The Solutions
N series provides highly available and reliable infrastructure solutions to keep your customers’ databases up and running. N series provides fast database backup and restore and cost-effective disaster recovery solutions. Customers benefit from speedy application upgrades, faster QA cycle times, and accelerated data and application access. N series storage solutions help your customers optimise their operational infrastructure.

IBM DB2® 9
IBM DB2® 9 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows IT challenges to consider when competing in today's environment include data privacy, compliance risks, data server performance, and unstructured data sources like blogs, podcasts, video, photos, wikis, and PDFs.

DB2 9 is the next-generation hybrid data server with optimised management of both XML and relational data. DB2 9 easily scales to handle high-volume transaction processing, multiterabyte data warehouses, and mission-critical applications from vendors such as SAP. DB2 9 on IBM System Storage N series enables customers to:

• Take full advantage of IBM System Storage N series multiprotocol capability. System Managed Spaces (SMS) and Database Managed Spaces (DMS) can be configured to use NFS, CIFS, iSCSI, or FCP.
• Leverage Snapshot copy and SnapRestore N series utilities to maintain high availability.
• Use parallel I/O to take advantage of high-speed Fibre Channel disk.

Microsoft SQL Server
Coupling SnapManager for SQL Server with other N series data management solutions delivers additional benefits in reducing costs, simplifying management, and increasing data availability for SQL Server environments:
• Costs are reduced by consolidating SQL Server data and eliminating pools of unused storage.
• Storage management is simplified through automated data management, rapid storage provisioning, and the ability to back up and restore hundreds of databases residing on a single SQL Server installation.
• Data availability is maximised with near-instantaneous backups, rapid database recovery, and the ability to store multiple online clones of SQL Server databases with minimal capacity overhead. In addition, SnapMirror provides simple, flexible, cost-effective replication and mirroring.

Oracle Database
N series solutions for Oracle enable customers to consolidate data and storage from hundreds or thousands of servers by using simple but powerful tools that help customers to manage storage efficiently in a mixed networking environment. Oracle information stored on N series systems can be quickly replicated to one or many locations by using SnapMirror.

SnapManager for Oracle
• Automates and simplifies the complex, manual, and time-consuming processes associated with the backup, restore, recovery, and cloning of Oracle databases.
• Leverages N series technology to create near-instantaneous and space-efficient Snapshot copies. The ability to create, use, and delete clone databases for use by nonproduction teams is a key new capability.
• Integrates with native Oracle technology, such as RAC, RMAN, and ASM, and across FC, iSCSI, and NFS protocols.