IBM storage portfolio swells

NEW DELHI: IBM has announced one of the single largest expansions of its storage portfolio with the introduction of new and faster systems, enhanced products across its product storage line and a new Enterprise Choice warranty service option for the IBM System Storage DS6000 series.

“The storage industry’s broadest portfolio of products and solutions just got broader,” said Shailesh Agarwal, country manager, IBM Storage. “We’re turbo charging our storage systems and accelerating our NetApp relationship to help customers manage their information on demand needs. Today’s announcement further demonstrates IBM’s commitment to provide our clients with increased flexibility and increased choice that enables them to take control of their storage infrastructures. The choice for customers is clear – more powerful and faster storage solutions from IBM, versus proprietary solutions from EMC.”

At the high-end, IBM is introducing 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.

IBM also announced enhancements to the IBM System Storage DS6000, which will now also support low cost Fibre Channel ATA drives (FATA), tiered storage options and TPC for Replication.

The DS6000 Series will also come with one-standard warranty and the option for customers to take advantage of a new flexible Enterprise Choice option for warranty extensions, which allows customers to choose a 24X7 warranty for an additional one year to three years in one-year increments when ordered at the time of original purchase.

The new IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo models and enhancements for the DS6000 series will both be available on September 9, 2006 with starting list prices of $213,400 for the DS8000 Turbo models and of $102,600 for the enhanced DS6000. 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.

The IBM DS8000 system has allowed clients to simplify their infrastructure and become more cost efficient. The DS8000 helps us to do this by decreasing our per-terabyte disk costs, increasing disk performance, protecting our data from unforeseen events and maintaining data availability.

IBM also announced the next major step in its relationship with Network Appliance Inc. with the introduction of high-end enterprise and gateway solutions. With the today’s 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 (FCP) attachment. Additionally, they offer over 35 advanced software features and are scalable up to 504 terabytes of physical capacity.

Tom Georgens, executive vice president and general manager, Enterprise, Storage Systems, Network Appliances, said, “The pairing of IBM’s global reach and NetApp’s leading-edge storage offerings has been a winning relationship for both companies, and in particular our customers.”

The N series enterprise appliance models will be available September 1, 2006 with a starting price of $140,500, and the N series enterprise gateway solutions will be available September 22, 2006 with a starting price of $113,500.

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 starting at a price of $21,000. Dual-server models will be available September 15, 2006 starting at a list price of $128,000.

Today’s announcement completes a major expansion of IBM’s storage line, which started earlier this month. IBM recently expanded its DS4000 line of mid-range storage servers with the introduction of the IBM System Storage DS4200 Express Model, a powerful and affordable storage server that is ideal 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, starting at a list price of $11,474.

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