IBM Adds High-End, Midrange Disk Arrays

Computerworld - NEW YORK -- IBM last week unveiled two new enterprise-class disk arrays. One is aimed at the high end and one at midrange environments, but both have compatible software that allows the boxes to be managed through a single interface and data to be replicated between them.

The TotalStorage DS8000, the next generation of IBM's high-end Enterprise Storage Server, also known as the Shark, boosts performance as much as sixfold, and the 192TB capacity is more than three times that of its predecessor. The midrange TotalStorage DS6000 array is a rack-mountable, 3U-high unit that scales from 580GB to 67.2TB. (1U is 1.75-in. high.)

Both boxes represent the first time IBM has used native Fibre Channel disk drives instead of SCSI with Fibre Channel bridges. Charles Lickel, vice president of software and storage development at IBM, said the arrays will be offered with less-expensive Advanced Technology Attachment disks by the end of 2005.

The arrays will ship Dec. 3. The DS8000 and DS6000 can be used as primary storage for IBM zSeries and iSeries mainframes as well as for Unix, Linux and Wintel servers. The DS8000 can be upgraded on the fly from two to four processors.

For the first time, IBM used its own server processors for storage. The refrigerator-size DS8000 uses the pSeries processor, and the DS6000 uses an IBM PowerPC chip.

Compatibility a Plus

Users at a press event here said they were impressed by the increase in performance and the ability to use a single management platform across all of IBM's storage products.

"It's easy to talk about the new stuff, but when you've got an existing infrastructure, you've got to have something that blends into that," said Bob Venable, manager of enterprise systems at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Inc. in Chattanooga. The users also said they looked forward to an upgrade that, as with a mainframe, will allow multiple logical partitions to be created automatically in response to application needs. IBM pledged to add that capability over the next year.

Currently the DS8000 can be manually split into two separate systems.

Tony Asaro, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., gave the new IBM disk arrays high marks for their price, compatibility, four-year warranty and use of IBM-built processors. But he added that IBM must still address the network-attached storage and content-addressed storage markets, like chief competitors EMC Corp. and Hitachi Data Systems Corp. have.

Both arrays use an internally switched architecture instead of Fibre Channel arbitrated loop, which brings IBM up to speed with similar boxes from its major competitors.