This IBM® Redbooks® publication captures several best practices and describes the performance gains that can be achieved by implementing the IBM FlashSystem® and IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) products running IBM Spectrum® Virtualize 8.5. These practices are based on field experience.

This book highlights configuration guidelines and best practices for the storage area network (SAN) topology, clustered system, back-end storage, storage pools and managed disks (MDisks), volumes, Remote Copy services, and hosts.

This book explains how you can optimize disk performance with the IBM Easy Tier® function. It also provides best practices for monitoring, maintaining, and troubleshooting.

This book is intended for experienced storage, SAN, IBM FlashSystem, and SVC administrators and technicians. Understanding this book requires advanced knowledge of these environments.

This book is focused on IBM FlashSystem and SVC systems that run IBM Spectrum Virtualize 8.5. Most configuration principles and best practices that are described in the book are still applicable for systems that cannot be upgraded to version 8.5, but some features are not available.

Chapter 1. Introducing IBM FlashSystem and IBM SAN Volume Controller running IBM Spectrum Virtualize 8.5

Chapter 2. Storage area network guidelines

Chapter 3. Storage back end

Chapter 4. Storage pools

Chapter 5. Volumes

Chapter 6. Copy services

Chapter 7. Ensuring business continuity

Chapter 8. Hosts

Chapter 9. Implementing a storage monitoring system

Chapter 10. Maintaining an IBM Spectrum Virtualize infrastructure

Chapter 11. Troubleshooting and diagnostics

Chapter 12. IBM Real-time Compression considerations

Appendix A. IBM i considerations