AIX > Storage > Servers

Reinventing Storage

The IBM XIV Storage System is cost effective and easy to use

Data-storage infrastructures often include IT components and tasks many IT managers don’t consider when assessing their overall IT environment costs. More frequently, they point at their servers when looking at IT total cost of ownership (TCO), citing such factors as up-front price, power consumption and administrative overhead.

This is unfortunate, because enterprise storage arrays impact IT bottom lines in myriad ways, including initial acquisition, downtime, environmental costs and, perhaps most dramatically, administration with regard to hardware and ongoing maintenance. This is why IBM incorporated the XIV* Storage System, which IBM acquired in December 2007, into its System Storage* lineup. Running on the mainframe under Linux* on System z* and Power Systems* under virtual I/O servers (VIOS) (AIX* and IBM i), as well as directly on AIX with IBM PowerHA* (formerly HACMP*), XIV addresses these and other additional issues.

The XIV Storage System uses standard Intel*/Linux components to help keep acquisition costs low, advanced hardware and software technologies to reduce downtime, high-density disks to lessen power consumption and an easy-to-use graphical-management interface to address administrative issues.

“In some ways, XIV reinvents the way storage is filled and managed by creating an innovative architecture that employs both advanced software technology and commodity hardware to keep costs low, improve uptime and create a very scalable storage environment,” notes Eyal Zimran, senior director, IBM XIV Global Marketing and Alliances.

“One of the great things about XIV is it will always be in balance, never develop hot spots and you don’t need to use special tuning for software or have experts provisioning the storage for you.” —Eyal Zimran, senior director, IBM XIV Global Marketing and Alliances

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