IBM DS8000 Thin Provisioning (Updated for Release 9.3)

An IBM Redpaper publication

Published 15 July 2022, updated 06 March 2024

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ISBN-10: 0738460702
ISBN-13: 9780738460703
IBM Form #: REDP-5343-02
(76 pages)

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Authors: Peter Kimmel, Connie Riggins, Jörg Klemm, Gauurav Sabharwal

Abstract

Ever-increasing storage demands have a negative effect on an organization’s IT budget and complicate the overall storage infrastructure and management. Companies are looking at ways to use their storage resources more efficiently.

Thin provisioning can help by reducing the amount of unused storage that is typically allocated to applications or users. Available for the IBM DS8000 for Fixed Block and Count Key Data (CKD) volumes, thin provisioning defers the allocation of actual space on the storage system until the time that the data must effectively be written to disk.

This IBM Redpaper™ publication provides an overall understanding of how thin provisioning works on the IBM DS8000. It also provides insights into the functional design and its implementation on the DS8900F and includes illustrations for the configuration of thin-provisioned volumes from the DS GUI or the DS CLI.

This edition applies to DS8900F Release 9.3 or later, yet with many aspects it is also usable with previous code levels or hardware generations.

Table of contents

Chapter 1. Thin provisioning
Chapter 2. Planning considerations and guidelines
Chapter 3. Space-efficient volumes in the DS8000
Chapter 4. DS GUI and DS CLI support for thin provisioning
Chapter 5. Managing and monitoring thin-provisioned volumes
Chapter 6. Use of thin-provisioned volumes in IBM Z

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