Thin-Provisioning on SVC, Priceless

IBM recently released SAN Volume Controller (SVC) Version 4.3, adding several new features that greatly enhance the functionality and competitiveness of the SVC network storage virtualization solution. Most significantly, Version 4.3 added thin-provisioning capability to SVC with Space-Efficient Virtual Disks (SEV). SEV is designed to use physical storage capacity only when data is written to virtual disks instead of dedicating physical capacity to the entire defined virtual capacity.

Thin-provisioning technology has been very well received among customers. Besides the cost savings derived from improved storage resource utilization, customers are also vastly attracted to the simplified storage administration enabled by thin-provisioning. Appealing to the customer demand, major storage vendors have been adding thin-provisioning capability to their storage systems. Soon, thin-provisioning will emerge as a popular feature and a common customer requirement for storage systems. In fact, thin-provisioning support has been a work-in-progress slated for the next major release of the SNIA Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S), which is expected in the 2008-2009 timeframe.

However, storage provisioning is a host-related task. Thin-provisioning is most effective when it is implemented at the same logical layer that is being presented to the hosts. In a virtualized storage network, hosts interact with the network virtualization layer instead of with individual storage arrays. The virtual representation of physical storage is provided by network virtualization engines such as IBM SVC, HDS USP, and EMC Invista.

HDS added thin-provisioning capability with the Dynamic Provisioning feature on its latest-generation USP V and VM systems. This initial release supports internal storage only, though HDS claims that Dynamic Provisioning will soon be supported on externally attached storage as well. Nevertheless, Dynamic Provisioning is a charged feature, priced according to capacity tiers. While EMC has be adding thin provisioning capabilities to its storage platforms (so far Celerra and Symmetrix), EMC currently does not support thin-provisioning on Invista. Further, any future support of thin provisioning on Invista could possibly be an added-charge feature, since EMC has expressed an inclination to charge for the newly added Virtual Provisioning feature on its Symmetrix arrays.

Notably, thin-provisioning capability is supported without an additional charge on IBM SVC. The use of SEV is included in the base SVC virtualization authorization license. Existing SVC customers can also take advantages of SEV without additional investment, as long as they are entitled to upgrade their SVC software to the latest version.

The no-charge addition of thin-provisioning capability on IBM SVC further solidifies its competitive positioning among storage virtualization offerings from leading vendors, as the most cost-effective and feature-rich alternative today. For a solution entry price of about $50,000, SVC enables customers to both transform their existing network storage infrastructures into a virtualized environment with unified manageability and benefit from the latest technology innovations, such as thin-provisioning. Conversely, $50,000 may not even cover the thin-provisioning enablement licensing charges on other alternative solutions.

Comments

[Barry Whyte]

I think the fact that SVC is the first to market with a heterogenous 'thin provisioning' solution is important and shows the value of the in-band virtualization model. Also as you have noticed the 'no extra charge' is a major differentiator when compared with other vendors. I've been using the "SVC can be implemented for less than a typical enterprise customers power path license" for a few year - I like your new comparison! Thanks.

For more details on the 4.3.0 release, see my blog as linked below.