IBM Turbocharges Storage Portfolio

contents

hardware

IBM commits one of the single largest expansions of its storage portfolio with the unveiling of new and faster systems, enhanced products across its storage product line, and a new Enterprise Choice warranty service option for the IBM System Storage DS6000 series. Spanning IBM's high-end disk systems, as well as its N series portfolio, data retention solutions, and offerings for SMBs, the new and enhanced storage products are designed to provide customers with increased performance and management capabilities and infrastructure simplification.

IBM is unveiling the new IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo models, updating its flagship DS8000 series. The new models - the IBM System Storage DS8100 Turbo and DS8300 Turbo systems - are based on POWER5+ processors, and demonstrate a performance improvement of up to 15 percent for transaction processing workload environments, as compared to the previous IBM System Storage DS8000 storage system. The addition of 4Gbps Fibre Channel and FICON technology allows for the reduction of the number of network resources supporting simplified management and reduced infrastructure costs. With this offering, IBM is now the first vendor to deliver 4Gbps FICON support. Additional features of the IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo models include improved tiered storage options, functions to enable greater performance and efficiency for DB2 applications on IBM System p servers, and support for three-site business continuity solutions that reaches greater distances and requires less network bandwidth than competing systems. Details include:
- Tiered Storage Options - The new Turbo models offer tiered storage options within a single system in order to align data with business value and simplify data management. The first tier, using Fibre Channel drives, can be used to store critical, frequently used data, whereas the second tier incorporates low cost Fibre Channel ATA drives (FATA) and is used to store less frequently used data. The second tier disk storage can support faster restores and provides the opportunity for lower costs by temporarily staging snapshots or backups.
- Three-Site Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Solution - Three-site Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery solutions are designed to provide constant access to data and to support failover/failback modes for efficient resynchronization with quick updates in the event that any site experiences downtime. The DS8000 three-site solution from IBM utilizes IBM Metro Mirror to maintain synchronous copies of data up to 300 kilometers away. Additionally, IBM's Global Mirror function for asynchronous copy provides three- to five-second replication at virtually unlimited distances, compared to up to 30 seconds for competing systems.
- IBM Server Synergy Features - I/O priorities and Cooperative Caching enable the IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo to work in conjunction with IBM AIX solutions and DB2 in order to improve efficiency and performance for high priority applications.
- IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center (TPC) for Replication - Is designed to provide a single point of control for Metro Mirror, Global Mirror and FlashCopy functions, as well as providing the ability to track and confirm the completion of replication operations to avoid costly mistakes. It also can help maintain data consistency with cross-device consistency groups. The software also works with IBM Enterprise Storage Server and IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) as a way of automating the replication functions of SVC.

IBM is also announcing enhancements to the IBM System Storage DS6000, which will now also support low cost Fibre Channel ATA drives, tiered storage options and TPC for Replication. The new IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo models and enhancements for the DS6000 series will both be available on September 9, 2006. Additionally, the server synergy features for the DS8000 Turbo will be available on November 17, 2006, and available as an upgrade at no additional charge on systems purchased prior to November 17, 2006.

IBM additionally unveils the next major step in its relationship with Network Appliance with the introduction of high-end enterprise and gateway solutions. With the launch of the new IBM System Storage N7000 family, IBM has introduced a complete line of unified storage products based on NetApp technology designed to provide end-to-end solutions for environments needing enterprise class NAS, FC SAN, and iSCSI offerings, from the smallest of businesses to the largest data centers. The N series models, IBM System Storage N7600 and N7800, offer Fibre Channel and SATA disk drive support and provide simultaneous NAS, iSCSI and 4Gbps FC SAN attachment. Additionally, they offer over 35 advanced software features and are scalable up to 504 terabytes of physical capacity. The enterprise gateway models, IBM System Storage N7600 and N7800 Gateways, utilize the same technology as the enterprise appliance models and include an option of attachment to IBM, Hitachi and HP storage subsystems. These high-end enterprise solutions are designed to enable customers to consolidate large amounts of IP attached storage under one single point of management.

Both the enterprise appliance and gateway solutions offer new software capabilities, in addition to the 35-plus software features already available across the entire N series. They include:
- FlexShare - Designed to help administrators to increase processing utilization without sacrificing the performance of critical business needs, as well as the control to prioritize applications based on how critical they are.
- MetroCluster - Designed to extend cluster failover capabilities from the primary to remote site and replicates data from the primary site for the remote site to help maintain currency and availability of data. MetroCluster also helps to rapidly resume operations at the remote site in the event of a disaster. Disaster recovery options are available for distances up to 100 kilometers. The N series enterprise appliance models will be available September 1, 2006.

Designed for long-term data retention, including retention driven by regulation or corporate governance requirements, the IBM System Storage DR550 V3.0 and DR550 Express is designed to offer increased flexibility, capacity and price performance by including the IBM System Storage DS4700 storage controller and the EXP810 storage expansion as its disk storage subsystem. The DS4700 system uses 500 GB SATA drives and offers 4Gbps Fibre Channel technology. Single server and express model configurations are currently available. Dual-server models will be available September 15, 2006.

IBM's announcement completes a major expansion of IBM's storage line, which started earlier this month. IBM recently expanded its DS4000 line of midrange storage servers with the introduction of the IBM System Storage DS4200 Express Model, a powerful and affordable storage server that is suited for small and medium-sized businesses. It also added new features and functionality across its entire DS4000 family of products to increase capacity, speed and overall performance, helping clients to create optimal tiered data storage strategies and offer robust data protection and duplication features. The new IBM System Storage DS4200 Express will be available on August 25, 2006.

write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Computing News :: home page