HP XP P9000 Provisioning for Mainframe Systems User Guide

With Thin Provisioning ZWithout Thin Provisioning ZAdvantages
unused. I/O loads may concentrate on just a
subset of the storage which might decrease
performance.
efficiency of the data
drive
bottlenecks in parity group performance.
Configuring the volumes from multiple parity
groups improves parity group performance. This
also increases storage use while reducing power
and pooling requirements (total cost of
ownership).
Thin Provisioning Z advantage example
To illustrate the merits of a Thin Provisioning Z environment, assume you have twelve 3390-V LDEVs
from 12 RAID 1 (2D+2D) array groups assigned to a THP pool. All 48 disks contribute their IOPS
and throughput power to all 3390-A THP volumes assigned to that pool. If more random read
IOPS capability is desired for a pool, it can be defined with 32 3390-V LDEVs defined using RAID
5 (3D+1P) array groups. This provides 128 disks to the pool and workload is spread across all
the disks. Up to 1024 LDEVs may be assigned to a single pool, providing a considerable amount
of I/O capability to just a few THP volumes.
Thin Provisioning Z work flow
The following illustrates the Thin Provisioning Z workflow.
Smart Tiers Z
After using Thin Provisioning Z software to implement a thin provisioning strategy, the array now
has all the elements in place to offer automatic self-optimizing storage tiers provided by Smart
Tiers. Using Smart Tiers Z, you can configure a storage system with multiple storage tiers using
different kinds of physical disk drives, including SSD, SAS, SATA, and external volumes. This can
improve the speed and cost of performance. Smart Tiers Z extends and improves the functionality
and value of Thin Provisioning Z. Both use pools of physical storage to define V-VOLs. Each thin
provisioning pool can be configured to operate either as a THP pool or a Smart Tiers Z pool.
Automated tiering of physical storage is the next step for thin provisioned enterprise arrays.
Automated tiering is the ability of the array to dynamically monitor and relocate data on the
optimum tier of storage based on performance requirements. It focuses on data segments rather
than entire volumes. The functionality is entirely within the array and needs no host level involvement.
Smart Tiers Z adds another layer to the thin provisioned environment.
Using Smart Tiers Z you can:
• Configure physical storage into tiers consisting of multiple kinds of physical disk drives,
including SSD, SAS, and SATA. Host volumes continue to be configured from a common pool,
but the pool is configured using multiple kinds of physical disk drives. Placing data that needs
Thin Provisioning Z advantage example 15