Originally posted by: TonyPearson
 | Christopher Vollmar
IBM Storage Architect supporting customers in Canada and the Caribbean |
Well, it's Tuesday again, and you know what that means? IBM Announcements!
IBM recently announced two things for the IBM FlashSystem A9000/A9000R in the release of software version 12.3.1. The first introduces "intelligent capacity management" and the second is scalability for the smallest A9000R model. Let's start with Intelligent capacity management for deduplication, which provides high-precision estimates for:
- Capacity optimization using reported reclaimable capacity, per volume
- Capacity chargeback using the attributable fare-share capacity, per volume
From its initial release, FlashSystem A9000 supported always-on, cross-volume deduplication, in addition to other data reduction capabilities, such as compression and the special processing for well-known patterns. Deduplication implies that the same stored data may belong to more than one volume. With deduplication, reporting the amount of data stored for a particular volume will have different answers for different uses:
- Reclaimable capacity
- the amount of physical capacity that will be freed when a volume is deleted or migrated to another array. For example, if two identical volumes exist, deleting one of them will not reclaim any capacity. When many volumes share many and variable extents of data, knowing the reclaimable capacity for a volume requires intelligent software to overcome the computational challenge.
- Attributed capacity
- the amount of physical capacity that can be fairly attributed to a volume, most typically for chargeback purposes. For example, if two identical volumes exist, it would be fair to attribute half the capacity to the chargeback of each volume. When many volumes share many and variable extents of data, knowing the attributed capacity for a particular volume requires intelligent software.
Both FlashSystem A9000/A9000R software version 12.3.1 and Hyper-Scale Manager version 5.5.1 (or later versions) are required to produce the reclaimable and attributed capacity information. The array provides metadata information, and the Hyper-Scale Manager uses patented IBM research algorithms to compute high-accuracy estimates with specified error margins, without performance impact.
To produce these reports IBM Hyper-Scale Manager will require incrementally larger memory for the hosting virtual machine or the physical host. Learn more information about the system requirements in the [Hyper-Scale Manager release notes].
Last year, IBM introduced the lowest new entry point configuration of A9000R using a single flash enclosure. With 12.3.1 the IBM FlashSystem A9000/A9000R enhances this offering with support to scale out that configuration. Clients using this configuration will be able to non-disruptively add flash enclosures and grid controllers to scale out system capacity and performance.
IBM Systems Technical University in Atlanta is just around the corner! This event will have 24 sessions on the IBM FlashSystem A9000/A9000R systems, here's a snapshot of them:
| Speaker | Session | Title |
|---|
| Andrew Greenfield | s107296 | FlashSystem A9000 thrashes SQL, Oracle and Hadoop workloads: Client examples |
| s107297 | Deep dive into best practies for host and hypervisor tuning for IBM FlashSystem A9000 |
| s107300 | Secrets of A9000 scripting and advanced customizations |
| Brian Sherman | s105876 | SVC/A9000 implementation best practices |
| Lisa Martinez | s107289 | Managing the IBM FlashSystem A9000/R with the IBM Hyper-Scale Manager |
| s107291 | Business resiliency for the DS8000 and FlashSystem A9000/R using IBM Copy Services Manager |
| s107292 | IBM FlashSystem A9000/R high availability and disaster recovery with the multi-site solution |
| Moshe Weiss | s107469 | Demo-ing FlashSystem A9000/R Provisioning, Monitoring and Troubleshooting with Hyper-Scale Manager |
| s107471 | NDA: Use IBM Hyper-Scale Manager to present & educate FlashSystem A9000/R |
| s107473 | NDA: 6 FlashSystem A9000/R Management prototypes: and your pick is? |
| s107474 | Make the most of FlashSystem A9000/R - tips, tricks and secrets |
| Nir Rigai | s107176 | Meet the A9000 and A9000R development experts: Open discussion about pros and cons |
| s107178 | The full customer experience of IBM FlashSystem A9000/R: Daily work, upgrades, integrations, support |
| s107182 | Reducing TCO while managing your IBM FlashSystem A9000/R |
| s107281 | IBM FlashSystem A9000/R: Consistent performance, flexibility and efficiency built for the cloud |
| Noam Ben-David | s108008 | IBM FlashSystem A9000/R customers' stories |
| Ofer Leneman | s107286 | Deep dive into FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R HyperSwap |
| s107287 | The blazing I/O trail across the grid - FlashSystem A9000 data path |
| s107288 | Deep dive into FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R multi-site high availability and disaster recovery |
| Yosef Shatsky | s107338 | Intelligent capacity management for FlashSystem A9000/R always-on data reduction |
| s107339 | FlashSystem A9000/R data reduction under the hood |
| Yossi Siles | s107253 | FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R roadmap - NDA |
| s107254 | FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R for private clouds and MSPs |
| s107282 | Fast Start - What's new with FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R |
For more details of the TechU event in Atlanta, GA (USA), April 29-May 3, visit [ibm.biz/Atlanta2019]. The three of us all plan to be there! Stop by and say hello.