Storwize V3700 overview
Each IBM® Storwize® V3700 system is a virtualizing RAID storage system.
Storwize V3700 machine code
IBM Storwize V3700 is built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize™ machine code, which is part of the IBM Spectrum Storage™ family.
Storwize V3700 hardware
The Storwize V3700 storage system consists of a set of drive enclosures. The control enclosure contains disk drives and two node canisters. Expansion enclosures contain disk drives and two expansion canisters.
Figure 1 shows a Storwize V3700 system as a traditional RAID storage system. The internal drives are configured into arrays. Volumes are created from those arrays.

The two node canisters are known as an I/O group. The node canisters are responsible for serving I/O on the volumes. Because a volume is served by both node canisters, there is no loss of availability if one node canister fails or is taken offline. The Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) features of SCSI are used to disable the I/O for a node before it is taken offline or when a volume cannot be accessed via that node.
Volumes types
System management
The Storwize V3700 nodes operate as a single system and present a single point of control for system management and service. System management and error reporting are provided through an Ethernet interface to one of the nodes in the system, which is called the configuration node. The configuration node runs a web server and provides a command-line interface (CLI). The configuration node is a role that either node can take. If the current configuration node fails, the other node becomes the configuration node. Each node also provides a command-line interface and web interface for performing hardware service actions.
Fabric types
I/O operations between hosts and Storwize V3700 nodes and between Storwize V3700 nodes and RAID storage systems are performed by using the SCSI standard. The Storwize V3700 nodes communicate with each other by using private SCSI commands.
Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity is supported on Storwize V3700 with the optional FCoE feature installed.
Table 1 shows the fabric types that can be used for communicating between hosts, nodes, and RAID storage systems. All installed fabric types can be used at the same time.
Communications type | Host to Storwize V3700 | Storwize V3700 to storage system |
---|---|---|
Fibre Channel SAN | Yes, with Fibre Channel host interface adapter | Yes, with Fibre Channel host interface adapter |
iSCSI (1 Gbps Ethernet) | Yes | No |
iSCSI (10 Gbps Ethernet) | Yes, with 10 Gbps Ethernet host interface adapter | No |
Fibre Channel over Ethernet | Yes, with 10 Gbps Ethernet host interface adapter | Yes, with 10 Gbps Ethernet host interface adapter |