IT analysts estimate that the volume of data worldwide will grow at nearly 35% a year through 2019. Storage budgets, on the other hand, only increased by a little over 3% in 2015, while IT staffing levels essentially remained flat. And all this while service level demands grow more stringent as user expectations intensify.¹

These are the realities for data storage in the 21st century – explosive data growth, anemic budgets, and plenty of pressure to do more with less.

In such environments – IBM storage systems based on IBM Spectrum Virtualize thrive.

With the latest IBM Spectrum Virtualize v7.8 release, IBM has also announced the availability of a new high density storage enclosure for Storwize family, FlashSystem V9000, SAN Volume Controller (SVC), and VersaStack. The new enclosure supports up to 92 drives in only 5U, about three times higher density than before. New 7.68TB and 15.36TB flash drives are also now available as well, delivering four times the flash capacity than previous drives. With other software changes, Storwize V7000, SVC, and FlashSystem V9000 (all available with VersaStack) now support up to 32PB of flash capacity in a single clustered system. And you can grow to this capacity without disruption from the very smallest initial investment, making the systems ideal for those looking to deploy private cloud solutions.

Why is the new high density enclosure so important for IBM customers? Because it will help them confidently and cost-effectively address the challenges noted above. And thanks to IBM Spectrum Virtualize software defined storage capabilities, their existing storage investments and infrastructure can continue to fully participate.

IBM Spectrum Virtualize-based storage solutions can function as a feature-rich, software defined storage layer that virtualizes and extends functionality such as the new Transparent Cloud Tiering to all managed storage. Because of this powerful virtualization capability, data can be non-disruptively moved between any storage under management, enabling very agile integration into existing storage environments and eliminating an important cause of planned downtime.

The new high density enclosures can accommodate 920TB of disk storage, if needed, or 1413TB of flash drives. The enclosures offer a 12Gbps SAS infrastructure and can easily be added to existing systems without disruption. The enclosures can be used as expansion drawers in Storwize V5000 Gen2 and V7000 Gen2/Gen2+, FlashSystem V9000, and SVC-based solutions.

When it comes to scalability, don’t forget that Storwize systems offer clustering capabilities that enable our customers to tailor their storage solutions to their unique requirements, then easily scale when needed. Also, customers will benefit from the single management interface of true clustering technology.

Think of a mid-sized enterprise or similar organization within a larger business. Perhaps some investment has already been made in storage, but now the organization is poised for significant and rapid growth and their IT infrastructure must enable this, not hinder it. For a small initial investment, the IT team adds, say, a Storwize V7000 system with minimal storage capacity to save on the capital expenditure. Thanks to the IBM Spectrum Virtualize capabilities, not only will the organization be able to virtualize and extend enterprise-grade functionality across all their storage, but now with the addition of one high density enclosure, their capacity limit rises into the multi-petabyte range, with flash performance flexibility wherever needed and even cloud storage options available.

It’s a powerful vision – essentially unlimited, easily managed storage scalability. As much storage capacity as you want on-premises, and easy access to infinite capacity in the cloud, all managed within a single user interface. With all the future innovation of IBM R&D just a non-disruptive software upgrade away.

It’s an extraordinary amount of data in just a few units of rack space. That’s another reason why we say IBM Spectrum Virtualize improves data value!

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¹ IDC Technology Spotlight: Solving the Copy Data Problem with In-Place Copy Data Management on IBM Storage (December 2015)