Storwize V7000 Unified overview

The IBM® Storwize® V7000 Unified system is a virtualizing RAID storage system that supports both block protocols and file protocols. This unified system includes the IBM Storwize V7000 File Module and the Storwize V7000 storage system.

Storwize V7000 Unified hardware

The file module is a volume storage system comprised of two units that provide file systems for use by network-attached storage. The file module uses the Storwize V7000 storage system to provide the file module with volumes. Other volumes, which are block volumes, are provided on the SAN to be presented to hosts.

Figure 1 shows how a Storwize V7000 Unified system can be configured.

Figure 1. Storwize V7000 Unified configuration

This figure shows the configuration of a Storwize V7000 Unified system.

¹Two 1 Gbps Ethernet for 700 file modules and Six 1 Gbps Ethernet for 720 file modules.

²V7000 Gen 2 requires option cards to support the connection to the File Modules. The connection speed is fixed at 8 Gbps.

Table 1. Supported Option cards
Part number	Part name	CRU or FRU
64P8473	4-port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel host interface adapter	CRU
00WY984	4-port 16Gbps Fibre Channel host interface adapter	CRU
00RY007	2-port 16 Gbps Fibre Channel host interface adapter	CRU

16 GBps cards are supported, but will only support 8Gbps when using direct attach to File Modules.

Table 2. Storwize V7000 communications types
Communications type	File module to Storwize V7000	Host to Storwize V7000	Storwize V7000 to storage system	Storwize V7000 to Storwize V7000
Fibre Channel Direct Attach	Yes	No	No	No
Fibre Channel SAN	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
iSCSI (1 Gbps Ethernet or 10 Gbps Ethernet)	No	Yes	No	No
Fibre Channel Over Ethernet SAN	No	Yes	Yes	Yes

The Storwize V7000 storage system consists of a drive enclosure called the control enclosure. Both regular and flash drives are supported. The control enclosure contains disk drives and two node canisters that are managed as a single volume storage system. Expansion enclosures contain drives and are attached to the control enclosure. Expansion canisters include the serial-attached SCSI (SAS) interface hardware that enables the node hardware to use the drives of the expansion enclosures.

Figure 2 shows the Storwize V7000 system as a traditional RAID storage system. The internal drives are configured into arrays, and volumes are created from those arrays.

Figure 2. Storwize V7000 system as a RAID storage system

This figure shows an overview of a RAID storage system.

The Storwize V7000 system can also be used to virtualize other storage systems as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Storwize V7000 system virtualizing other storage systems

This figure shows an overview of viirutalizing other storage systems

The two node canisters in each control enclosure are arranged into pairs known as I/O groups. A single pair is responsible for serving I/O on a given volume. Because a volume is served by two node canisters, there is no loss of availability if one node canister fails or is taken offline.

Storwize V7000 Unified software

The IBM Storwize V7000 File Module Software within the Storwize V7000 Unified system contains the interface node and management node functions. The management node function provides for configuring, administering, and monitoring a system. The interface node function connects a system to an Internet Protocol (IP) network. You can connect by using any of the following protocols:

Common Internet File System (CIFS)
Network File System (NFS)
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS)
Secure Copy Protocol (SCP)

IBM Storwize V7000 Unified is built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize™ software, which is part of the IBM Spectrum Storage™ family.

The Storwize V7000 Unified software also includes these functions for the host systems that attach to the Storwize V7000 Unified system by using block protocols:

Creates a single pool of storage
Provides logical unit virtualization
Manages logical volumes
Mirrors logical volumes
Large scalable cache
Copy Services
- IBM FlashCopy® (point-in-time copy) function, including thin-provisioned FlashCopy to make multiple targets affordable
- Metro Mirror (synchronous copy)
- Global Mirror (asynchronous copy)
- Data migration
Space management
- IBM Easy Tier® to migrate the most frequently used data to higher-performance storage
- Metering of service quality when combined with IBM Spectrum Control Base. For more information, refer to the IBM Spectrum Control Base documentation.
- Thin-provisioned logical volumes
- Compressed volumes to consolidate storage

Figure 4 shows an example of a management GUI view of the various components in a Storwize V7000 Unified system.

Figure 4. Storwize V7000 Unified components

System management

The management node function within the file module presents a single point of control for system management and service. You use the command line interface (CLI) or the graphical user interface (GUI) for configuring, administering, and monitoring the system. The management node function also provides a CLI interface and web interface for performing hardware service actions.

Fabric types

I/O operations between hosts and Storwize V7000 nodes and between Storwize V7000 nodes and RAID storage systems are performed by using the SCSI standard. The Storwize V7000 nodes communicate with each other by using private SCSI commands.

FCoE connectivity is supported on Storwize V7000 Gen1 models 2076-312 and 2076-324, after the system software has been upgraded to version 6.4. A Storwize V7000 Gen2 model 2076-524 can have up to eight 10 Gbps Ethernet ports per control enclosure when two 4-port 10 GbE host interface adapters are installed.

Storwize V7000 uses the SCSI commands over the Fibre Channel SAN and either 1 Gbps Ethernet or 10 Gbps Ethernet. Table 2 shows the fabric type that can be used for communicating between hosts, nodes, and RAID storage systems. These fabric types can be used at the same time.

Note: To reach a Storwize V7000 Unified system using external clients, a public IP network must be configured and available. This includes all network interfaces used to provide NAS services to external clients in the customer network. These NAS services network interfaces are configured exclusively on the file modules.