Blogs

Originally posted by: TonyPearson

Well, it's Thursday again, and you know what that means? IBM Announcements!

(OK, OK, my long-time readers already know that [storage announcements are usually on Tuesdays], not Thursdays.

However, I was speaking to various clients in Winnipeg, Canada Tuesday and Wednesday this week, so marketing moved the announcement date to today to accommodate my schedule. Sometimes, being the #1 most influential IBM employee in storage comes in handy!)

Here, then, is a quick review of the storage portion of today's announcements.

IBM FlashSystem 840

The [IBM FlashSystem 840] offers twice the capacity as its predecessors, the 810 and 820, with up to 48TB in a dense 2U package.

(Quick recap of previous models: Both the FlashSystem 810 and 820 supported ECC-protected memory and Variable-striped RAID (VSR). The [FlashSystem 810] supported RAID-0 striped across the modules, and the [FlashSystem 820] supported two-dimensional 2D-RAID across modules for higher availability. Fellow blogger Jim Kelley (IBM) on his Storage Buddhist blog has a great post on this: [IBM FlashSystem: Feeding the Hogs].

The new FlashSystem 840 in effect replaces both, so you can choose RAID-0 striping or 2D-RAID, along with your ECC-protected memory and Variable-striped RAID. It offers hot-swappable Flash modules, redundant components, and non-disruptive concurrent code load (CCL).

The FlashSystem 840 also introduces military-grade AES-XTS 256 bit encryption to provide added protection to your data.

For host attachment, you have some great choices: 16Gb/8Gb/4Gb auto-negotiated Fibre Channel (FCP), 40Gb InfiniBand QDR, and 10Gb FCoE. Whatever you decide, you get 90 microsecond writes, and 135 microsecond reads.

Since its introduction just over a year ago, IBM has sold FlashSystem to over 1,000 clients! For more on how this compares to other all-flash arrays, read my previous post about [IBM FlashSystem].

IBM FlashSystem Enterprise Performance Solution

The [IBM FlashSystem Enterprise Performance Solution] combines the incredible feature set of the [IBM SAN Volume Controller] with the FlashSystem 840 announced above. About 25 percent of FlashSystem customers use them in conjunction with SVC, so this offering makes a lot of sense.

Adding SAN Volume Controller provides some key advantages, including Real-time compression, Thin provisioning, FlashCopy point-in-time copies, Stretched Cluster support, Easy Tier sub-LUN automated tiering, and remote copy services like Metro Mirror (synchronous) and Global Mirror (asynchronous).

Adding the SVC also changes the host attachment options: 8Gb/4Gb/2Gb Fibre Channel (FCP), 1Gb and 10Gb iSCSI, and 10Gb FCoE. Depending on the options and features you choose, the SVC layer adds a modest 60 to 100 microseconds to each read and write.

Each SVC node dedicates four of its six cores, and 2GB of its 24GB cache, to use with compression. Those interested in beefing up compression performance, either with FlashSystems or with any other disk, can choose the "Compression Hardware Upgrade Boosts Base I/O Efficiency" (affectionately known as the CHUBBIE) RPQ 8S1296 for SVC systems with software version 6.4.1.4 or higher. Basically, this RPQ adds another 6-core CPU and another 24GB of cache, so that each node can dedicate 8 cores for compression, and 26GB of cache for compression processing. Initial test results show this can increase performance 3x!

IBM Network Advisor

The [IBM Network Advisor v12.1] management software provides comprehensive management for data, storage and converged networks. This single application can deliver end-to-end visibility and insight across different network types--it supports Fibre Channel SANs (including Gen 5 Fibre Channel platform), IBM FICON and IBM b-type SAN FCoE networks--and provides new features to manage your Brocade and IBM b-type SAN switches.

Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director

The [Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director] is mainframe-ready, with full support for System z FICON and Fibre Channel protocol (FCP) environments. This director supports eight module slots for a maximum of 384 ports.

In other news, IBM had once again filed [the most U.S. Patents for the 21st year in a row], and our brothers and sisters over in server land introduced [the X6 architecture for x86 servers] for the System x and PureSystems product lines, optimized for Cloud and Analytics.

technorati tags: IBM, FlashSystem, FlashSystem 810, FlashSystem 820, FlashSystem 840, Jim Kelly, FCP, InfiniBand, FcoE, iSCSI, SVC, SAN Volume Controller, FlashSystem Solution, RPQ, Network Advisor, Brocade, SAN, Cisco, MDS, FICON, Mainframe, Patents, IBM X6, x86 servers, Cloud, Analytics,