Types of Storage

HPSS Metadata

High IOPS and high bandwidth storage like NVMe flash is best for HPSS Db2 metadata storage.

HPSS Disk Cache

Deploy a mix of flash and spinning disk storage units from DDN, NetApp, IBM, and similar for active data demanding low latency access.

HPSS Tape Libraries

Use a mix of IBM, Oracle, Quantum, and Spectra Logic tape libraries to reduce the total cost of ownership of your inactive data.

HPSS Tape Drives

Choose LTO drives for infrequently accessed cold-data, and Enterprise drives for active archive requirements.

Metadata Storage

Metadata describing the files in HPSS are managed by Db2 relational databases. Each relational database has tables and index files, transaction log files, archived transaction log files, and database backup files.

HPSS Metadata Best Practices:

NVMe is best for IOPS (database transactions) and bandwidth (backup performance).
Use two physically-separate RAID-protected pools of storage at 10 TB each (per billion HPSS files).
Integrate the HPSS Db2 recovery files into your site backup strategy.
Do NOT store the Db2 backups into HPSS.

Optional HPSS Metadata Redundancy

Db2 log shipping is used to replicate HPSS metadata to a second Db2 instance. The second instance of Db2 can be located in a different rack, room, building, or city; and is often located with the second copy of data on tape. Db2 log shipping is used to reduce downtime caused by hardware failures.