by Evelyn Perez, Software Architect, IBM Spectrum Virtualize With exploding data volumes dwarfing the growth of IT budgets, one of the central ways storage solutions are increasingly being evaluated is by their efficiency features. Features not limited to but including data reduction capabilities to store more in less space, tiering to optimize the cost of data placement and virtualization to extend the life of usable storage.  But storage efficiency gains extend well beyond the systems themselves to include storage administration.  The release of IBM Spectrum Virtualize 8.4.1—the software at the heart of IBM FlashSystem and IBM SAN Volume Controller—extends its advanced data services leadership with a series of new capabilities designed to enhance automation and simplify management. These improvements bring greater efficiency for storage administrators.

Highlights of this release include: 

• Volume Provisioning Simplified. Storage admins now have the ability to preset provisioning policies for pool volume creation. By associating a provisioning policy with specific pools, all future volumes will automatically align to the preset values, allowing a single policy to be applied to multiple storage pools for greater control, faster provisioning and ease of management.

• Accelerated Data Migrations. 4.1 release delivers a 32X increase in the volume mirroring sync rate for mirrored vdisks. This improvement elevates the sync rate to a maximum of 2GB/s, accelerating operations such as volume copy creation and improving the speed of data migration. 

• Reliable System-wide DNS Implementations. Today’s update enables the use of DNS names via updates to API calls, eliminating the manual, error-prone IP address entry process.  This enhancement further allows users to enter Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDNs) which are more recognizable and remain fixed even if underlying IP addresses change, reducing risk while eliminating the need for further manual intervention. 

• Improved Integration with IBM Storage Insights & IBM Spectrum Control. This release adds the preferred node name for vdisks on the Spectrum Virtualize GUI in addition to the currently displayed preferred node ID.  This new, common view between Storage Insights and IBM Spectrum Control lowers complexity and speeds actions for users, making it easier to compare consistent node information across each interface.

• Extended Support for Red Hat Ansible. Today’s release supports the use of “Check-Mode” to validate Ansible playbooks and system configurations. This integration enables users to predict and evaluate the impact of changes prior to implementation to ensure the desired result. Additional volume management enhancements such as specifying a LUN id, renaming a volume or increasing volume capacity gives users greater control of deployed volumes and easier ongoing management. 
  
  
• Support for Thales CipherTrust Manager– IBM Spectrum Virtualize version 8.4.1 now supports organization who have moved to the next generation Thales key server, CipherTrust Manager, as a result of the Gemalto key server withdrawal.

Whether you’ve deployed IBM Spectrum Virtualize as the software to modernize existing storage, as the intelligent foundation for the IBM FlashSystem family, or to support hybrid cloud initiatives through the ease of integration with IBM Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud, you can take advantage of these latest enhancements by upgrading to the latest release of Spectrum Virtualize starting today. These enhancements are immediately available at no additional charge to customers with current subscription and support.  Access IBM support to learn more and plan your upgrade today.

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