Tape Library

Tape Library

Cyber resilient, energy-efficient tape storage with airgap and long-term retention

 View Only

Announcements for July 2007

By Tony Pearson posted Tue July 10, 2007 02:00 PM

  

Originally posted by: TonyPearson


It's Tuesday, which means IBM makes its announcements. We had several for the IBM System Storage product line. Here's a quick recap.

Disk Systems

The IBM System Storage DS3000 now offers DC power models.New DC powered models of the DS3200, DS3400, and EXP3000 are well suited for Telco industry environments, as theseare NEBS and ETSI compliant and are powered by an industry standard 48 volt DC power source.

Also, the IBM System Storage N series now supports750GB SATA drives available for the EXN1000 drawer.

Tape Systems

IBM Virtualization Engine TS7740now supports 3-cluster grids. Unlike 3-way replication on disk mirroring, such as IBM Metro/Global Mirror for the DS8000 that enforces a primary, secondary and tertiary copy, the grid implementation of TS7740 tape virtualization allows for any-to-any mirroring. Existing standalone TS7740 clusters can be converted to grid-enabled. A "Copy Export" feature allows virtual tapes to be exported onto physical tape. And in keeping with our theme of "enabling business flexibility", performance throughput can now be purchased in 100 MB/sec increments, up to 600 MB/sec, to match your workload bandwidth requirements.

The IBM System Storage TS1120drives installed in the IBM System Storage™ TS3400 Tape Library can now be attached to System z platforms using the IBM System Storage™ TS1120 Tape Controller. Before this, the TS3400 could only be attached to UNIX, Windows and Linux systems.

The IBM System StorageTS2230 Express is offered as an external stand-alone or rack-mountable unit. This model incorporates the new LTO IBM Ultrium 3 Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Half-High Tape Drive, and a 3 Gbps single port SAS interface for a connection to a wide spectrum of distributed system servers that support Microsoft Windows and Linux systems.

Storage Networking

IBM has added theCisco MDS 9124 for IBM System Storageentry-level fabric switch as an Express offering and part of the IBM Express Advantage Program. Express offerings are specifically created for mid-market companies and are well suited for workgroup storage applications like e-mail serving, collaborative databases and web serving. They bring enterprise-class performance, scalability and features to small and medium-sized companies and are easy to use, highly scalable, and cost-effective.This will make it easier for IBM Business Partners to provide fabric switch connectivity for:

  • Storage consolidation solutions with IBM System Storage™ DS4000 Express disk arrays, especially the DS4700 Express.
  • Backup / restore solutions with IBM System Storage™ TS3000 Tape Libraries, such as the TS3200.

Archive and Retention

Ordering large configurations of the IBM System Storage Grid Access Manager just got a lot easier.New features enable configurations greater than 500 TB to be submitted as a single order. No change in the actualproduct, just an improvement in the ordering process.

For System p and System i servers, the IBM 3996 Optical library now supports Gen 2 60GB optical cartridges. These can be read/write or WORM cartridges.

I'm off to Denver, Colorado this week. I hope it is cooler there than it is down here in Tucson, Arizona.

technorati tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2 comments
4 views

Permalink

https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/tony-pearson1/2007/07/10/announcements-for-july-2007

Comments

Archive User
Wed July 18, 2007 11:50 PM

Brandon,Yes, very reasonable question. Without knowing the specifics of your situation, operating system, file system, database, or application, I can only point you to general resources. You are welcome to post back with more details, or contact me via e-mail (tpearson@us.ibm.com) if you don't want your details public on this blog.
First, learn about IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). We have a TSM Express and Tivoli CDP for Files for small Windows-only deployments, TSM Standard Edition for medium deployments, and TSM Enterprise Edition for large deployments, with the ability to grow from one to the other. Web site: http://www.ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr/
Second, review our IBM Redbooks collection. IMHO, these are the best-written books within IBM, and are written by real people using the products and solutions they are writing about. You can search the library for terms like "Backup", "Tivoli Storage Manager", "Business Continuity" and so on.Web site: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/
Third, you mentioned the data was "sensitive", which implies that the backup copies either need to be on disk, or encrypted tape, to prevent un-encrypted data walking out the door in someones pocket or briefcase. TSM can backup directly to disk systems, virtual tape libraries (VTL) that are actually disk looking like tape such as our IBM System Storage TS7520, and encrypted tape (either our TS1120 or LTO4 drives).
Fourth, consider supplementing TSM with advanced copy services available on disk systems. Point-in-Time copies like FlashCopy make instant copies of a disk LUN to another disk LUN. Disk Mirroring like Metro Mirror or Global Mirror send data written to one disk LUN to another at some distance away in real time, keeping them current continuously, rather than one-time copy. These features are available on most of our disk systems: IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller, DS4000, DS6000, DS8000, and N series.
This should get you started. Feel free to contact me, or anyone else in IBM, when you are ready to continue the conversation.

Archive User
Wed July 18, 2007 10:42 PM

This blog is great, and a fantastic resource for someone very new to the storage arena. I have really easy question for you...
I have limited knowledge and experience backing up enterprise level systems and I've recently been charged with backing up a 11 TB of sensitive data, with room for growth to 50 TB and more. Taking scalability into consideration, what's my best resource to learn very quickly what I need to know? I don't want some vendor to cajole me into wrapping our financial resources around something that's too small, too large, or too limited.
Have any suggestions?
In the meantime, I'll keep reading this awesome blog.
Thanks!Brandon