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Dynamic Infrastructure - Disk Announcements 1Q09

By Tony Pearson posted Tue February 10, 2009 01:39 PM

  

Originally posted by: TonyPearson


Well, it's Tuesday, so that means IBM announcements!

We had so much announced, that I will just cover the disk systems today, and deal with tape systems and software tomorrow.

IBM System Storage DS8000 series

IBM continues to invest heavily in its strategic [DS8000 series].For [existing 2107 machines], IBM's new DS8000 microcode supports:

  • 1 TB 7200 rpm Serial ATA (SATA) Disk Drives

    Now that IBM XIV has proven that 1TB SATA are safe for high-end tier-1 enterprise class use, we extended DS8000 support to include SATA support also. DS8000 supports RAID-6 and RAID-10 for these.

  • Intelligent Write Caching

    IBM Research conducts extensive investigations into improved algorithms for cache management. Intelligent Write Caching boosts performance for both temporal and spatial locality.

  • Remote Pair FlashCopy®

    This allows you to FlashCopy volume A to volume B, with Volume B remotely mirrored to Volume C at a secondary location, via Metro Mirror. This allows you to have a consistent copy of your data at both locations.

For[newly ordered 242x models], you get all the features above, plus the following additional support:

  • Full Disk Encryption (FDE)

    IBM was the first in the industry to deliver tape-drive encryption, so it makes sense that IBM is also the first in the industry to deliver disk-drive encryption. These are 15K rpm drives in standard 146GB, 300GB and 450GB capacities. As with tape, encrypting at the disk device eliminates the huge overhead from server-based encryption methods.

  • Solid State Drive (SSD)

    You can also have Solid State Disk drives in your DS8000, in 73GB and 146GB capacities, protected by RAID-5.If you are wondering what data to put on these much-faster drives, IBM has taken the work and worry out by havingintelligence in DB2 to optimize what gets placed on SSD to get the most performance improvement.



IBM System Storage XIV

Continuing the incredible marketplace excitement over its Cloud-Opimized Storage[XIV series], IBM now has announced[new capacity options]. The IBM XIV R2 that we announced last August 2008 was a fixed 15 module configuration. In thenew configurations, you can start with as little as six modules, representing a 40% partial rack of the originalfull model. Here is a table that shows the details:

Total Modules 6 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Useable Capacity (TB) 27 43 50 54 61 66 73 79

Interface Modules 3 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
Data Modules 3 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Disk Drives 72 108 120 132 144 156 168 180
Fibre Channel Ports 8 16 16 20 20 24 24 24
iSCSI Ports 0 4 4 6 6 6 6 6
Cache Memory (GB) 48 72 80 88 96 104 112 120

IBM System Storage N series

And last, but not least, we have two new models in IBM's[N6000 series].The [N6060]has model A12 (single controller) and model A22 (dual controller). These are disk-less controllers thatyou can configure in either appliance mode or gateway mode. In appliance mode, you can attachdisk drawers such as the EXN1000, EXN2000 or EXN4000. In gateway mode, you attach external disk systems, suchas the IBM DS8000 or XIV above.

Also, IBM introduces the new [2101 model N42 rack], which has the following features:

  • It's ruggedized to handle earthquakes. IBM brings a feature that we've had for a while on other disk systems to the N series with a collection of bolts and anchors to secure the rack from physical tremors.
  • It's instrumented for IBM Active Energy Manager, a component of IBM Systems Director. New iPDUs are designed to help measure and monitor energy management components. As companies get more concerned about thefate of the planet, monitoring energy consumption can help reduce carbon footprint.

I'll cover the rest of the announcements tomorrow!

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Archive User
Mon February 16, 2009 06:55 PM

Hi BarryB, happy new year!
Here are the answers to your questions. Most of this is in the announcement letters, but for the benefit of everyone who may not pick up on some of the subtleties, I will spell it out.
1) The DS8K can only FDE on new systems, using the specific drives mentioned, and the entire array must be encrypted - all or nothing - correct?
Correct, for now. From the press release:"The Full Disk Encryption support feature is available only as plant order. Plant configured encryption supporting systems will be allowed to increase the number of drive sets installed at the installed location. Intermixing of drives is not supported, thus the entire subsystem is either encrypted drives (#5xxx features) or intermixed devices of Fibre Channel, SATA, and SSD devices (#2xxx and #6xxx features)."
1a) Can you later choose to un-encrypt the entire array?
Yes, IBM offers this as a simple means to securely erase all the data for decommissioning the array. (Normally, clients hire someone to erase all the data securely, to protect sensitive information for compliance reasons, for example, and now they can do it themselves to save money)
1b) Is the encryption one key per system, one key per drive, or multiple keys per drive?
Not exactly. One key per "Storage Facility Image". If you have a DS8100 or DS8300 in non-LPAR mode, then this is the same as one key per system. If you split your DS8300 into separate LPARs, then each LPAR can have its own key.
1c) Can you re-key the drives non-disruptively?
Currently, no, the FDE drives do not yet support that.
2) The DS8K cannot encrypt either Flash or SATA drives, under any configuration - correct?
The encryption is done at the HDD level, not in the array itself. However, you can continue to encrypt data using the application or operating system as you have today, onto data that is stored on Flash SSD or SATA disks. If sometime in the future Flash SSD or SATA drives are manufactured with FDE capability, then IBM can offer this as well, but currently FDE drives currently only come in 15K rpm drive speeds.
3) The minimum purchase of Flash drives for the DS8K is 16, of which 14 are usable (RAID 5 protection required), and 2 are hot spares - correct?
Two hot spares are required per storage facility instance, not per drive set, so the first drive set will have two RAID-5 ranks of 6+P+S and the rest of the drive sets can be 7+P. Only RAID-5 is supported for now at this time under standard terms and conditions. Clients can submit an RPQ if they want RAID-6 or RAID-10 support.
4) You do not support RAID 5 on SATA drives in the DS8K - correct?
Some industry experts consider RAID-5 on large SATA drives to be the equivalent of "professional malpractice" because it takes a long time to rebuild from an HDD failure and there is risk during those hours that a second drive might fail, resulting in tape recovery. Based on these concerns, IBM decided not to support this at this time under standard terms and conditions for the DS8000. However, if clients are willing to accept the risks, perhaps the data is temporary or easily re-creatable, they can submit an RPQ requesting RAID-5 support on their DS8000 SATA drives. IBM also offers plenty of other disk arrays that support RAID-5 SATA, including our DS4000 and DS5000 series, where mainframe attachment is not required.
Hope that answers everything, Barry!

Archive User
Thu February 12, 2009 02:56 PM

Clarifying questions:
1) The DS8K can only FDE on new systems, using the specific drives mentioned, and the entire array must be encrypted - all or nothing - correct?
1a) Can you later choose to un-encrypt the entire array?
1b) Is the encryption one key per system, one key per drive, or multiple keys per drive?
1c) Can you re-key the drives non-disruptively?
2) The DS8K cannot encrypt either Flash or SATA drives, under any configuration - correct?
3) The minimum purchase of Flash drives for the DS8K is 16, of which 14 are usable (RAID 5 protection required), and 2 are hot spares - correct?
4) You do not support RAID 5 on SATA drives in the DS8K - correct?
Thanks...