Data is the new currency of business, the most critical asset of the modern organization. In fact, enterprises that can gain business insights from their data are twice as likely to outperform their competitors; yet, 72 percent of them have not started or are only planning big data activities. In addition, organizations often spend too much money and time managing where their data is stored. The average firm purchases 24% more storage every year, but uses less than half of the capacity it already has.

A member of the IBM® Storwize® family, IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) Data Platform is a storage virtualization system that enables a single point of control for storage resources to help support improved business application availability and greater resource utilization. The objective is to manage storage resources in your IT infrastructure and to make sure they are used to the advantage of your business, and do it quickly, efficiently, and in real time, while avoiding increases in administrative costs.

Virtualizing storage with SVC Data Platform helps make new and existing storage more effective. SVC Data Platform includes many functions traditionally deployed separately in disk systems. By including these in a virtualization system, SVC Data Platform standardizes functions across virtualized storage for greater flexibility and potentially lower costs.

SVC Data Platform functions benefit all virtualized storage. For example, IBM Easy Tier® optimizes use of flash storage. And IBM Real-time Compression™ enhances efficiency even further by enabling the storage of up to five times as much active primary data in the same physical disk space. Finally, high-performance thin provisioning helps automate provisioning. These benefits can help extend the useful life of existing storage assets, reducing costs.

Integrating these functions into SVC Data Platform also means that they are designed to operate smoothly together, reducing management effort.

In this IBM Redbooks® publication, we discuss the latest features and functions of the SVC 2145-DH8 and software version 7.3, implementation, architectural improvements, and Easy Tier.

Chapter 1. Introduction to IBM storage virtualization

Chapter 2. Change history

Chapter 3. 2145-DH8 and SAN Volume Controller software version 7.3

Chapter 4. Planning and configuration

Chapter 5. SAN Volume Controller Easy Tier

Chapter 6. SAN Volume Controller initial configuration

Chapter 7. Real-time Compression and the SVC 2145-DH8 Node

Chapter 8. Performance data and statistics gathering

Chapter 9. SAN Volume Controller operations using the command-line interface

Chapter 10. SAN Volume Controller operations using the GUI

Chapter 11. SAN Volume Controller Stretched System