The IBM XIV Storage System was a line of cabinet-size disk

storage server In computing, a file server (or fileserver) is a computer attached to a network that provides a location for shared disk access, i.e. storage of computer files (such as text, image, sound, video) that can be accessed by the workstations that are ab ...

s. The system is a collection of

modules Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a sy ...

, each of which is an independent computer with its own

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, ...

, interconnections, disk drives, and other subcomponents, laid out in a grid and connected together in parallel using either

InfiniBand InfiniBand (IB) is a computer networking communications standard used in high-performance computing that features very high throughput and very low latency. It is used for data interconnect both among and within computers. InfiniBand is also used ...

(third generation systems) or

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

(second generation systems) connections. Each module has an x86 CPU and runs a software platform consisting largely of a modified

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a free and open-source, monolithic, modular, multitasking, Unix-like operating system kernel. It was originally authored in 1991 by Linus Torvalds for his i386-based PC, and it was soon adopted as the kernel for the GNU ope ...

and other

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

Description

Traditional storage systems distribute a volume across a subset of disk drives in a

cluster may refer to: Science and technology Astronomy * Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft * Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family * Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study t ...

ed fashion. The XIV storage system distributes volumes across all modules in 1 MiB chunks (

partition Partition may refer to: Computing Hardware * Disk partitioning, the division of a hard disk drive * Memory partition, a subdivision of a computer's memory, usually for use by a single job Software * Partition (database), the division of a ...

s) so that all of the modules' resources are used evenly. For robustness, each logical partition is stored in at least two copies on separate modules, so that if a part of a disk drive, an entire disk drive, or an entire module fails, the data is still available. One can increase the system storage capacity by adding additional modules. When one adds a module, the system automatically redistributes previously stored data to make optimal use of its I/O capacity. Depending on the model and disk type chosen when the machine is ordered, one system can be configured for storage capacity from 27 TB to 324 TB. The XIV software features include remote mirroring,

thin provisioning In computing, thin provisioning involves using virtualization technology to give the appearance of having more physical resources than are actually available. If a system always has enough resource to simultaneously support all of the virtualized ...

quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...

controls,

LDAP The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory servi ...

authentication support,

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

support, differential, writable snapshots, online volume migration between two XIV systems and encryption protecting data at rest. The IBM XIV management GUI is a software package that can be installed on operating systems including

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, Linux and Mac OS. An XIV Mobile Dashboard available for Android or

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

History

The IBM XIV Storage System was developed in 2002 by an

Israeli Israeli may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the State of Israel * Israelis, citizens or permanent residents of the State of Israel * Modern Hebrew, a language * ''Israeli'' (newspaper), published from 2006 to 2008 * Guni Israeli ...

start-up company funded and headed by engineer and businessman

Moshe Yanai Moshe Yanai ( he, משה ינאי; born 1949) is an Israeli electrical engineer. He is an inventor, businessman, entrepreneur, aviator, investor,

. They delivered their first system to a customer in 2005. Their product was called Nextra. In December 2007, the IBM Corporation acquired XIV, renaming the product the IBM XIV Storage System. The first IBM version of the product was launched publicly on September 8, 2008. Unofficially within IBM this product is called Generation 2 of the XIV. The differences between Gen1 and Gen2 were not architectural, they were mainly physical. New disks were introduced, new controllers, new interconnects, improved management, additional software functions. In September 2011, IBM announced larger disk drives, changing the inter-connectivity layer to use InfiniBand rather than Ethernet. In 2012-2013 IBM added the support of SSD devices and 10GbE host connectivity.

References

External links

IBM Redbooks that contain information on IBM XIV

Official IBM Information page on XIV
{{IBM Data storage IBM storage servers Mergers and acquisitions of Israeli companies Israeli inventions

Description

History

See also

References

External links