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IBM Power Systems RAID Solutions Introduction and Technical Overview

Author Harihara Balakrishnan , Swarna Narendra Babu , Scott Vetter
Release Date: 2018/12/01
ISBN: 9780738454344
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Book Description

This IBM® Redpaper™ publication given an overview and technical introduction to IBM Power Systems™ RAID solutions. The book is organized to start with an introduction to Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID), and various RAID levels with their benefits. A brief comparison of Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and networked storage systems such as SAN / NAS is provided with a focus on emerging applications that typically use the DAS model over networked storage models.

The book focuses on IBM Power Systems I/O architecture and various SAS RAID adapters that are supported in IBM POWER8™ processor-based systems. A detailed description of the SAS adapters, along with their feature comparison tables, is included in Chapter 3, "RAID adapters for IBM Power Systems" on page 45.

The book is aimed at readers who have the responsibility of configuring IBM Power Systems for individual solution requirements. This audience includes IT Architects, IBM Technical Sales Teams, IBM Business Partner Solution Architects and Technical Sales teams, and systems administrators who need to understand the SAS RAID hardware and RAID software solutions supported in POWER8 processor-based systems.

Table of Contents

  1. Front cover
  2. Notices
    1. Trademarks
  3. IBM Redbooks promotions
  4. Preface
    1. Authors
    2. Now you can become a published author, too!
    3. Comments welcome
    4. Stay connected to IBM Redbooks
  5. Chapter 1. Introduction to RAID Technologies
    1. 1.1 General description
      1. 1.1.1 Emerging workloads, DAS, and RAID
    2. 1.2 Introduction to RAID technology
      1. 1.2.1 Benefits and Economics - Various levels of RAID
      2. 1.2.2 Hardware RAID and software RAID
      3. 1.2.3 Hardware RAID levels and their characteristics
      4. 1.2.4 Supported hardware RAID levels in Power Systems
      5. 1.2.5 Supported software RAID levels in Power Systems
  6. Chapter 2. IBM Power Systems I/O architecture overview
    1. 2.1 General Description
    2. 2.2 PCIe Gen3 Slots
      1. 2.2.1 PCIe Lanes and Bandwidth
    3. 2.3 Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface
    4. 2.4 Easy Tier in Power Systems
    5. 2.5 IBM Power Systems I/O architecture overview
    6. 2.6 Power S814 and S824 I/O Architecture Overview
      1. 2.6.1 Power S814 PCIe Gen3 Slots
      2. 2.6.2 Power S824 PCIe Gen3 Slots
      3. 2.6.3 Integrated SAS Controllers
      4. 2.6.4 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawers
      5. 2.6.5 EXP24S SFF Gen-2 Drawer and internal disk bays
    7. 2.7 Power S822 I/O Architecture Overview
      1. 2.7.1 Power S822 PCIe Gen3 Slots
      2. 2.7.2 Integrated SAS Controllers
      3. 2.7.3 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawers
      4. 2.7.4 EXP24S SSF Gen-2 Drawer and Internal Disk bays
    8. 2.8 Power S812L and Power S822L I/O Architecture Overview
      1. 2.8.1 Power S812L PCIe Gen3 Slots
      2. 2.8.2 Power S822L PCIe Gen3 Slots
      3. 2.8.3 Integrated SAS Controllers
      4. 2.8.4 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawers
      5. 2.8.5 EXP24S SSF Gen-2 Drawer and Internal Disk bays
    9. 2.9 Power E850 I/O Architecture Overview
      1. 2.9.1 Power E850 PCIe Gen3 Slots
      2. 2.9.2 Integrated SAS Controllers
      3. 2.9.3 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawers
      4. 2.9.4 EXP24S SSF Gen-2 Drawer and Internal Disk bays
    10. 2.10 Power E870 and Power E880 I/O Architecture Overview
    11. 2.11 PCIe Gen3 I/O Expansion Drawer Overview
  7. Chapter 3. RAID adapters for IBM Power Systems
    1. 3.1 IBM Power Systems and options for RAID adapters
    2. 3.2 POWER8 processor based systems and supported PCIe RAID adapters
    3. 3.3 POWER8 based processor systems and internal RAID adapters
    4. 3.4 PCIe SAS RAID adapters with write cache
    5. 3.5 General guidelines for selecting SAS RAID adapters
    6. 3.6 High Availability feature considerations
      1. 3.6.1 High Availability features for AIX and Linux
      2. 3.6.2 High Availability two system RAID
      3. 3.6.3 High Availability single system RAID
      4. 3.6.4 High Availability access optimization
      5. 3.6.5 Just a bunch of disks (JBOD)
      6. 3.6.6 High Availability features for IBM i
      7. 3.6.7 High Availability feature comparison
    7. 3.7 PCIe SAS RAID adapters
      1. 3.7.1 #5805 - PCIe 380MB cache Dual -x4 3Gb SAS RAID Adapter
      2. 3.7.2 #ESA3 - PCIe2 1.8GB Cache RAID SAS Tri-port 6Gb Adapter
      3. 3.7.3 #EJ0J - PCIe3 RAID SAS adapter Quad-port 6Gb x8
      4. 3.7.4 #EJ0L - PCIe3 12GB Cache RAID SAS adapter Quad-port 6Gb x8
      5. 3.7.5 #EJ0M - PCIe3 LP RAID SAS adapter
      6. 3.7.6 #EL3B - PCIe3 LP RAID SAS adapter
      7. 3.7.7 #EL59 - PCIe3 LP RAID SAS adapter Quad-port 6Gb x8
      8. 3.7.8 #5913 - PCIe2 1.8GB Cache RAID SAS adapter Tri-port 6Gb x8
      9. 3.7.9 #5901 - PCIe Dual-x4 SAS adapter
      10. 3.7.10 #5278 - PCIe LP Dual-x4 SAS adapter 3Gb
    8. 3.8 IBM disk formatting practices
      1. 3.8.1 Guidelines for choosing disks
      2. 3.8.2 ANSI T10 standardized data integrity fields
    9. 3.9 VIOS vSCSI disks and IBM i client partitions
    10. 3.10 RAID adapters performance characteristics
      1. 3.10.1 JBOD, RAID 0 and write cache
    11. 3.11 SSDs and Easy Tier array
      1. 3.11.1 Performance testing with Easy Tier
    12. 3.12 SAS RAID adapters performance comparison
  8. Chapter 4. Software RAID in Power Systems
    1. 4.1 Software RAID in AIX
    2. 4.2 Software RAID in Linux
    3. 4.3 Software RAID in IBM i
  9. Appendix A. RAID in storage subsystems
    1. A.1 RAID in storage subsystems
    2. A.2 Two innovative solutions
  10. Related publications
    1. IBM Redbooks
    2. Online resources
    3. Help from IBM
  11. Back cover