Cloud Storage Solutions

Host connection is a vital part of any storage system deployment procedure. Basically, a host is the physical computer or virtual machine that uses storage resources of the storage system, rather than having its own local storage. Accordingly, the hosts are defined on the storage system itself, allowing for this interaction.

Only hosts that are mapped to storage volumes can access those volumes on the storage system. Also, all host I/O operations must be equitably distributed among the storage interface modules. This workload balance is ensured by the storage administrator, who also monitors and assesses it over time when host traffic patterns change.

However, the host operating systems and network protocols come in different types and vendors. This variety presents a challenge to host administrators who must configure the host properly before it can perform on-going and uninterrupted I/O operations on the storage system. This is where the IBM Storage Host Attachment Kit (HAK) comes in handy.

The HAK for the IBM Spectrum Accelerate family – namely XIV, FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R, as well as the software-defined storage (SDS) Spectrum Accelerate deployable software – provides the host administrator with all the required tools for automatic and simpler host diagnostics, configuration, and attachment to the storage system. In addition, the HAK facilitates the monitoring and management of storage volumes from the host.

The HAK can be run on Linux (RHEL or SLES), Microsoft Windows Server, or IBM AIX hosts, and uses iSCSI or Fibre Channel SANs for connecting to the storage systems. Moreover, you can forgo the host installation altogether and use the HAK as a portable package (disk-on-key version). This allows you to run its utilities from a shared network drive or a portable USB flash drive.

Once the host is attached to storage system, defined on the storage device itself, and have the storage volumes mapped to the host, you can:

• Display information about connected storage arrays and volumes.
• Configure connectivity parameters.
• Run host diagnostics.
• Gather configuration information on the host and create host profile that can then be shared with different IBM internal technical support systems.

In all, the IBM Storage Host Attachment Kit is a nifty small-footprint program, indispensable for fast and smart storage deployment. Provided free of charge, it’s available for download from the IBM Fix Central.

For information about the latest version, check IBM Knowledge Center.

The long and arduous road to HyperSwap is over! We are happy to announce a release of a new software version of our blazingly fast FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R. This is version 12.1, which brings HyperSwap to our storage clients. HyperSwap solution is an ingenious way of providing high availability based on active-active pairing of storage systems per volume or per consistency group. Each volume or consistency group pair uses synchronous replication to keep both systems updated at all times. When certain conditions apply, an automatic and completely transparent failover is performed, so that the applications experience no downtime. As soon as the actual failure is recovered, the pair is automatically resynchronized.

For easier integration with VMware, Linux, AIX and Windows platforms, we've upgraded these Cloud Storage Solution products:

• IBM Spectrum Accelerate Family Storage Replication Adapter, version 3.0.0 for combining VMware SRM failover capabilities with state-of-the-art HyperSwap high-availability solution.
• IBM Storage Host Attachment Kit, version 2.8.0 for hassle-free attachment of Linux, Windows Server or AIX hosts to FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R storage systems in HyperSwap relations.
• IBM Spectrum Accelerate Family Provider for Microsoft Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service, version 2.9.0 for fully automatic creation of snapshots on HyperSwapped FlashSystem A9000 and A9000R storage systems.

Upgrade now to unleash the full power of the HyperSwap disaster recovery!

We are proud to announce that the IBM XIV Host Attachment Kit has been recently upgraded to a new version - 2.5.0. This release brings support for XIV microcode version 11.6.x, IBM Spectrum Accelerate 11.5.1.x, and RHEL 7.1. In addition, this version introduces a hot feature - the host-side acceleration (HSA) for improved iSCSI communication between Spectrum Accelerate and a host.
The improvement is achieved by efficient mapping of I/O operations to modules that store the required data. In a nutshell, instead of sending data across all paths and letting the storage arrays decide on correct forwarding, the host sends data directly to the correct module. This leads to faster handling of data by the host, with improved response time and throughput.

Another change is a deprecation of the -L option of the xiv_iscsi_admin and xiv_fc_admin commands, reserving the ability to list the attached storage devices for the xiv_syslist -L command only.

 

The XIV Host Software team is happy to announce the 2011Q4 release of the XIV Host Attachment Kit, version 1.7.1.
We recommend checking out the full list of changes and known issues for a specific platform in the corresponding Host Attachment Kit 1.7.1 Release Notes, available in the link above.

• Overall quality improvement, focused on Windows and Linux platforms: we've fixed over 40 bugs and implemented over 20 improvements.
• Provide detailed information the configuration steps HAK performs on the hosts, as we're aware that the host admins would really like to know that.
• xiv_attach now presents a clear list of the configuration steps.
• Added the "--verbose" flag to HAK tools. e.g. xiv_attach --verbose notifies about the changes HAK is about to perform.
• Host Attachment Guide's appendix A documents the configuration actions.
• Improved Windows KB installation, and clarified Windows KB requirements in the Release Notes
• Improved Windows installer and portable HAK packages
• Added support for Linux RHEL 5.7, 6.1 and 6.2.
• Improved Non-English locale support
  

And we didn't stop there...
We've invested a lot in internal test and development improvements. Most notably we've increased the automated test coverage and improved our automated build environment. This allows us to provide you with a better tested, higher quality product.

We are happy to announce our newest edition of the IBM XIV Host Attachment Kit, version 1.8.0. This release includes a new utility and support for new operating system versions, as well as several bug fixes and code infrastructure improvements.
 
And now, let's dive into the details:
Starting with our cool new utility, called "xiv_syslist"... This new tool in the HAK will provide great assitance to host and storage administrators, by exposing useful storage array details from the server/host point of view. What kind of details? Without turning this post into a User Guide, the list of storage array details includes (for each array connected to the host): Array name, Array Serial, Management IPs, Connected Modules & Ports, Connectivity Types, Host Name Defined and Host Ports Definition State. The output can be formatted as xml or csv, as well as regular text output.The "xiv_syslist" utility is available on all platforms supported by the HAK.Here is a screenshot, for first impression:



We could not finish without mentioning the issues that were fixed in this version. While several minor issues have been fixed, the most encompassing one is an infrastructure revamp for the "xiv_devlist" utility, that has fixed many issues in the utility on all the supported platforms.
Now if this sounds good to you, here is the download link from IBM Fix Central. Here you can find the IBM XIV  Host Attachment Guide and the HAK Release Notes for each of the platforms.

Happy Easter and Passover Holidays!

The IBM XIV Host Software team