Improving performance with Easy Tier

You can enable Easy Tier to automatically manage storage capacity to improve performance.

About this task

Use Easy Tier to dynamically move your data to the appropriate drive tier in your storage system with its automatic performance monitoring algorithms. You can use this feature to increase the efficiency of your storage system.

You can enable Easy Tier to manage all capacity placement on the storage system, or to manage only the pools that have multiple storage device types (also referred to as tiered pools). You can also enable Easy Tier to monitor I/O activity for capacity only.

Procedure

  1. To enable Easy Tier to manage capacity on the storage system, use the Easy Tier mode options in the Easy Tier tab on the System settings page in the DS8000 Storage Management GUI.
    Easy Tier mode options
    Enabled
    Monitor I/O activity for capacity and manage capacity placement within all pools.
    Disabled
    Do not monitor I/O activity for capacity or manage capacity placement.
    Tiered pools only
    Monitor I/O activity for capacity and manage capacity placement within pools that have arrays with different drive classes.
    Monitor only
    Monitor I/O activity for capacity but do not manage capacity placement.
  2. Select an Easy Tier Heat Map Transfer option on the Easy Tier tab of the on the System settings page. The Easy Tier Heat Map Transfer Utility moves Easy Tier heat map information from primary to auxiliary storage systems. In this way, the performance characteristics of the auxiliary storage are consistently updated to reflect that of primary storage.
  3. Select an Easy Tier allocation order option that determines the order in which drive classes (high performance or high utilization) are chosen when capacity is allocated in pools.

    If you are using thin provisioning/ESE devices either for host usage or FlashCopy, the high-performance option can ensure that newly allocated extents can be allocated on flash drives if space is available.

    If you have a high percentage of flash drives and you expect to have free capacity on the flash tier, the high-performance option can allocate new devices on the flash tier even if you are not using thin provisioning.

    High performance
    Allocates data in drive classes in this order:
    All flash systems
    Flash Tier 0, Flash Tier 1, Flash Tier 2 (default for all flash systems)
    Hybrid systems
    Flash Tier 0, Flash Tier 1, Flash Tier 2, Enterprise, Nearline
    High utilization
    Allocates data in drive classes in this order:
    All flash systems
    Flash Tier 1, Flash Tier 2, Flash Tier 0
    Hybrid systems
    Enterprise, Flash Tier 1, Flash Tier 2, Nearline, Flash Tier 0 (default for hybrid systems)
  4. Manage drive class assignments for volumes by selecting a volume and using the Assign to Drive Class action on the Volumes, Volumes by Pool, Volumes by LSS, and Volumes by Host pages.
  5. Monitor Easy Tier performance on selected pools and volumes by using the performance graphs on the Performance page.
  6. Download Easy Tier data by using the Export Easy Tier Summary option available from the Export icon on the System page.