Booting servers from a storage area network (SAN) is being used increasingly in complex data center environments today, due to its significant benefits over the traditional method of booting from local disks. SAN Boot enables organizations to maximize consolidation of their IT resources, minimize their equipment costs, and realize the considerable management benefits of centralizing the boot process. In SAN Boot, you can deploy diskless servers in an environment where the boot disk is located on (often RAID-capable) storage connected to the SAN. The server (initiator) communicates with the storage device (target) through the SAN using the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA). The system downtime is greatly minimized in case a critical component such as a processor, memory, or host bus adapter fails and needs to be replaced. The system administrator needs to swap only the hardware and reconfigure the HBA's BIOS, switch zoning, and host-port definitions on the storage server. The system image still exists on the logical drive, therefore the server is fully operational after the hardware swap and configuration change is completed. This IBM® Redbooks® publication can help you with the SAN Boot implementation. We present various SAN Boot scenarios using IBM System Storage® products that include DS5000, DS8000®, XIV®, and SVC. The operating systems that are covered include Windows 2008, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and VMware.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication represents a compilation of best practices for deploying and configuring the IBM System Storage® DS5000 Series family of products. This book is intended for IBM technical professionals, Business Partners, and customers responsible for the planning, deployment, and maintenance of the IBM System Storage DS5000 Series family of products. We realize that setting up DS5000 Storage Servers can be a complex task. There is no single configuration that will be satisfactory for every application or situation. First, we provide a conceptual framework for understanding the hardware in a Storage Area Network. Then, we offer our guidelines, hints, and tips for the physical installation, cabling, and zoning, using the Storage Manager setup tasks. Next, we provide a quick guide to help you install and configure the DS5000 using best practices. After that, we turn our attention to the performance and tuning of various components and features, including numerous guidelines. We look at performance implications for various application products such as IBM DB2®, Oracle, IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager, Microsoft SQL server, and in particular, Microsoft Exchange server. Then we review the various tools available to simulate workloads and to measure, collect, and analyze performance data. We also consider the IBM AIX® environment, including IBM High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing (HACMPTM) and IBM General Parallel File System (GPFSTM). This edition of the book also includes guidelines for managing and using the DS5000 with the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and IBM Storwize® V7000.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication represents a compilation of best practices for deploying and configuring IBM Midrange System StorageTM servers, which include the DS4000® and the DS5000 family of products. This book is intended for IBM technical professionals, Business Partners, and customers responsible for the planning, deployment, and maintenance of the IBM Midrange System Storage family of products. We realize that setting up DS4000 and DS5000 Storage Servers can be a complex task. There is no single configuration that will be satisfactory for every application or situation. First, we provide a conceptual framework for understanding the hardware in a Storage Area Network. Then we offer our guidelines, hints, and tips for the physical installation, cabling, and zoning, using the Storage Manager setup tasks. After that, we turn our attention to the performance and tuning of various components and features, including numerous guidelines. We look at performance implications for various application products such as DB2®, Oracle, Tivoli® Storage Manager, Microsoft® SQL server, and in particular, Microsoft Exchange with IBM Midrange System Storage servers. Then we review the various tools available to simulate workloads and to measure, collect, and analyze performance data. We also consider the AIX® environment, including High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing (HACMPTM) and General Parallel File System (GPFSTM). Finally, we provide a quick guide to the storage server installation and configuration using best practices. This edition of the book also includes guidelines for managing and using the DS4000 and DS5000 with the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC).

This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes several of the preferred practices and describes the performance gains that can be achieved by implementing the IBM SAN Volume Controller powered by IBM Spectrum® Virtualize V8.4. These practices are based on field experience. This book highlights configuration guidelines and preferred practices for the storage area network (SAN) topology, clustered system, back-end storage, storage pools, and managed disks, volumes, Remote Copy services, and hosts. Then, it provides performance guidelines for IBM SAN Volume Controller, back-end storage, and applications. It explains how you can optimize disk performance with the IBM System Storage Easy Tier® function. It also provides preferred practices for monitoring, maintaining, and troubleshooting IBM SAN Volume Controller. This book is intended for experienced storage, SAN, and IBM SAN Volume Controller administrators and technicians. Understanding this book requires advanced knowledge of the IBM SAN Volume Controller, IBM FlashSystem, and SAN environments.

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication, we describe recommendations based on an IBM b-type storage area network (SAN) environment that is utilizing VMware vSphere ESXi. We describe the hardware and software and the unique features that they bring to the marketplace. We then highlight those features and how they apply to the SAN environment, and the best practices for ensuring that you get the best out of your SAN. For background reading, we recommend the following Redbooks publications: - Introduction to Storage Area Networks and System Networking, SG24-5470 - IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller Best Practices and Performance Guidelines, SG24-7521 - IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller and Storwize V7000 Replication Family Services, SG24-7574 - Implementing the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller V6.3, SG24-7933 - IBM SAN Volume Controller Stretched Cluster with PowerVM and PowerHA, SG24-8142 - Implementing the IBM SAN Volume Controller and FlashSystem 820, SG24-8172 - IBM System Storage DS8000 Copy Services for Open Systems, SG24-6788 - IBM System Storage DS8000: Host Attachment and Interoperability, SG24-8887 This book is aimed at pre- and post-sales support, system administrators, and storage administrators.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides best practices for planning, installing, maintaining, and monitoring the IBM PowerVM® Enterprise Edition virtualization features on IBM POWER7® processor technology-based servers. PowerVM is a combination of hardware, PowerVM Hypervisor, and software, which includes other virtualization features, such as the Virtual I/O Server. This publication is intended for experienced IT specialists and IT architects who want to learn about PowerVM best practices, and focuses on the following topics: Planning and general best practices Installation, migration, and configuration Administration and maintenance Storage and networking Performance monitoring Security PowerVM advanced features This publication is written by a group of seven PowerVM experts from different countries around the world. These experts came together to bring their broad IT skills, depth of knowledge, and experiences from thousands of installations and configurations in different IBM client sites.

Along with servers and networking infrastructure, networked storage is one of the fundamental components of a modern data center. Because storage networking has evolved over the past two decades, the industry has settled on the basic storage networking technologies. These technologies are Fibre Channel (FC) storage area networks (SANs), Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI)-based Ethernet attachment, and Ethernet-based network-attached storage (NAS). Today, lossless, low-latency, high-speed FC SANs are viewed as the high-performance option for networked storage. iSCSI and NAS are viewed as lower cost, lower performance technologies. The advent of the 100 Gbps Ethernet and Data Center Bridging (DCB) standards for lossless Ethernet give Ethernet technology many of the desirable characteristics that make FC the preferred storage networking technology. These characteristics include comparable speed, low latency, and lossless behavior. Coupled with an ongoing industry drive toward better asset utilization and lower total cost of ownership, these advances open the door for organizations to consider consolidating and converging their networked storage infrastructures with their Ethernet data networks. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is one approach to this convergence, but 10-Gbps-enabled iSCSI also offers compelling options for many organizations with the hope that their performance can now rival that of FC. This IBM® Redbooks® publication is written for experienced systems, storage, and network administrators who want to integrate the IBM System Networking and Storage technology successfully into new and existing networks. This book provides an overview of today's options for storage networking convergence. It reviews the technology background for each of these options and then examines detailed scenarios for them by using IBM and IBM Business Partner convergence products.