Meeting the changing needs of space requirements in a data storage system is an obstacle that has proven difficult for many companies to negotiate over the years.

For example, more and more medical facilities have switched to completely electronic medical records. Such changes place a huge burden in way of storage on an existing network infrastructure. Other times, these problems have come from self-inflicted origins. More often than not, this is a result of inadequate planning before implementing a new system. If it has come time to upgrade again or if your business is in the market to implement a new server solution, IBM has an ideal solution for almost any business model in their IBM XIV.

When planning for a new server or provisioning any new hardware, there are a several things to keep in mind. Scalability should always come into question. A system that is both scalable in itself and its ability to further network with other units is important to accommodate growth. The IBM XIV has the capability to automatically redistribute the file storage distribution as soon as new hardware is installed. The upgrades can be done hot as well so there is little, if any, downtime. Also minimizing downtime is the “active-active N+1” redundancy – coupled with the system’s ability to perform hot hardware swaps and the system’s active redistribution of data, it can rebuild a 3 TB hard drive in approximately 50 minutes. The unit itself can support from 72 up to 180 hard drives but more impressively is that the IBM XIV Gen 3 allows for SSD drive caching across all volumes. The system gains a boost from the ability to have 400 GB per each module for a total of 6 TB of cache space.

The IBM XIV is designed to accommodate growth. The system is designed to be part of a large grid architecture, so even highly straining tasks may be accomplished. The IBM XIV and Gen 3 model both make use of fiber optic channel-to-control unit controllers. This allows for a highly dispersed grid, if the need should arise. More importantly is that such technology can transfer information at the data link level as high as 8 GB per second.

Such a system allows for the provisioning of much thinner clients in the workspace. The IBM XIV is geared towards not only storing information but also accommodates application virtualization through the use of VMware. Remote access to resources is made easy by incorporating the vCloud so no one is restricted by office walls. Complementing the remote access features enjoyed by the end users is something for the IT staff – an iPhone app is available, allowing for real-time monitoring from anywhere. IBM also provides an informative and relatively simple GUI for the management of the system which allows reduces the amount of time it takes the IT staff to make any manual adjustments.

Nordisk systems is an IBM Business Partner specializing in Managing products like Tivoli identity manager. Data center virtualization Solutions allowing our clients to achieve many benefits of a virtualized environment.