Originally posted by: TonyPearson

XIV asynchronous mirror

For those not using XIV behind SAN Volume Controller, [XIV now offers native asynchronous mirroring] support to another XIV far, far away. Unlike other disk systems that are limited to two or three sites, an XIV can mirror to up to 15 other sites. The mirroring can be at the individual volume, or a consistency group of multiple volumes. Each mirror pair can have its own recovery point objective (RPO). For example, a consistency group of mission critical application data might be given an RPO of 30 seconds, but less important data might be given an RPO of 20 minutes. This allows the XIV to prioritize packets it sends across the network.

As with XIV synchronous mirror, this new asynchronous mirror feature can send the data over either its Fibre Channel ports (via FCIP) or its Ethernet ports.

Networking Gear

The IBM System Storage SAN384B and SAN768B directors now offer [two new blades!]

• A 24-port FCoCEE blade where each port can handle 10Gb convergence enhanced Ethernet (CEE). CEE can be used to transmit Fibre Channel, TCP/IP, iSCSI and other Ethernet protocols. This connect directly to server's converged network adapter (CNA) cards.
• A 24-port mixed blade, with 12 FC ports (1Gbps, 2Ggbs, 4Gbps, 8Gbps), 10 Ethernet ports (1GbE) and 2 Ethernet ports (10GbE). This would connect to traditional server NIC, TOE and HBA cards as well as traditional NAS, iSCSI and FC based storage devices.

IBM also announced the IBM System Storage [SAN06B-R Fibre Channel router]. This has 16 FC ports (1Gbps up to 8Gbps) and six Ethernet ports (1GbE), with support for both FC routing as well as FCIP extended distance support.

With the holiday season coming up at the end of the year, now is a great time to ask Santa for a new shiny pair of XIV systems, and some extra networking gear to connect them.

technorati tags: IBM, XIV, asynchronous+mirror, FCoE, FCoCEE, CEE, iSCSI, SAN384B, SAN768B, SAN06B-R