This e-Learning module gives you a “what’s new” overview of some of the new features and functions that are available with version 8.3.1.
For systems that support distributed arrays, you can use the management GUI or the expandarray command to increase the number of drives in an array by including new drives into the array. In version 8.3.1, you can expand distributed arrays to increase the available capacity of the array or add usable capacity. As part of the expansion, the system automatically migrates data for optimal performance for the newly expanded configuration. Expansion of distributed arrays supports incremental growth of available capacity for arrays. This support is compatible with other functions, such as IBM(R) Easy Tier(R) and data migrations.
Volume protection prevents active volumes or host mappings from being deleted inadvertently if the system detects recent I/O activity. With 8.3.1, this global setting is enabled by default on new systems. The system-wide volume protection and the pool-level protection must both be enabled for protection to be active on a pool. The pool-level protection depends on the system-level setting to ensure that protection is applied consistently for volumes within that pool. If system-level protection is enabled, but pool-level protection is not enabled, any volumes in the pool can be deleted even when the setting is configured at the system level.
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a standard protocol for managing networks and exchanging messages. The system supports both SNMP version 2 and version 3. SNMP version 3 uses the same base protocol as earlier versions and introduces encryption and improves authentication mechanisms. Depending on how you authorize with the SNMP agent on a system, you can configure different levels of security. These different security levels depend on the credentials that you configure to authenticate successfully to the SNMP server. None - No additional authentication or encryption is used to send SNMP notifications. Authentication - Notifications are authenticated, but message content is not encrypted. Authentication and Privacy - Notifications are authenticated and message content is encrypted.
With 8.3.1, you can expand HyperSwap(R) volumes using the management GUI or the CLI expandvolume command. Volumes can be expanded without stopping host I/O activities and the new capacity is available immediately. You can expand the size of HyperSwap volumes if the following conditions are true: All copies of the volume are synchronized. All copies of the volume are thin-provisioned or compressed. No mirrored copies exist. The volume is not in a consistency group. However, you can remove the active-active relationship for the volume from the remote copy consistency group, and then expand the volume. After the volume is expanded, add the active-active relationship for the volume back to the consistency group.
In this topic, you learned about some of the new feature and functions. To learn more, see IBM Knowledge Center.