What Makes SVC So Special? - Technical Benefits of SV1 Nodes and the Non-Disruptive Upgrade Process

Taking a trip down memory lane I have been fortunate enough to work with all of the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) models from the 2145-4F2 that was released way back in 2003 up to the 2145-SV1 which was released late in 2016.

The thing in my mind that makes SVC so special is how it enables simplified management of Storage infrastructure. 
Enhancing storage functions via enabling key technologies such as the Virtualization of external storage, real-time compression, automated optimised tiered storage via EasyTier, replication, stretch clustering, encryption and enabling the movement of data between dissimilar storage subsystems without disruptions. 
These technologies are primarily enabled via the Spectrum Virtualize software running on the SVC nodes. 
IBM are further enhancing the capabilities of Spectrum Virtualize on a quarterly basis, they now offer a software only solution and also now offer Spectrum Virtualize as a Cloud based service in IBM Cloud enabling hybrid deployments of Spectrum Virtualize. The great thing about this is it enables DRaaS quickly and efficiently.  
There's many more exciting developments coming in the near future with SVC and Spectrum Virtualize that I will discuss in later blog posts.

Running SVC means your Storage environment is seamless to manage and not dependant on the physical Storage hardware. The great news is this means you are not locked into the technologies delivered via single vendor, customers in this scenario without SVC often end up with silos of Storage and an environment that is very labour intensive to manage. 
I have also seen SVC be a live saver in terms of enabling organisations to cope with entire site outages with minimal impact to end users. 
This obviously needs the correct Storage Area Network setup at the backend to enable a stretch cluster to be deployed but if designed, configured and deployed correctly it is extremely effective.
In this day and age where data is the lifeblood of organisations it really in my opinion is the best Storage Management engine in the world. 

Spectrum Virtualize 8.1 - Whats New?

Today IBM announced Spectrum Virtualize 8.1 with some exciting enhancements to the code including cache and encryption enhancements, an updated GUI, remote support assistance, health checker and more.

The biggest headliner in the release is undoubtedly the cache enhancements.

Why? Because of the performance improvements these enhancements deliver.

Prior to this release the SVC memory manager (PLMM) could only address 64GB of memory. In this release the PLMM has been rewritten, structure sizes have been increased enabling more memory to be addressed via the cache if available. There are no visible changes apart from larger read cache sizes and therefore improved performance.
The V7000 Gen2+ will support up to 128GB per canister (256GB per system) the SVC SV1 and V9000 have had the capability of supporting 256GB per node since v7.8.1, the v8 operating system will now allow the cache to fully take advantage of all this lovely memory to improve performance and ultimately improve the end-users experience.

Security is a key function of Spectrum Virtualize that went under the microscope via IBM development and has had some serious improvements in the 8.1 release.
The 7.8 release introduced support for encryption key servers with Spectrum Virtualize via IBM Security Key Lifecycle Manager (SKLM). The first release only allowed 1 key server. With the 8.1 server support has been added to up to 4 SKLM key server end points meaning 1 master and up to 3 clones are allowed. The benefit being each key server provides redundant/highly available access ot the system encryption keys. Also concurrent use of both SKLM servers and USB-based encryption is now supported enabling a deeply secure storage solution using USB for DR and key servers for day to day use.