One of the new LVM enhancements in AIX V7 and AIX 6.1-006 is the use of Solid State Disks (SSD).  This is a most welcome enhancement.  This is particularly wonderful for those extremely busy databases. A single SDD runs around 14,000 to 29,000 IOPS.  Compare that to a traditional hard drive, which gets about 175 IOPS.

Some considerations when working with SDDs.  First of all, they are small compared to HDDs, 69 GB of space.  The second big consideration is a Volume Group will perform read/writes at the speed of the slowest disk.  So while you can inter-mix HDD and SDD, it is not a good idea.  LVM has an enhancement, where you can specify that a VG is SDD only.  That will help keep you safe from yourself, or that person in the cube next to you.  The last consideration is, as you probably guessed, they are EXPEN$IVE, about $10K right now.

If you need some assistance configuring your system, moving data to SDD VGs, or need some AIX assistance, please give us a call!