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SAN Volume Controller
storage software for Cisco MDS 9000, specifications
from Q Associates, IBM Business Partner UK
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SAN
Volume Controller storage software for Cisco MDS 9000
- Specifications
home
) storage ) software
) SAN
volume controller for cisco mds 9000 - specifications
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Delivers
advanced features to help make multilayer
intelligent SANs a reality
Overview
 IBM
and Cisco offer a solution that combines IBM
TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller with a
Cisco MDS 9000 Caching Services Module. The
result is a solution designed to reduce the
complexity and costs of managing SAN-based
storage.
The SAN Volume Controller for Cisco MDS 9000
Solution is designed to create a single pool
of storage from disparate storage devices.
This helps enable you to increase capacity
uti-lization, simplify management and lower
overall storage costs. The SAN Volume Controller
for Cisco MDS 9000 Solution implements a cache-based,
clustered architecture designed to help provide
the high availability, scalability and performance
needed for today's demanding storage environments.
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| Solution
description |
The SAN Volume
Controller for MDS 9000 Solution is designed
to combine the benefits of pooled storage
and caching services. Its SAN Volume Controller
storage software pools stor-age, helping
you to manage pooled storage volumes from
a central point, avoid downtime for planned
outages. It also helps to increase capacity
utiliza-tion, and implement copy services
from a single license across multiple storage
devices. Its cache-based, clustered architecture
promotes space efficiency. Delivered as
a feature of a Cisco MDS 9000 switch, the
SAN Volume Controller for Cisco MDS 9000
Solution runs on a clustered pair of caching
services modules within the switch. Because
the solution is achieved in a switch, no
additional fabric ports or cables are required.
Based on virtualisation technology, the
SAN Volume Controller for MDS 9000 Solution
is designed to support a virtualised pool
of storage from the stor-age subsystems
attached to a storage area network (SAN).
This storage pool can help you to tap into
your unused storage capacity and make your
busi-ness more efficient and resilient.
It is designed as an integrated solution
to help support high performance and continuous
availability in open-systems environments.
Storage volumes are represented to applications
as virtual disks, created from the pool
of man-aged disks residing behind the storage
engines. The solution helps enable storage
administrators to scale perfor-mance by
adding storage engines and scale capacity
by adding disks to the managed storage pool.
The solution's Cisco Caching Services Module
integrates two high-performance processing
nodes.
When combined
with the SAN Volume Con-troller storage-software
component, these nodes deliver network-hosted
virtualisation and replication services.
Each Caching Services Module includes 8
GB of local cache used to hold recently
accessed data blocks. On-board dual batteries
and hard disk drives protect cached data
in the event of a power failure. To further
ensure data availability and integrity,
nodes are paired with nodes on other Caching
-Services Modules in high-availability (HA)
clusters. Up to four nodes can be added
to a cluster today. Larger clusters are
scheduled to be supported in the future
through a simple software upgrade when available.
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| A
centralized point of control for volume management |
Through virtualisation,
the SAN Volume Controller storage-software
component helps to create pools of managed
disks spanning multiple storage subsystems.
These managed disks can then be mapped to
virtual disks that are used by server applications.
These virtual disks can help you make better
use of existing storage. The storage software
also provides a comprehensive easy-to-use
graphical interface designed to ease management.
This simple interface incorporates the Storage
Management Initiative Specification (SMIS)
application programming inter-face (API),
and further demonstrates the IBM focus on
open standards.
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| Avoidance
of downtime for planned outages, maintenance
and backups |
SAN Volume Controller
storage software includes a dynamic data-migration
function that can help administrators migrate
storage from one device to another, without
taking it offline. This can allow administrators
to reallocate and scale storage capacity without
disrupting applications. The SAN Volume Controller
for Cisco MDS 9000 Solution is designed to
support both local area network (LAN) free
and server-free backups, while a clustered
configuration designed to support high availability
allows for nondisruptive soft-ware upgrades.
SAN Volume Controller for Cisco MDS 9000 also
leverages IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage
Server multipathing software.
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| Improved
resource utilization |
The SAN Volume
Controller for MDS 9000 Solution is designed
to enable more-efficient use of personnel
and technology resources. It can help increase
administrator productivity by empowering central
management of volumes under disparate storage
controllers from a single user inter-face.
It can also help increase the amount of available
storage capacity by pooling storage across
multiple devices. The solution's virtualisation
of heterogeneous storage devices allows less-complex,
lower-cost storage to back up higher-function
devices. Designed to manage up to two petabytes
(PB) of total usable storage capacity, SAN
Volume Control-ler for Cisco MDS 9000 is designed
to support even higher performance by adding
storage engine pairs. In the case of additional
storage engine pairs, all of the storage engines
within a cluster can jointly manage the entire
capacity of a storage pool.
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| A
single, cost-effective set of advanced copy
services |
With conventional
SAN disk arrays, copy operations are limited
to in-box or like-box-to-like-box environments.
But the SAN Volume Controller storage-software
component moves copy ser-vices from individual
storage controllers to the SAN. Administrators
can apply copy services across disparate storage
devices within the network. Advanced copy
services-such as IBM Flash-Copy and Peer-to-Peer
Remote Copy (PPRC)-are supported across the
managed storage.
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| Application
scalability through distributed cache-based
virtualisation |
The Cisco MDS
9000 Caching Services Module virtualisation
architecture is designed to provide the performance
benefits of lower latency, high aggre-gate
throughput and the ability to use lower-cost
disk arrays for greater flex-ibility. The
architecture is designed to support scalability
of virtualisation per-formance to the level
required by even the largest organizations,
scaling up to four nodes today with support
for larger SAN Volume Controller storage solution
cluster sizes planned in the future.
Simply adding service modules adds virtualisation
performance. Application I/O response time
is improved through the use of local caching
of disk blocks. By moving the virtualisation
into the network, any host can access any
vir-tual volume from anywhere in the fabric,
independent of the host's attachment point
in the SAN. In addition to virtu-alization
and replication services, the MDS 9000 Caching
Services Module leverages all of the advanced
SAN-OS features available on the MDS 9000
platform, helping to simplify security, diagnostics
and management.
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| Fabric-based
virtualisation services- intelligent networking
features |
MDS 9000 fabric-based
virtualisation is designed to provide a level
of inte-gration with intelligent SAN services
unavailable to host or virtualisation appliance-based
solutions. As new modules are introduced to
the Cisco MDS 9000 Family, they take advan-tage
of all the advanced features and intelligence
required to make multilayer intelligent SANs
a reality, including hardware-enabled innova-tions
designed to dramatically improve scalability,
availability, security and manageability of
storage networks, helping to increase utility
and lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
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Multiprotocol
intelligence |
The Cisco Caching
Services Module is an integral component of
the MDS 9000 multiprotocol platform that is
designed for deployment of cost-optimized
storage networks. The SAN Volume Controller
storage solution intends to support the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard iSCSI1
proto-col over Ethernet and Fibre Channel
over IP (FCIP), using the Cisco MDS 9000 platform.
It is intended to provide companies with the
ability to offer vir-tualization and replication
services to clients attached either directly
through fibre channel or by using the iSCSI
protocol over Ethernet for cost-effective
connectivity to shared storage pools.
The MDS 9000 FCIP capability helps simplify
deployment of data-replication services over
extended distances, eliminating the need for
separate channel-extension devices. The Cisco
MDS 9000 platform is designed to support future
storage protocols, so that users can easily
migrate to new technologies while retaining
a consistent set of features, services and
management tools.
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| Virtual
SAN |
Virtual SANs
(VSANs) are designed to allow more-efficient
SAN utilization by creating hardware-based
isolated environments within a single SAN
fabric. Each VSAN can be configured with fibre-channel
zones and maintains its own fabric services
for added scalabil-ity and resilience. VSANs
are designed to allow the cost of SAN infrastructure
to be shared among more users, while supporting
segregation and security of traffic, and retaining
independent control of configuration on a
VSAN-by-VSAN basis. VSANs provide a protective
barrier between application hosts and physical
storage, helping to enhance data integrity
in a virtualised storage environment.
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| Comprehensive
security |
Recognizing
the need for security in virtualised storage
networks, the Cisco Caching Services Module
and IBM SAN Volume Controller storage software
inte-grate easily into the MDS 9000 security
infrastructure. The MDS 9000 platform applies
extensive security measures at all possible
points of attack.
SSH, RADIUS, SNMPv3, and Role-Based Access
Control are employed against unauthorized
management access. To guard against compromis-ing
control traffic, the Fibre Channel Security
Protocol (FC-SP) is employed. FC-SP is designed
to help provide con-fidentiality, data-origin
authentication and connectionless integrity
across the fabric. Data plane traffic is secured
with VSANs, supporting segregation of traffic
across shared fabrics, and with zoning to
help satisfy traffic seg-regation requirements
within a VSAN. Hardware-based access control
lists (ACLs) provide further granularity for
advanced security options. The Cisco Caching
Services Module leverages Cisco's experience,
securing some of the world's most-sensitive
data net-works to deliver one of the industry's
most-secure network-hosted storage virtualisation
platforms.
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| Advanced
diagnostics and troubleshooting tools
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Cisco Caching
Services Module appli-cations leverage MDS
9000 family advanced network analysis and
debug tools. For fault management in large-scale
storage networks, the Cisco MDS 9000 family
delivers commands, such as FC Traceroute for
detailing the exact path and timing of flows,
and uses Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) to
capture network traffic efficiently. After
traffic has been captured, it can then be
analyzed with Cisco Fabric Ana-lyzer, an embedded
fibre-channel analyzer. In addition, integrated
Call Home capability can help provide added
reliability, faster problem resolu-tion and
reduced service costs. The Cisco MDS 9000
family with integrated Caching Services Module
delivers one of the most-comprehensive tool-sets
for troubleshooting and analysis of an organization's
virtualised storage environment.
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| Availability
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Like all other
Cisco MDS 9000 Family modules, the Caching
Services Module is designed to be hot-swappable
and fully integrate into the Cisco MDS 9000
high-availability architecture. The Cisco
MDS 9000 SAN-OS software architecture offers
an unprecedented level of availability including
automatic restart of failed supervisor processes
and fabric-level availability through Cisco
PortChannel capability, which allows users
to aggregate up to 16 physical links into
one logical bundle. The bundle can consist
of any port in the chassis to help allow the
bundle to remain active in the event of a
port, ASIC or module failure. The bundle is
designed to sustain the failure of any physical
link without causing a reset. Additionally,
Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) multipathing
is designed to pro-vide the intelligence to
load-balance across up to 16 equal cost paths
and, in the event of a switch failure, to
reroute traffic dynamically. When deployed
in clustered pairs and combined with SAN Volume
Controller storage software, availability
is extended to the volume level to promote
maximum uptime.
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| Ease
of management |
Delivering on
the potential of network-based storage virtualisation
means delivering on management capabili-ties.
To meet the needs of all users, the Cisco
MDS 9000 Family Caching Services Module provides
three prin-cipal modes of management of your
virtual storage environment: Cisco MDS 9000
Family command line inter-face (CLI), IBM
SAN Volume Controller for Cisco MDS 9000 CLI
and IBM Interactive Code Analysis Tool (ICAT)
management GUI. For users who pre-fer a common
interface for both SAN and volume management,
the Cisco SAN-OS CLI includes the full suite
of capabilities necessary to manage your virtual
storage environment from the SAN-OS command
line.
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IBM
TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller for Cisco
MDS 9000 Solution, at a glance:
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Caching
Services Module:
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- Virtualisation
services processing nodes-two nodes
per module
- Cache
memory-8 GB per module (4 GB per
node)
- Battery
packs-two per module, used to maintain
power during cache dump to on-board
hard disk drives in the event of
a system power failure
- Disk
drives-two per module (20-GB ATA),
used to store volume metadata and
to store cache data during system
power failure
- Switch
interface-backplane interface to
MDS 9000 cross-bar and intelligent
SAN switching services
- Front
panel LED indicators-module status,
battery status, node status (2)
Host operating systems support
- Microsoft
Windows NT V4.9 with Service Pack
6A
- Microsoft
Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3,
MSCS
- IBM
AIX 4.3.3, 5.1, 5.2, HACMP
- HP-UX
V 11.i
- Solaris
Release 7 or later
- Red
Hat Linux Adv Server 2.1 with kernel
2.4.9
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Storage
subsystems support:
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- IBM
Enterprise Storage Server F20, 800
- IBM
FAStT Storage Server (FAStT500,
600, 700, 900)
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SAN
Volume Controller storage software-supports:
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- Up
to 1024 virtual disks on 64 hosts
- Up
to 4096 physical logical units (LUNs)
on 64 controllers
- Up
to 128 controller ports
- Up
to 2-TB virtual disk size
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Data
migration:
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- Transparent
virtual-disk-to-physical-disk mapping
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Synchronous
PPRC-optional:
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Flashcopy-optional:
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- One
point-in-time (PIT) copy per volume
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Minimum
software requirement:
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- SAN-OS
Release 1.3 (1)
- Management
Applications - SAN Management -
Cisco MDS 9000 Family CLI - Cisco
Fabric Manager - CiscoWorks 2000
Resource Manager Essentials - Volume
and Replication Management - Cisco
MDS 9000 Family CLI - IBM SAN Volume
Controller for Cisco MDS 9000 CLI
- IBM ICAT
- VSANs
- VSAN-based
roles
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