®

IBM System Storage™

Storage Introduction
Part 1

Rekiardi
Storage Systems Group/IBM Indonesia

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education.
It is not intended for distribution to customers.
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
© 2007 IBM Corporation
 IBM TotalStorage®

Definition (1)

SCSI
– Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically
connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices.
The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical
interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it
can connect a wide range of other devices, including scanners, and optical
drives (CD, DVD, etc.).
– Bandwidth: up to 320Mbps

FC (Fibre Channel)
– Fibre Channel is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage
networking. It comes usually with fiber-optic connector/cables.
– Bandwidth: 1-4Gbps

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
 IBM TotalStorage®

Definition (2)

SATA (Serial ATA)
– A computer bus primarily designed for transfer of data between a computer and storage devices
(like hard disks or optical drives).The main benefits are thinner cable that let air cooling work
more efficiently, faster transfers, ability to remove devices while operating (Hot swapping), and
more reliable operation with tighter data integrity checks. It was designed as a successor to the
legacy Advanced Technology Attachment standard (ATA), and is expected to eventually replace
the older technology (retroactively renamed Parallel ATA or PATA). Serial ATA adapters and
devices communicate over a high-speed serial link.
– Bandwidth: 3Gbps

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
– A computer bus technology primarily designed for transfer of data to and from devices like hard
drives, CD-ROM drives and so on. SAS is a serial communication protocol for direct attached
storage (DAS) devices. It is designed for the corporate and enterprise market as a replacement
for parallel SCSI, allowing for much higher speed data transfers than previously available, and is
backwards-compatible with SATA drives. Though SAS uses serial communication instead of the
parallel method found in traditional SCSI devices, it still uses SCSI commands for interacting with
SAS End devices.
– Bandwidth: 3Gbps (Serial)

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
 IBM TotalStorage®

Type of Disk

FC (Fibre Channel)

– Fibre Channel disk is the fastest type of disk. It comes with high speed RPM (10,000
or 15,000). The choice of capacity: 73GB, 146GB, 300GB. It is usually used for
handling high performance application (OLTP, ERP, database)
– FC disk = high cost, medium capacity, high performance.

SATA (Serial ATA)

– It comes usually with large capacity (currently 500GB and 750GB), but with slower
performance (7,200 RPM). It is more likely to PC's disk. It is usually used for
backup/file sharing purposes, not suitable for handling high performance
applications (database, OLTP, ERP).
– SATA disk = low cost, large capacity, slow performance.

SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) Disk

– The newest type of disk. It is similar to server disk. SAS disk comes with high
performance like FC disk and low cost like SATA disk. The size of disk is smaller
than FC and SATA disk
– SAS disk = high performance, medium capacity, high performance.

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
 IBM TotalStorage®

Understanding SATA Performance

Throughput

Sequential, large-block transfers
– Video servers, rich media,
seismic processing, HPC

Key drive-based performance enablers: SATA II
– Data transfer rate, maximum I/O
transfer size, command queuing

IOPS

Random, small-block transfers
– OLTP, databases, Exchange
– Majority of enterprise applications SATA II

Key drive-based performance enablers:
– Seek time, latency, rotational velocity,
command queuing, number of drives

IOPS -- SATA ~33% of 15K FC

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
 IBM TotalStorage®

Understanding SAS Performance

Throughput

Sequential, large-block transfers
– Video servers, rich media,
seismic processing, HPC

Key drive-based performance enablers: 10K SAS
– Data transfer rate, maximum I/O
transfer size, command queuing

IOPS Throughput -- SAS ~100% of FC

Random, small-block transfers
– OLTP, databases, Exchange
– Majority of enterprise applications 15K SAS

Key drive-based performance enablers:
– Seek time, latency, rotational velocity,
command queuing, number of drives

IOPS -- SAS ~100% of 15K FC

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
 IBM TotalStorage®

What is IOPS?

IOPS is important for transaction-based applications with random, small-
block I/O such as OLTP, databases, Exchange

IOPS performance is heavily dependent on the number and type of disk
drives
– FC and SAS drives generally have faster seek time, lower latency,
faster and rotational velocity and better command queuing compared
to SATA
– Drive-limited configurations can result in similar performance between
systems with different maximum capabilities

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
 IBM TotalStorage®

What is Throughput

MB/s important for throughput-intensive applications with sequential
large-block I/O such as video servers, seismic processing, high
performance computing (HPC)

Throughput rates are heavily dependent on the internal controller
bandwidth

Maximum throughput rates can typically be reached with
a smaller number of disk drives (~ 14 to 42)
– SATA generally delivers up to 66% of FC’s or SAS’ drive-level
performance

This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.
 IBM TotalStorage®

Application Access Patterns

Best served by SAS or FC drives

Read Write I/O Throughput Random Sequential

intensive intensive intensive intensive access access

OLTP ● ● ● ●
Data warehouse ● ● ●
System (SCP) ● ● ●
File serving ● ● ●
Medical imaging ● ● ● ●
Web / Internet ● ● ●
Multimedia / video ● ● ●
Document imaging ● ● ●
CAD/CAM ● ● ●
Backup / recovery ● ● ●

Option for SATA drives

MB/s
This document is intended for IBM sales force and IBM Business Partner education. It is not intended for distribution to customers. © 2007 IBM Corporation
See Legal Notes for important notices and information.