Storage consolidation

When you use a storage unit, you can consolidate data and workloads from different kinds of independent servers into a single shared resource.

You might mix production and test servers in an open systems environment or mix S/390 or zSeries and open systems hosts. In this kind of independent server environment, servers rarely, if ever, contend for the same resource.

Although sharing resources in the storage unit has advantages for storage administration and resource sharing, there are additional implications for workload planning. The benefit of sharing is that a larger resource pool (for example, disk drives or cache) is available for critical applications. However, you must ensure that uncontrolled or unpredictable applications do not interfere with critical work. This requires the same kind of workload planning that you use when you mix various types of work on a server.

If your workload is critical, consider isolating it from other workloads. To isolate the workloads, place the data as follows:

On separate RAID disk groups. S/390 or zSeries and open-systems data are automatically placed on separate arrays, which reduces the contention for disk use.
On separate device adapters.
In separate storage unit clusters, which isolates use of memory buses, microprocessors, and cache resources. Before you make this decision, verify that the isolation of your data to a single cluster provides adequate data access performance for your application.