As of February 2015, IBM is offering a 100% software version of its repackaged SAN X14 as a virtual appliance called Spectrum Accelerate. The goal is to enable Big Blue customers to deploy distributed storage technology on the systems of their choice, as well as deploy it to remote sites or public or hybrid clouds. Until then, IBM only offered the XIV cluster storage technology as ready-to-use hardware appliances.
Deploy a virtual XIV cluster
Spectrum Accelerate implements all the features of a XIV hardware array and deploys on standard x86 servers running VMware ESXi (from version 5.5 onwards). It takes a minimum of 3 Spectrum Accelerate virtual machines to initiate a functional cluster, but it is possible to build a massive virtual storage array with up to 144 Spectrum Accelerate virtual instances each connected to up to 12 hard drives (for a maximum of 40 Po useful).
Each VM Spectrum Accelerate must have 6 cores, 48 GB of RAM and be able to access an SSD for the data cache. It must also have 12 identical hard disks and be able to access 4 10 Gbit Ethernet ports (one part is used for intracluster exchanges and the other part to deliver data to applications).
IBM's SDS technology embeds the advanced distributed parity features of XIV for disk or node failure protection and it also includes XIV's rich data services including its data compression, snapshot, Synchronous and asynchronous replication, QoS management or automation (via a Restful API)
Spectrum Accelerate is sold with a single license that includes all OS services and is billed based on the amount of data managed. The software can be deployed as a standalone array or as the storage component of a hyperconverged solution.
Spectrum Accelerate implements all the features of a XIV hardware array and deploys on standard x86 servers running VMware ESXi (from version 5.5 onwards). It takes a minimum of 3 Spectrum Accelerate virtual machines to initiate a functional cluster, but it is possible to build a massive virtual storage array with up to 144 Spectrum Accelerate virtual instances each connected to up to 12 hard drives (for a maximum of 40 Po useful).
Each VM Spectrum Accelerate must have 6 cores, 48 GB of RAM and be able to access an SSD for the data cache. It must also have 12 identical hard disks and be able to access 4 10 Gbit Ethernet ports (one part is used for intracluster exchanges and the other part to deliver data to applications).
IBM's SDS technology embeds the advanced distributed parity features of XIV for disk or node failure protection and it also includes XIV's rich data services including its data compression, snapshot, Synchronous and asynchronous replication, QoS management or automation (via a Restful API)
Spectrum Accelerate is sold with a single license that includes all OS services and is billed based on the amount of data managed. The software can be deployed as a standalone array or as the storage component of a hyperconverged solution.