductory concepts VSC components and available integrations Storage management component of VSC Storage virtualization component of VSC Application aware data protection component of VSC VSC storage provisioning VSC storage optimization This book is primarily for storage administrators, users who are responsible for maintaining IT and business infrastructures, and anyone who wants to learn more about IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center.

IBM® Tivoli® Storage Productivity Center V5.2 is a feature-rich storage management software suite. The integrated suite provides detailed monitoring, reporting, and management within a single console. In addition, implementing the IBM SmartCloud® Virtual Storage Center (VSC) license with Tivoli Storage Productivity Center addresses new workloads that require massive scale and rapid pace, and accelerates business insight, by adding advanced analytics functions such as storage optimization, provisioning, and transformation. This IBM Redbooks® publication is intended for storage administrators and users who are installing and using the features and functions in IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.2. The information in this Redbooks publication can be used to plan for, install, and customize the components of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center in your storage infrastructure. Note: This IBM Redbooks publication is written and based on Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.2.2. Sections in this book that pertain to advanced analytics, including cloud configuration, provisioning, transforming volumes, and storage optimization all require the IBM SmartCloud Virtual Storage Center license to be installed.

You have installed and performed the basic customization of IBM® Tivoli® Storage Productivity Center. You have collected performance data and generated reports. Now it's time to learn the best ways to use the software to manage your storage infrastructure. This IBM Redbooks® publication shows the best way to set up the software, based on your storage environment, and then how to use it to manage your infrastructure. It includes experiences from IBM clients and staff and covers the following topics: Architectural design techniques (sizing your environment, single versus multiple installations, physical versus virtual servers, deployment in a large, existing storage infrastructure) Database and server considerations (database backup and restoration methods and scripts, using IBM Data Studio Client for database administration, database placement and relocation, repository sizing and tuning, moving and migrating the server) Alerting, monitoring and reporting (monitoring thresholds and alerts, performance management and analysis of reports, real-time performance monitoring for IBM SAN Volume Controller) Security considerations (Tivoli Storage Productivity Center internal user IDs, user authentication configuration methods, how and why to set up and change passwords, configuring, querying, and testing LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory) Heath checks (server heath and logs, health and recoverability of IBM DB2® databases, using the Database Maintenance tool) Data management techniques (how to spot unusual growth incidents, scripted actions for Tivoli Storage manager and hierarchical storage management) This book is for storage administrators who are responsible for the performance and growth of the IT storage infrastructure. This publication was updated in January 2017 to reflect the latest support information.

Dynamic organizations want to accelerate growth while reducing costs. To do so, they must speed the deployment of business applications and adapt quickly to any changes in priorities. Organizations require an IT infrastructure to be easy, efficient, and versatile. The VersaStack solution by Cisco and IBM® can help you accelerate the deployment of your datacenters. It reduces costs by more efficiently managing information and resources while maintaining your ability to adapt to business change. The VersaStack solution combines the innovation of Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) Integrated Infrastructure with the efficiency of the IBM Storwize® storage system. The Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure includes the Cisco UCS, Cisco Nexus and Cisco MDS switches, and Cisco UCS Director. The IBM Storwize V7000 storage system enhances virtual environments with its Data Virtualization, IBM Real-time CompressionTM, and IBM Easy Tier® features. These features deliver extraordinary levels of performance and efficiency. The VersaStack solution is Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) ready. Your IT team can build, deploy, secure, and maintain applications through a more agile framework. Cisco Intercloud Fabric capabilities help enable the creation of open and highly secure solutions for the hybrid cloud. These solutions accelerate your IT transformation while delivering dramatic improvements in operational efficiency and simplicity. Cisco and IBM are global leaders in the IT industry. The VersaStack solution gives you the opportunity to take advantage of integrated infrastructure solutions that are targeted at enterprise applications, analytics, and cloud solutions. The VersaStack solution is backed by Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) to provide faster delivery of applications, greater IT efficiency, and less risk. This IBM Redbooks® publication is aimed at experienced storage administrators that are tasked with deploying a VersaStack solution with IBM DB2® High Availability (DB2 HA), IBM SpectrumTM Protect, and IBM Spectrum ControlTM.

Organizations are looking for ways to get more out of their already strained IT infrastructure as they face new technological and economic pressures. They are also trying to satisfy a broad set of users (internal and external to the enterprise) who demand improvements in their quality of service (QoS), regardless of increases in the number of users and applications. Cloud computing offers attractive opportunities to reduce costs, accelerate development, and increase the flexibility of the IT infrastructure, applications, and services. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the typical starting point for most organizations when moving to a cloud computing environment. IaaS can be used for the delivery of resources such as compute, storage, and network services through a self-service portal. With IaaS, IT services are delivered as a subscription service, eliminating up-front costs and driving down ongoing support costs. IBM® has defined the Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (CCRA) based on years of experience of working with customers who have implemented cloud-computing solutions. The IBM CCRA is a blueprint or guide for architecting cloud-computing implementations. This IBM RedguideTM publication highlights the Cloud Enabled Data Center adoption pattern and describes how you can use it to define an IaaS solution. This guide is intended for chief technology officers, data center architects, IT architects, and application architects who want to understand the cloud-computing infrastructure necessary to support their applications and services by using an IaaS solution. It explains the technical and business benefits of a Cloud Enabled Data Center solution. It introduces a Cloud Enabled Data Center maturity model where each maturity level corresponds to an increase in the degree of automation and the cloud-computing capabilities that are available. In addition, this guide describes the architectural framework provided by the IBM CCRA and explains details about the Cloud Enabled Data Center adoption pattern.

IBM® Tivoli® Storage Productivity Center V5.1 products offer storage infrastructure management that helps optimize storage management by centralizing, simplifying, automating, and optimizing storage tasks associated with storage systems, data disaster recovery, storage networks, and capacity management. IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1 products include: IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1 IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Select Edition V5.1 Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1 is designed to provide device management capabilities, such as automated system discovery, provisioning, data replication, configuration, and performance monitoring for storage systems and storage networks. Tivoli Storage Productivity Center Select Edition V5.1 offers the same features as Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1 but at attractive entry-level pricing for operations with smaller capacities. It is licensed per storage device, such as disk controllers and their respective expansion units. This IBM Redbooks® publication is intended for storage administrators and users who are installing and using the features and functions in IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center V5.1. The information in this book can be used to plan for, install, and customize the components of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center in your storage infrastructure.

The success or failure of businesses often depends on how well organizations use their data assets for competitive advantage. Deeper insights from data require better information technology. As organizations modernize their IT infrastructure to boost innovation rather than limit it, they need a data storage system that can keep pace with highly virtualized environments, cloud computing, mobile and social systems of engagement, and in-depth, real-time analytics. Making the correct decision on storage investment is critical. Organizations must have enough storage performance and agility to innovate as they need to implement cloud-based IT services, deploy virtual desktop infrastructure, enhance fraud detection, and use new analytics capabilities. At the same time, future storage investments must lower IT infrastructure costs while helping organizations to derive the greatest possible value from their data assets. IBM® FlashSystem storage solutions can accelerate the transformation of the modern organizations into an IBM Cognitive BusinessTM. FlashSystem all-flash storage arrays are purpose-engineered to support the organization's active data sets. FlashSystem solutions offer a broad range of industry-leading storage virtualization and data management features that can provide improved storage system performance, efficiency, and reliability. Even better, FlashSystem can be less expensive than conventional enterprise storage solutions. This IBM Redbooks® Product Guide describes IBM FlashSystem® V9000, which is a comprehensive all-flash enterprise storage solution that delivers the full capabilities of IBM FlashCoreTM technology. In addition, it provides a rich set of software-defined storage features, including IBM Real-time CompressionTM, dynamic tiering, thin provisioning, snapshots, cloning, replication, data copy services, and IBM HyperSwap® for high availability. With the release of FlashSystem V9000 Software V7.7.1, extra functions and features are available, including support for new and more powerful FlashSystem V9000 control enclosure Model AC3 and new SAS-based small form factor (SFF) and large form factor (LFF) expansion enclosures that provide a mixture of nearline hard disk drives (HDDs) and flash mdisks in a pool that can be used for IBM Easy Tier®. The new IBM FlashSystem V9000 SFF expansion enclosure Model 24F offers new tiering options with low-cost solid-state drive (SSD). Up to 20 serial-attached SCSI (SAS) expansions are supported per FlashSystem V9000 controller pair, providing up to 480 drives with expansion Model 24F and up to 240 drives with expansion Model 12F. Also new with FlashSystem V9000 Software V7.7.1 is N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) support, which virtualizes worldwide port names (WWPNs) for zero path reduction during controller maintenance and outages. FlashSystem V9000 Software version 7.7.1 replaces version 7.7, and is available to all IBM FlashSystem V9000 customers with current warranty or software maintenance agreements.

In today's 24 x 7 world, there is likely not a business on this planet, IBM® Smarter Planet® or not, that finds that their storage requirements are growing too fast and demand is starting to outpace supply. Not only this, but in this cost-conscious environment of today, the costs of managing this growth are likely to be eating into the IT budget. One way to make better use of existing storage without adding more complexity to the infrastructure is the IBM System Storage® SAN Volume Controller (SVC). For many years now this has helped business become more flexible, agile, and introduced an extremely efficient storage environment. SAN Volume Controller is designed to deliver the benefits of storage virtualization in environments from large enterprises to small businesses and midmarket companies. Virtualizing storage with SAN Volume Controller helps make new and existing storage more effective. SAN Volume Controller includes many functions that are traditionally deployed separately in disk systems. By including these in a virtualization system, SAN Volume Controller standardizes functions across virtualized storage for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs. Now, with IBM FlashSystemTM storage, SAN Volume Controller is enabled to extend its reach and benefit all virtualized storage. For example, IBM Easy Tier® optimizes use of flash storage. And IBM Real-time CompressionTM enhances efficiency even further by enabling the storage of up to five times as much active primary data in the same physical disk space. In this IBM Redbooks® publication, we show how to integrate the IBM FlashSystem 820 to provide storage to the SAN Volume Controller, and show how they are designed to operate seamlessly together, reducing management effort. In this book, which is aimed at pre- and post-sales support, storage administrators, and people that want to get an overview of this new and exciting technology, we show the steps required to implement the IBM FlashSystem 820 in an existing SAN Volume Controller environment. We also highlight some of the new features in SAN Volume Controller that increase performance. If you are not already familiar with the SAN Volume Controller, it is beneficial to read the following IBM Redbooks publications: - Implementing the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller V6.3, SG24-7933 - Implementing the IBM Storwize V7000 V6.3, SG24-7938 - Real-time Compression in SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000, REDP-4859 - IBM SAN Volume Controller and IBM FlashSystem 820: Best Practices and Performance Capabilities, REDP-5027 - IBM FlashSystem 710 and IBM FlashSystem 810, TIPS1002 - IBM FlashSystem 720 and IBM FlashSystem 820, TIPS1003 - Flash or SSD: Why and When to Use IBM FlashSystem, REDP-5020

IBM® Spectrum Control (Spectrum Control), a member of the IBM SpectrumTM Family of products, is the next-generation data management solution for software-defined environments (SDEs). With support for block, file, object workloads, and software-defined storage and predictive analytics, and automated and advanced monitoring to identify proactively storage performance problems, Spectrum Control enables administrators to provide efficient management for heterogeneous storage environments. IBM Spectrum ControlTM (formerly IBM Tivoli® Storage Productivity Center) delivers a complete set of functions to manage IBM Spectrum VirtualizeTM, IBM Spectrum AccelerateTM, and IBM Spectrum ScaleTM storage infrastructures, and traditional IBM and select third-party storage hardware systems. This IBM Redbooks® publication provides practical examples and use cases that can be deployed with IBM Spectrum Control Standard Edition, with an overview of IBM Spectrum Control Advanced Edition. This book complements the Spectrum Control IBM Knowledge Center, which is referenced for product details, and for installation and implementation details throughout this book. You can find this resource at the following website: IBM Spectrum Control Knowledge Center Also provided are descriptions and an architectural overview of the IBM Spectrum Family, highlighting Spectrum Control, as integrated into software-defined storage environments. This publication is intended for storage administrators, clients who are responsible for maintaining IT and business infrastructures, and anyone who wants to learn more about employing Spectrum Control and Spectrum Control Standard Edition.

This IBM® RedpaperTM publication helps you to install, tailor, configure, and use IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager for Virtual Environments - Data Protection for VMware. The features of Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments - Data Protection for VMware are described. Scenarios are provided for implementation of Tivoli Storage Manager Virtual Environment to protect virtual machines in several environments. This publication includes answers to common implementation errors and questions you might have that are related to the implementation of Data Protection for VMware.