GLYPH<SM590000> Facilitates a common platform for data replication, even if the back-end storage does not have this functionality. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Provides a centralized point of control for storage provisioning across heterogeneous SAN environments. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Reduces license costs for advanced functions in the virtualized storage systems. 

GLYPH<SM590000> Increases storage administrator productivity. 

The following IBM products provide this technology: 

GLYPH<SM590000> SAN Volume Controller 

GLYPH<SM590000> Storwize V7000 

GLYPH<SM590000> Storwize V7000 Unified 

GLYPH<SM590000> Storwize V3700 and Storwize V5000 (For details, see 9.2, “General considerations: V3700, V5000, and V7000” on page 127.) 

SAN Volume Controller can virtualize multi-vendor storage disks to perform LUN provisioning in a high-end environment. In addition to performing external storage virtualization, Storwize V7000 has internal disks that constitute its storage capacity for a mid-range environment. Storwize V7000 Unified consolidates block (SAN) virtualization and file workloads (network-attached storage, or NAS) into a single storage system. 

Supported vendor storage:  A list of supported vendor storage disks for SAN Volume Controller is at the following web page: 

## 9.3.2 Terminology 

http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S1003658 

Also see the IBM System Storage Interoperation Center (SSIC) website: 

http://www.ibm.com/systems/support/storage/ssic/interoperability.wss 

This section describes the terminology used in this chapter that relates to storage virtualization. The following list includes the terms: 

Storage pool 

Managed disk (MDisk) 

Volume/(VDisk) 

Extents 

Also known as managed disk group (MDG). An MDG is a collection of storage capacity (MDisks) that provides the capacity requirements (extents) for volumes that are based on MDisks characteristics, such as disk speed and type. 

An MDisk is composed of a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) logical unit (LU) that a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) controller provides and that a clustered system manages. The MDisk is not visible to host systems on the SAN. 

Also known as virtual disk (VDisk). A volume is the representation of a SCSI disk that is presented to a host system. 

A unit of data that manages the mapping of data between managed disks (MDisks) and volumes. By default, its size is 256 MB. 

