High Speed Interface Connects IBM Z to DS8880 Storage Systems

IBM Corp. announced solutions that connect mainframes to DS8880 family of primary all-flash storage systems, provide data encryption to ensure transactional, business intelligence and machine learning workloads used for businesses running IBM Z environments are protected if data is lost or compromised.

IBM Z and DS8880

The DS8880 all-flash helps clients deliver hybrid cloud environments by adding additional clouds supported.

“The resiliency of the mainframe is shaped by mature, transactional industries that have long relied on it to run their business and emerging ones like blockchain that depend on the security inherent to mainframe as a cornerstone of its plans,” said Ed Walsh, GM, storage and software defined infrastructure, IBM. “For z Systems users IBM has cross-teamed, tested and designed new connectivity to increase security and data access performance by 10x.“

IBM zHyperLink, is a short distance mainframe interface that is only available from the company. It delivers 10x latency reduction compared to the z13 ⁽¹⁾ and cutting application response time in half ⁽¹⁾, enabling businesses to do much more work, such as real-time analytics or interact with IoT devices and cloud applications, within the same transaction without changing application code.

Expanding on the recently announced integration of Transparent Cloud Tiering (TCT) with the DS8880, mainframe users to automate the movement data to and from Bluemix, Cloud Object Storage and Amazon cloud targets. Through automating the movement of data to and from the cloud TCT empowers IBM z14 users with new levels of control to put hot or cold data where it makes the most sense for their business.

For mainframe clients improved availability and a storage layer of tape data protection adds to the encryption technology and key protection system to data, networks, external devices found in company’s Z. This is important for blockchain applications that must provide higher performance, cryptography, security and availability.

Resources:
Integration by design: DS8880 and IBM Z
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⁽¹⁾ The 10x lower read latency projection was based on z14 and zHyperLink results with DS8886 and z13 measurements that provided results for I/O interrupt and dispatching. This response time projection was based on the company’s internal measurements and projections that contrasted zHyperLink Express with a similar configuration using zHPF. The measurements and projections assume that assume 75% or more of the workload response time is associated with read DASD I/O and the storage system random read cache hit ratio is above 80%. The execution environment for both scenarios was a z14 with 10 CPs. The zHPF tests used FICON Express 16S+ connected to a DS8886. The zHyperLink tests were also conducted using DS8886. The actual performance that any user will experience may vary.