IBM DS8000 Easy Tier (Updated for DS8000 R9.0)

Book description

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication describes the concepts and functions of IBM System Storage® Easy Tier®, and explains its practical use with the IBM DS8000® series and License Machine Code 7.9.0.xxx (also known as R9.0)..

Easy Tier is designed to automate data placement throughout the storage system disks pool. It enables the system to (automatically and without disruption to applications) relocate data (at the extent level) across up to three drive tiers. The process is fully automated. Easy Tier also automatically rebalances extents among ranks within the same tier, removing workload skew between ranks, even within homogeneous and single-tier extent pools.

Easy Tier supports a Manual Mode that enables you to relocate full volumes. Manual Mode also enables you to merge extent pools and offers a rank depopulation function. Easy Tier fully supports thin-provisioned Extent Space Efficient fixed block (FB) and count key data (CKD) volumes in Manual Mode and Automatic Mode.

Easy Tier also supports extent pools with small extents (16 MiB extents for FB pools and 21 cylinders extents for CKD pools). Easy Tier also supports high-performance and high-capacity flash drives in the High-performance flash enclosure, and it enables additional user controls at the pool and volume levels.

This paper is aimed at those professionals who want to understand the Easy Tier concept and its underlying design. It also provides guidance and practical illustrations for users who want to use the Easy Tier Manual Mode capabilities.

Easy Tier includes additional capabilities to further enhance your storage performance automatically: Easy Tier Application, and Easy Tier Heat Map Transfer.

Table of contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  3. Preface
    1. Authors
    2. Now you can become a published author, too
    3. Comments wel come
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  4. Summary of changes
    1. October 2019, Ninth Edition
  5. Chapter 1. IBM DS8000 Easy Tier
    1. 1.1 Introduction
    2. 1.2 Easy Tier evolution
    3. 1.3 Easy Tier license
    4. 1.4 Capabilities
      1. 1.4.1 Easy Tier Automatic Mode
      2. 1.4.2 Easy Tier Manual Mode
      3. 1.4.3 Easy Tier control
      4. 1.4.4 Storage Tier Advisor Tool
      5. 1.4.5 DS GUI: Easy Tier reporting
  6. Chapter 2. DS8000 Easy Tier concepts, design, and implementation
    1. 2.1 Easy Tier features
    2. 2.2 General I/O characteristics
    3. 2.3 Easy Tier concepts
    4. 2.4 Easy Tier support for small extents
    5. 2.5 Easy Tier Report integrated in DS GUI
    6. 2.6 Easy Tier operating modes
      1. 2.6.1 Easy Tier Automatic Mode
      2. 2.6.2 Easy Tier Manual Mode
    7. 2.7 Easy Tier allocation controls
    8. 2.8 Easy Tier design
      1. 2.8.1 Flash, enterprise, and nearline storage tiers
      2. 2.8.2 Easy Tier performance metrics
      3. 2.8.3 Easy Tier cross-tier and intra-tier performance management
      4. 2.8.4 Migration plan creation
      5. 2.8.5 Easy Tier migration types
      6. 2.8.6 Promoting and swapping
      7. 2.8.7 Auto-rebalance
      8. 2.8.8 Warm and cold demote
      9. 2.8.9 Extent allocation in hybrid and managed extent pools
      10. 2.8.10 Easy Tier considerations
    9. 2.9 Easy Tier control
      1. 2.9.1 System-level Easy Tier control
      2. 2.9.2 Pool-level Easy Tier control
      3. 2.9.3 Volume-level Easy Tier control
  7. Chapter 3. Planning for DS8000 Easy Tier
    1. 3.1 Prerequisites
    2. 3.2 Physical configuration planning and flash considerations
      1. 3.2.1 Flash technology features and benefits
      2. 3.2.2 Flash performance guidelines
      3. 3.2.3 Data placement guidelines, limitations, and considerations
    3. 3.3 Logical configuration planning
      1. 3.3.1 General considerations for DS8000 logical configurations
      2. 3.3.2 Guidelines for creating multi-tier extent pools
      3. 3.3.3 Guidelines for creating single-tier (homogeneous) extent pools
      4. 3.3.4 Other considerations for thin-provisioned volumes
    4. 3.4 Implementation considerations for multi-tier extent pools
      1. 3.4.1 Using thin provisioning with Easy Tier in multi-tier pools
      2. 3.4.2 Staged implementation approach for multi-tier pools
      3. 3.4.3 Working with pinned volumes
    5. 3.5 Copy Services considerations
    6. 3.6 Workload planning
  8. Chapter 4. DS GUI and DS CLI support for IBM DS8000 Easy Tier
    1. 4.1 DS GUI support for Easy Tier
      1. 4.1.1 Easy Tier controls at the system level
      2. 4.1.2 Volume Properties window
      3. 4.1.3 Volume migration window
      4. 4.1.4 Disk configuration summary
      5. 4.1.5 Pool Properties window
      6. 4.1.6 Manage Volumes window
      7. 4.1.7 Merge Extent Pools window
      8. 4.1.8 Dynamic volume relocation
      9. 4.1.9 Dynamic extent pool merge
      10. 4.1.10 Rank depopulation
    2. 4.2 DS CLI support for Easy Tier
    3. 4.3 Easy Tier functions by using the DS CLI
      1. 4.3.1 Change storage system properties for Easy Tier
      2. 4.3.2 Dynamic volume relocation
      3. 4.3.3 Dynamic extent pool merge
      4. 4.3.4 Easy Tier Automatic Mode
    4. 4.4 Easy Tier control by using the DS CLI
      1. 4.4.1 Suspend or resume the Easy Tier migration process for an extent pool
      2. 4.4.2 Suspend and resume the Easy Tier monitoring process for extent pool
      3. 4.4.3 Reset the Easy Tier monitoring process for the extent pool
      4. 4.4.4 Suspend and resume the Easy Tier monitoring process for a volume
      5. 4.4.5 Reset the Easy Tier monitoring process for a volume
      6. 4.4.6 Assigning a volume to a tier (pinning a volume to a tier)
      7. 4.4.7 Exclude a volume from the nearline tier
      8. 4.4.8 Unassigning a certain tier from a volume
  9. Chapter 5. DS8000 Easy Tier reporting
    1. 5.1 Easy Tier usage
    2. 5.2 Easy Tier Reporting in the DS8000 GUI
      1. 5.2.1 Easy Tier pool level reporting
      2. 5.2.2 Easy Tier Volume-Level Reporting
    3. 5.3 Using the Easy Tier data files
      1. 5.3.1 Easy Tier data files
    4. 5.4 STAT Charting Utility
      1. 5.4.1 Easy Tier skew curve
      2. 5.4.2 Easy Tier workload categorization
      3. 5.4.3 Easy Tier data movement report
    5. 5.5 Disk Magic and IBM Storage Modeller
      1. 5.5.1 Reading the skew curve into Disk Magic
  10. Appendix A. IBM DS8000 Easy Tier and IBM z/OS system-managed storage
    1. z/OS system-managed storage
    2. Easy Tier storage management
    3. Hybrid pools in z/OS system-managed storage environments
    4. z/OS and thin-provisioning
    5. z/OS Db2 synergy
  11. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks publications
    2. Other publications
    3. Online resources
    4. Help from IBM
  12. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: IBM DS8000 Easy Tier (Updated for DS8000 R9.0)
  • Author(s): Bertrand Dufrasne, Peter Kimmel, Matthew Houzenga, Dennis Robertson
  • Release date: November 2019
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: 9780738457154