Originally posted by: TonyPearson
Lakota Industries made news with the introduction of its [
Sarah-Cuda Hunting Bow], named after moose-huntingU.S. Vice President nominee and Governor of Alaska [
Sarah Palin]. This has all the same features as their other high-end hunting bows, but is lighter, smaller and available in Pink Camo. This "pink-it-and-shrink-it" move was designed to broaden the market share of hunting bows by reaching out to the needs of women hunters.
Not to be outdone, today, at the Storage Networking World Conference, IBM announced the new IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller Entry Edition [SVC EE].
 | The new SVC Entry Edition, available in Flamingo Pink* or traditional Raven Black. * RPQ required. Default color is Raven Black. |
You might be thinking: "Wait! IBM SVC is already the leading storage virtualization product among SMB clients today,why introduce a less expensive model?" With the global economy in the tank, IBM thought it would be nice to help outour smaller SMB clients with this new option.
This new offering is actually a combination of new software (SVC 4.3.1) and new hardware (2145-8A4). Here are thekey differences:
| SVC Classic | SVC EE |
| Licensing | by usable capacity managed, up to 8 PB | by number of disk drives, up to 60 drives |
| Hardware | 2145-4F2, 8F2, 8F4, 8G4, 8A4 | 2145-8A4 |
| Cluster size | 1, 2, 3 or 4 node-pairs, depending on performance requirements | only one node-pair needed |
| Copy Services | FlashCopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror, licensed by subset of capacity used | FlashCopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror, but with simplified licensing |
The SVC EE is not a "dumbed-down" version of the SVC Classic. It has all the features and functions of theSVC Classic, including thin provisioning with "Space-efficient volumes", Quality of Service (QoS) performance prioritization for more important applications, point-in-time FlashCopy, and both synchronous and asynchronous disk mirroring (Metro and Global Mirror).
While IBM has not yet have SPC-1 benchmarks published, IBM is positioning the SVC EE as roughly 60 percent of the performance, at 60 percent of the list price, compared to a comparable SVC Classic 2145-8G4 configuration. The SVC Classic is already one of the fastest disk systems in the industry. By comparison, the SVC EE is twice as fast as the original SVC 2145-4F2 introduced five years ago.If you outgrow the SVC EE, no problem! The 2145-8A4 can be used in traditional SVC Classic mode, and the SVC EE software can be converted into the SVC Classic software license for upgrade purposes, protecting your originalinvestment!
For those considering an HP EVA 4400 or EMC CX-4 disk system, you might want to look at combining an SVC EE with [IBM System Storage DS3400] disk. The combination offers more features and capabilities, and helps reduce your IT costs at the same time.
And if you are worried you can't afford it right now, IBM Global Financing is offering a ["Why Wait?" world-wide deferral of interest and payments] for 90 days, so you don't have to make your first payment until 2009, applicable to all IBM System Storage products, including the SVC EE, SVC Classic and DS3400 disk systems.
You can read more details on fellow blogger Barry Whyte's[Storage Virtualization] blog.
technorati tags: IBM, SVC, SVC EE, SVC Classic, Lakota Industries, Sarah-Cuda, Sarah Palin, Flamingo Pink, Raven Black, RPQ, SPC-1, 2145-8A4, DS4300, IBM Global Financing, Why Wait, FlashCopy, Metro Mirror, Global Mirorr, Barry Whyte