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Optimizing Enterprise Storage

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

with IBM XIV

White Paper | June 2009

TCO Reinvented

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TCO Reinvented

Contents

Introduction.......................................................................................... 1

IBM XIV: Designed for Low TCO ............................................................................ 2

Acquisition Costs .................................................................................... 4

Single-tier architecture advantages ........................................................................ 5

Commodity hardware ............................................................................................ 5

Very High Density Slower Rotation (VHDSR) disk drives ........................................... 6

Built-in thin provisioning ........................................................................................ 6

Optimal capacity use ............................................................................................. 7

Simple pricing, with all-inclusive features ................................................................ 9

Summary: How to reduce acquisition costs ........................................................... 10

Environmental Costs ............................................................................. 10

Power and cooling consumption ........................................................................... 10

Floor space use ................................................................................................... 11

Summary: How to reduce environmental costs ..................................................... 11

Administration and Management Costs ....................................................... 12

Less management overhead ................................................................................ 12

Summary: How to reduce management costs ....................................................... 13

Downtime Costs ................................................................................... 13

Less failure to be managed .................................................................................. 13

Less human intervention and error ....................................................................... 14

High availability and non-disruptive changes ......................................................... 14

Hot, online, intra- and inter-family code upgrades ................................................. 14

Summary: How to reduce downtime costs ............................................................ 15

Backup/Restore Costs ............................................................................ 15

Summary: How to reduce backup costs ................................................................ 15

Conclusion .......................................................................................... 15

Appendix: Cost Savings Formulas ............................................................. 17

Floor space savings ............................................................................................. 17

Power and cooling savings ................................................................................... 18

TCO Reinvented

Introduction

A high-end storage system’s total cost of ownership (TCO) is like an iceberg: the vast majority of costs are hidden from view. Comparing systems by looking at obvious factors, like capacity and box price, may be easier. But taking a fuller look at the factors impacting

IT budgets over a system’s lifetime will yield a more accurate TCO assessment and,

ultimately, a more informed decision as to which system is truly more favorable to the company's bottom line.

The chart below shows a fuller set of storage array cost factors and their generally

recognized relative impact on a system’s overall cost.*

Figure 1: Typical TCO costs of enterprise storage arrays

In “Governance Dashboard for Enterprise Storage” (Information Management Magazine, May 2006), Dick Benton of GlassHouse Technologies Inc. notes that Gartner and Forrester attribute as much as 60-70% of overall storage TCO to the Administration factor. This large figure likely comes from grouping Administration together with Backup/Restore and other cost factor categories. Here, we break them out separately.

TCO Reinvented

In short, a thorough TCO assessment needs to take into account the cost of:

► Buying, implementing, running, cooling, and expanding the system ► Managing, integrating, and testing the system ► Ensuring the system’s reliability and availability ► Downtime caused by routine maintenance or unexpected equipment failure ► Savings opportunities lost during the time it takes the system to integrate newly

available, cost-reducing technologies

► Software licensing – at time of purchase and upon each capacity increase

The IBM XIV® Storage System has been architected to address all these cost issues. This paper looks at the true total cost of owning an enterprise-class storage system and the XIV system’s winning, truly cost-reducing approach.

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It should be stated that it is inaccurate and even impractical to compare overall cost of the XIV system with other storage systems using all VHDSR drives or currentgeneration enterprise-class systems using a significant number of 1 TB drives. This is because these systems, unlike IBM XIV, do not use 1 TB drives for tier 1 or even tier 2 storage; rather, for archiving and other needs that do not require high performance or high reliability. The XIV system provides enterprise-class performance and reliability for all data at all times. In short, the quality of the storage is different.

It goes without saying that the huge cost advantage resulting from XIV ease of management and software features is relevant in any comparison.

IBM XIV: Designed for Low TCO

Architected to deliver high reliability and performance at exceptionally low TCO, the IBM XIV Storage System is:

► A fully virtualized, self-managed, self-healing system that balances load perfectly

at all times, optimizing capacity use and minimizing human intervention and error

► Complete with a built-in features set, including differential snapshots, remote

mirroring, and thin provisioning

► Easily managed through a simple graphical user interface (GUI) that minimizes

storage management overhead

► Built entirely of standard components, including low-cost, very high density slower

rotation disks (VHDSR)

► Fully hardware redundant, lowering risk of failure to negligible levels and enabling

disks to be added and replaced on the fly without a performance hit or downtime

► A single-tier platform based on a grid architecture, for easy scaling

Environmentals

 Reduced power and

cooling

 Minimized space

footprint

 Integral UPS

Backup/Restore

 Snaps with no

performance impact

 Differential snaps  VSS support  Simple migration  Consistency groups

Acquisition

 Single-tier architecture  Commodity hardware  Lower hardware costs  Just-in-time purchasing  Efficient thin provisioning  Optimal capacity use  All key aspects scalable  All software included; no licensing

Downtime

 Less hardware to fail  Integral UPS  Less human intervention  Easy to monitor  Rapid self-healing and scrubbing  All components redundant  Free and flexible volume replication

Administration

 Fast deployment  Simplified storage

management

 Space reclamation  Self-tuning  Rolling upgrade  Transparent scaling with

no hidden costs

Environmentals

 Reduced power and cooling  Minimized space footprint

TCO Reinvented

The XIV system is designed to comprehensively tackle each storage TCO factor, in multiple ways, as delineated below:

Figure 2: How XIV storage reduces TCO

The result is that the XIV system succeeds in dramatically improving each TCO factor (with the exception of fixed factors, such as hardware maintenance) while other storage systems typically focus on reducing only one or two cost factors. For example, even if a

system’s upfront cost is largely discounted, its TCO will still be high due to ongoing

administration and maintenance costs; a system with improved performance often has higher environmental costs.

By taking a balanced and comprehensive approach to reducing all cost factors, the XIV system succeeds in dramatically reducing TCO where other systems fail.

TCO Reinvented

Figure 3: Overall TCO: Traditional Tier-1 storage vs. XIV storage

Acquisition Costs

The IBM XIV Storage System is designed to be cost-efficient in all aspects, while delivering outstanding and consistent performance. The XIV system’s:

► Single-tier architecture supports all kinds of storage in one environment and

makes scaling easy

► Use of off-the-shelf components makes customized hardware unnecessary and

makes it possible to integrate newer, state-of-the-art hardware as soon as it becomes available and without delay

► Innovative use of highly economical disk drives [Very High Density Slower

Rotation (VHDSR) drives] offers excellent capacity-for-cost value while meeting enterprise performance standards

► Built-in thin-provisioning allows the acquisition and installation of additional

capacity to be delayed until needed, making it possible to defer capital purchases and take full advantage of future hardware and price-point improvements not currently available

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