Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning - Understanding IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center and IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center with Advanced Provisioning

16 Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning

2.1 Overview

What is storage provisioning? Storage capacity provisioning involves activities

needed in order to make storage available to a server, applications, or users.

The major steps in storage provisioning involve creating a Logical Unit Number

(LUN), for example, a logical disk in a storage array — or the selection of an

already existing LUN, zoning the SAN between the storage array and the server,

making the storage available to the application, and finally monitoring the use of

that storage. It is important to note that after you have provisioned the storage,

you are going to want to monitor the availability and performance of that storage

so you can make better operational decisions. For example, if you find that disk

performance is not meeting service levels (using a tool such as IBM TotalStorage

Multiple Device Manager), you may want to provision higher speed storage for

improved performance, and reallocate the slower storage to less performance

intensive systems or applications.

While it may look relatively simple, there is really a lot more underneath the

covers in terms of individual tasks associated with each of these provisioning

steps, like getting world wide port names, mapping, etc. In fact, there can be as

many as 50 steps depending on what your environment consists of.

Automated provisioning involves automating these manual steps. Automation

allows you to harden your processes programmatically, it helps you to avoid

mistakes; for example, performing two steps out of order, or skipping a step.

Automation allows you to lower your management time and helps improve

responsiveness to the application’s needs for storage.

2.2 The big picture

In this section we will introduce IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center and IBM

TotalStorage Productivity Center with Advanced Provisioning in terms of the IBM

TotalStorage Architecture, what we call “the big picture.” We will present to you

the building blocks of this overall architecture and where IBM TotalStorage

Productivity Center fits into it.

The IBM TotalStorage hardware and IBM TotalStorage Open Software Family

make up the components of the IBM TotalStorage Architecture and are designed

to help you with the steps needed toward evolving to an on demand storage

environment.

Figure 2-1 is a diagram of the IBM TotalStorage architecture, showing where the

IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center aligns itself within this framework.

Chapter 2. Architecture 17

Figure 2-1 Storage architecture

At the bottom layer, we have a complete hardware infrastructure — offering

various media types with different qualities of service and cost structures such as

Enterprise Storage Server (ESS) and FAStT, tape and optical devices, switches,

etc.

At the Storage Virtualization layer, we offer virtualization software solutions

designed to improve the flexibility of the storage infrastructure. Solutions include

SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and SAN File system (SFS).

The next level up is the layer where one of the major components of this solution,

IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center, fits in. It fits into the Storage Infrastructure

Management box, which is composed of software designed to help you manage

your disks, the performance or those disks, replication, and your fabric, as well

as the capacity utilization of your database and file systems.

At the next level, we have several components:

򐂰 Hierarchical Storage Management software helps you control storage growth.

򐂰 IBM Tivoli Storage Manager offers Archive Management software to help

manage the cost of storing bookkeeping and compliance data for long periods

of time.

򐂰 Recovery Management software is available to help ensure the recoverability

of your business data.

Storage Orchestration

Hardware Infrastructure

Disk Tape/Optical Storage Networking

Storage Virtualization

Advanced Copy Services

Storage

Infrastructure

Management

Hierarchical

Storage

Management

Archive

Management

Recovery

Management

Tivoli

Provisioning

Manager

TotalStorage

Productivity

Center