Introduction to IBM Real-time Compression Appliances

Introduction to IBM Real-time Compression Appliances

by Roland Tretau, Michael Jahn, Christof Schirra, Eyal Traitel, Lucian Vlaicu
Released July 2011
Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
ISBN: None

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Book description

Continuing its commitment to developing and delivering industry-leading storage technologies, IBM® is introducing the IBM Real-time Compression Appliances for NAS, an innovative new storage offering that delivers essential storage efficiency technologies, combined with exceptional ease of use and performance.

In an era when the amount of information, particularly in unstructured files, is exploding, but budgets for storing that information are stagnant, IBM Real-time Compression technology offers a powerful tool for better information management, protection, and access.

IBM Real-time Compression can help slow the growth of storage acquisition, reducing storage costs while simplifying both operations and management. It also enables organizations to keep more data available for use rather than storing it offsite or on harder-to-access tape, so they can support improved analytics and decision making.

IBM Real-time Compression Appliances provide on-line storage optimization through real-time data compression, delivering dramatic cost reduction without performance degradation.

This IBM Redbooks® publication is an easy-to-follow guide that describes how to design solutions successfully using IBM Real-time Compression Appliances. It provides practical installation examples, ease of use, remote management, high availability, and administration techniques.

Table of contents

  1. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  2. Preface
    1. The team who wrote this book
    2. Now you can become a published author, too!
    3. Comments welcome
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  3. Chapter 1: The industry requirement for compression
    1. Current IT challenges
    2. How compression can overcome the challenges
    3. Identifying use cases for compression
      1. Home directories
      2. CAD/CAM
      3. Oil and gas data
      4. Log data
      5. Database
      6. Virtualized infrastructures
  4. Chapter 2: Compression technology discussed
    1. Compression technology history
    2. Data efficiency technologies
      1. Space efficient
      2. Flash Copy (space efficient)
      3. Easy Tiering
      4. Archiving and space management
      5. Data deduplication
    3. Data compression technologies
  5. Chapter 3: Introduction to RTCA design
    1. The RTCA approach
    2. IBM Real-time Compression
      1. Lempel-Ziv algorithm
      2. Huffman coding
      3. Compression in real-time
    3. Random Access Compression Engine
      1. Random Access Compression Engine: RACE
      2. Unified Protocol Manager
      3. Monitoring and Reporting Manager
    4. Performance considerations
    5. Data integrity
      1. Data integrity at the network level
      2. Data integrity at the protocol layer
      3. Data integrity at the storage layer
    6. Storage advantages
  6. Chapter 4: Hardware and software components
    1. Base model configurations
      1. IBM Real-time Compression Appliance STN6500 (2452-650)
      2. IBM Real-time Compression Appliance STN6800 (2452-680)
    2. Front-panel components
    3. Rear-panel components
    4. Technical specifications
      1. Physical specifications
      2. Technical specifications
      3. Operating environment
      4. Supported clients and servers
    5. Software components
  7. Chapter 5: Performance considerations
    1. Performance requirements
    2. Performance best practices
      1. Read-cache allocation
      2. Parallelism of I/O
      3. Compression ratio
      4. Transparent versus compressed traffic
  8. Chapter 6: Implementation planning
    1. Solution requirements
    2. Architectural planning
      1. Physical installation and cabling considerations
      2. Network
      3. Antivirus services considerations
    3. Network considerations summary
    4. Configuration planning
  9. Chapter 7: Deploying Real-time Compression Appliances
    1. Physical installation of Real-time Compression Appliance
    2. Cabling the RTCA product for configuration
    3. Connecting to the RTCA product
      1. Direct connection
      2. Remote connection
    4. Configuring the RTCA product
    5. Configuring bonds and bridges
      1. Creating bonds
      2. Creating bridges
    6. Configuring high availability
      1. Synchronizing high availability manually
      2. Synchronizing high availability automatically
      3. Configuring high availability from the command line interface
  10. Chapter 8: Administration
    1. Working with the IBM Real-time Compression Appliance
      1. The web interface
      2. The menu
      3. Input area
      4. Connecting to the web interface and access permissions
    2. Configuring compression accelerator
      1. Compression accelerator procedure
      2. Scheduling
      3. Monitoring the Compression Accelerator
      4. Resetting the accelerator log
    3. High availability concepts
    4. Configuring storage and compression filters
      1. Transparent mode
      2. Compress mode
    5. Monitoring the compression appliance
      1. Displaying compression appliance status
      2. Displaying storage status
      3. Displaying compression status
    6. Configuring SNMP
    7. Configuring LDAP
      1. Configure
      2. Diagnose
    8. Miscellaneous tasks
      1. Date and time settings
      2. Setting up the remote syslog servers
      3. Resetting the compression statistics
      4. Web interface session timeout
      5. DNS server setup
    9. Maintaining the compression appliances
      1. Reboot and shutdown
      2. Backing up and restoring the configuration settings
    10. Software installation or upgrade
      1. Installing/upgrade on a single RTCA
      2. Installing/upgrade on a high availability RTCA
      3. Updating the hardware configuration file
    11. Configuring system options
    12. Diagnosing problems
    13. Recovering files when appliance is unavailable
      1. Using the data recovery utility
      2. Recovery procedure
      3. Creating data-recovery tasks
      4. Running data-recovery tasks
      5. Viewing data-recovery logs
  11. Chapter 9: NAS / N series solution design
    1. Terms and definitions
    2. N series single node solutions
      1. N series and single RTCA product
      2. N series and single RTCA product, active/passive path
      3. N series and active/passive path, RTCA product HA pair
      4. Active/passive path, RTCA product HA, EtherChannel/LACP bonds
    3. N series dual node solutions
      1. Active/passive RTCA product on LACP bonds
      2. Controller configurations
    4. N series MetroCluster solutions
    5. N series with MultiStore
      1. Considerations for vfilers
      2. Types of configurations
  12. Chapter 10: ProtecTIER solution design
    1. Combining RTCA and IBM ProtecTIER deduplication
    2. Solution setup
  13. Abbreviations and acronyms
  14. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks publications
    2. Other publications
    3. Online resources
    4. Help from IBM
  15. Index (1/2)
  16. Index (2/2)
  17. Back cover

Product information

  • Title: Introduction to IBM Real-time Compression Appliances
  • Author(s): Roland Tretau, Michael Jahn, Christof Schirra, Eyal Traitel, Lucian Vlaicu
  • Release date: July 2011
  • Publisher(s): IBM Redbooks
  • ISBN: None