Now the Thanksgiving Holidays are over, its time to catch up on some Storage Announcements! These actually came out November 20, but many readers were busy with Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and Give Back Tuesday, they might have been missed.
- IBM DS8880/F Storage Systems
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There were three items this time for the DS8880 family, for both Generation 1 and Generation 2 models.
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The first is the expansion on the type of high capacity flash drives available for the system. With this announcement, IBM has added the high-capacity 15.3 TB flash drive set as an available option. With this, the maximum flash storage capacity supported per high performance flash enclosure (HPFE) pair is now 737 TB raw.
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The second is the addition of write operations for zHyperLink. zHyperLink is a short distance, mainframe attach link that is intended to accelerate Db2 v12 for z/OS. Low I/O latencies deliver value through improved workload elapsed times and faster transactional response times, and contribute to lower scaling costs.
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The third is the ability to leverage IBM Storage Insights cloud-based service for your DS8880 systems. It supports the next-generation Call Home infrastructure that enables continuous updates of the system's configuration and health. IBM Storage Insights simplifies uploading logs, speeds resolution with online configuration data, and provides an overview of open tickets, all in one place. Clients who have been using IBM Storage Insights with their their IBM Storwize and IBM FlashSystem A9000/R systems can now extend this to include their DS8880 systems.
To learn more, see [DS8880F], [DS8880 Gen1], and [DS8880 Gen2] announcement letters.
- IBM TS4500 Tape Library
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The TS4500 library now supports IBM TS1080 tape drive model F8S. This is an LTO8 Ultrium tape drive enabled with single-mode fiber and designed for the heavy demands of backup and archive tape storage applications that require high bandwidth over long distances. TS1080 Model F8S can be installed in a TS4500 tape library and delivers maximum throughput with a native data transfer of up to 360 Mbps.
There were two other enhancements for the TS4500 were:
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A new action "Export logs direct to IBM" on the web. The TS4500 will collect library logs and send via Call Home to IBM, eliminating download to the laptop or system. This improves how clients engage with IBM support teams.
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A new intelligent Power Distribution Unit (PDU) with three-phase [wye] or single-phase input to provide power to the local frame control assembly. This new PDU will offer power and environmental monitoring features in the future. So stay tuned.
To learn more, see [TS4500 and LTO-8 Single-Mode Fiber] and [TS1160 for TS4500] announcement letters.
- IBM TS1160 Enterprise Tape
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IBM continues its lead in tape innovation with the IBM TS1160 Enterprise Tape Drive model (60F)! Delivering a 100% increase over the TS1150 series of tape drives, the TS1160 comes in at 20TB of cartridge capacity on the new JE media type with a native data rate of 400 Mbps, or up to 900 Mbps compressed. The new TS1160 will be available for the TS4500, the TS3500 (Model 60G) as well as a stand alone design with Fibre Channel interfaces.
Of course, the new TS1160 will support the reuse of existing JD/JZ/JL media with the capability to read and write TS1150 and TS1155 formatted media, and format the same media with up to 15 TB uncompressed capacity. It will also support IBM Spectrum Archive with the LTFS format for tape. Leveraging these larger tape capacities for active archives, backups, and other long term retention requirements.
To learn more, see [TS1160 for TS3500] and [TS1160 for TS4500] announcement letters.
- IBM Spectrum Archive
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IBM Spectrum Archive can move data from Spectrum Scale flash and disk storage to less expensive tape. IBM Spectrum Archive is based on IBM Linear Tape File System (LTFS) and enables fast and easy data retention to reduce the total cost of ownership for active archive storage. Both the IBM Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition (EE) V1.3, and the Library Edition (LE) V2.4.1, will support the new enterprise-class TS1160 tape drive.
To learn more, see [IBM Spectrum Archive support for TS1160] announcement letter.
- IBM Spectrum Scale
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The Data Management Edition (DME) of Spectrum Scale does not require you to separately purchase client, server, or FPO socket-based, MIPS-based, or PVU-based licenses. Instead, you can simply license the total storage capacity managed by IBM Spectrum Scale. DME is now available through IBM Shopz. Shopz is a web service to order z Systems software, manage software licenses, and view software inventory. It provides an easy way to plan and order your product ServerPac or CBPDO, running on z.
To learn more, see [IBM Spectrum Scale on IBM Shopz] announcement letter.
IBM Storage has made many exciting announcements in 2018, and it was good to wrap up this year with these!