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IBM DS4700 Storage Server  

In a continuing effort to provide storage solutions that are designed to provide low total cost of ownership, high performance, robust functionality, and unparalleled ease of use, IBM offers the IBM System Storage DS4700 Express. As part of the DS4000 Series, the DS4700 Express offers high-performance 4 Gbps capable Fiber Channel connections, up to 33.6TB of Fiber Channel physical storage capacity, 56TB of SATA physical storage capacity, and powerful system management, data management and data protection features. The DS4700 Express is designed to expand from workgroup to enterprise-wide capability with up to six Fiber Channel expansion units with the DS4000 EXP810 Expansion Unit.

DS4700 Model 70 Disk System (Holds up to 16-drives internally and connection for up to 6 EXP810's) (includes 2GB cache, 2 storage partition, Microsoft Windows Host Kit). Eight 4Gbps FC ports (four 4 Gbps FC host ports and four 4Gbps FC drive ports).Includes 4@ 4GB SW SFP's, (up to 6 Expansion cabinets, requires expansion licenses to add 1st and 4th EXP810)

DS4700 Model 72 Disk System (Holds up to 16-drives internally and connection for up to 6 EXP810's) (includes 4GB cache, 4 storage partition, Microsoft Windows Host Kit). Twelve 4 Gbps FC ports (eight 4Gbps FC host ports and four 4Gbps FC drive ports). Includes 6@ 4GB SW SFP's, (up to 6 Expansion cabinets, requires expansion licenses to add 4th EXP810 )

Step 2: Add EXP810 enclosures

The DS4000 EXP810 is the latest disk drive enclosure in the DS4000 Series of products. This 3U enclosure has 4 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces, and supports up to 16 disk drives.

Click on Image for a drawing on caballing the DS4700 & EXP810

A FlashCopy logical drive is a point-in-time image of a logical drive. It is the logical equivalent of a complete physical copy, but you create it much more quickly than a physical copy. Plus it requires less disk space. In DS4700 Storage Manager, the logical drive from which you are basing the FlashCopy, called the base logical drive, must be a standard logical drive in the Storage Subsystem. Typically, you create a FlashCopy so that an application (for example, an application to take backups) can access the FlashCopy and read the data while the base logical drive remains online and user-accessible. When the backup completes, the FlashCopy logical drive is no longer needed (it is usually disabled rather than delete.

The VolumeCopy feature is a firmware-based mechanism for replicating logical drive data within a Storage Subsystem. This feature is designed as a system management tool for tasks such as relocating data to other drives for hardware upgrades or performance management, data backup, and restoring snapshot logical drive data. A VolumeCopy creates a complete physical replication of one logical drive (source) to another (target) within the same Storage Subsystem. The target logical drive is an exact copy or clone of the source logical drive. Because VolumeCopy is a full point-in-time replication, it allows for analysis, mining, and testing without any degradation of the production logical drive performance. It also brings improvements to backup and restore operations, making them faster and eliminating I/O contention on the primary (source) logical drive.

The Enhanced Remote Mirroring option is used for online, real-time replication of data between Storage Subsystems over a remote distance. In the event of disaster or unrecoverable error at one Storage Subsystem you can promote the second Storage Subsystem to take over responsibility for normal I/O operations. The Enhanced Remote Mirroring is a redesign of the former Remote Volume Mirroring and now offers three different operating modes:
Metro Mirroring
Metro Mirroring is a synchronous mirroring mode. Any host write request is written to the primary (local) Storage Subsystem and then transferred to the secondary (remote) Storage Subsystem. The remote storage controller reports the result of the write request operation to the local storage controller which reports it to the host. This mode is called synchronous, because the host application does not get the write request result until the write request has been executed on both (local and remote) storage controllers. This mode corresponds to the former RVM functionality.
Global Copy
Global Copy is an asynchronous write mode. All write requests from a host are written to the primary (local) Storage Subsystem and immediately reported as completed to the host system. Regardless of when data was copied to the remote Storage Subsystem, the application does not wait for the I/O commit from the remote site. However, Global Copy does not ensure that write requests performed to multiple drives on the primary site are later processed in the same order on the remote site. As such, it is also referred to as Asynchronous Mirroring without Write Consistency Group.
Global Mirroring
Global Mirroring is an asynchronous write that ensures that the write requests are carried out in the same order at the remote site. This mode is also referred to as Asynchronous Mirroring with Write Consistency Group. The new Enhanced Remote Mirroring has also been equipped with new functions for better business continuance solution design and maintenance tasks.

Storage partitioning adds a high level of flexibility to the DS4000 Storage Server. It allows you to connect a much higher number of host systems, either in stand-alone or clustered mode. Without storage partitioning, the logical drives configured on a DS4700 Storage Server can only be accessed by a single host system or by a single cluster. This can surely lead to inefficient use of Storage Server hardware. Storage partitioning, on the other hand, allows you to create sets, containing the hosts with their host bus adapters and the logical drives. We call these sets storage partitions. Now the host systems can only access their assigned logical drives, just as if these logical drives were locally attached to them. Storage partitioning adapts the SAN idea of globally accessible storage to the local-storage-minded operating systems. Storage partitioning lets you map and mask LUNs (that is why it is also referred to as LUN masking). That means once you have assigned the LUN to a host it is hidden from all other hosts connected to the same Storage Server. Therefore, the access to that LUN is exclusively reserved for that host.