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. Nevertheless, 72% 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 that it already has.

The IBM® Storwize® family, including the IBM SAN Volume Controller Data Platform, is a storage virtualization system that enables a single point of control for storage resources. This functionality helps support improved business application availability and greater resource use. The following list describes the business objectives of this system:

• To manage storage resources in your information technology (IT) infrastructure
• To make sure that those resources are used to the advantage of your business
• To do it quickly, efficiently, and in real time, while avoiding increases in administrative costs

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

Storwize functions benefit all virtualized storage. For example, IBM Easy Tier® optimizes use of flash memory. In addition, 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 Storwize also means that they are designed to operate smoothly together, reducing management effort.

This IBM Redbooks® publication provides information about the latest features and functions of the Storwize V7000 Gen2 and software version 7.3 implementation, architectural improvements, and Easy Tier.

Chapter 1. Introduction to IBM storage virtualization

Chapter 2. IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2 Hardware

Chapter 3. Planning and configuration

Chapter 4. IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2 Easy Tier

Chapter 5. The IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2 Initial Configuration

Chapter 6. IBM Real-time Compression and the IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2

Chapter 7. Performance overview of the IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2

Chapter 8. IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2 command-line interface

Chapter 9. IBM Storwize V7000 Gen2 operations using the GUI