3.002: expert advice on tiering with ibm db2

Someone sent me this link to an article on IBM developerWorks this morning:

Feature: Right Data, Right Place, Right Time
Storage tiering for the DB2 database administrator

Interestingly, the author was not someone from within IBM. Instead, this article comes from the company that has been pioneering the practicalities of tiered storage for several years:

Paul Pendle, Consulting Systems Integration Engineer, EMC Corporation

Nice work, Paul!

 

technorati tags: IBM,EMC,Tiered Storage,Storage Tiering,FAST,DB2,Flash Drives,EFD,SATA,Fully Automated Storage Tieringi,Symmetrix,VMAX,V-Max,DMX,Easy Tier,iPad

Comments

[frank finley]

Apparently Paul's article has out of date information in it according to a comment posted at the end of the article. You may want to review...

[Rob Jodoin]

Not a bad article but I had to check the date. As a co-worker pointed out, the article neglects mentioning the FLASHDA tool which has been available for quite some time. You can find details here:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/zos/downloads/flashda.html
Basically it is a SAS based tool that will analyse your SMF data looking for key IO characteristics and provide a report that identifies the best candidates to land on SSD.

There is an excellent Redpaper available at:
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4537.html?Open
which not only addresses the tiering aspect of SSD but also some features available in zOS that help storage maximize the performance of SSDs such as zHPF and HyperPAVs.

Also, no mention of Easy tier which was announced for the DS8700 on April 13th. It is a feature which automates data movement within the DS8700 at the sub lun level similar to what FAST V2 will deliver if/when it is GA'd .