IBM's DS8000 getting thin provisioning
XIV gets dual processors, as well
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IBM has added thin provisioning to its high-end DS8000 storage array and has enhanced its XIV storage product.
Thin provisioning involves telling an application it has all the capacity it needs in the storage volume assigned to it, but actually only assigning the capacity needed to write data plus a margin. When this capacity is close to being filled, another chunk of capacity is assigned.
This technique prevents an array from having large amounts of assigned-but-empty disk capacity, allowing an array's total disk capacity to be reduced. More drives can be bought when capacity is needed.
Thin provisioning is a feature that 3PAR, EMC, HDS, and HP have had for some time. IBM's own SAN Volume Controller has had it since June of last year. DS8000 customers will also find that provisioning has become automated and requires less management.
The scalable XIV storage array, which IBM acquired when it bought the XIV company last year, has had dual processors added, speeding up some workloads by up to 30 per cent. Tivoli Productivity Center 4.1 now supports the XIV product. IBM has also added support for the Lghtweight Director Access Protocol (LDAP) which enables single sign-on and consolidated access control for multiple systems.
IBM will add asynchronous mirroring to the XIV products later this year, which will improve business continuity and disaster recovery. The mirroring can take place across continental distances.
The XIV improvements are available at no charge. DS8000 thin provisioning is charged on a per-model basis and starts at $69,000. ®
COMMENTS
Just bought the XIV last month
I'm definitely going to give IBM a call to upgrade my XIV. It won't be in production until late August but I like to see how the array handles a module going offline, adding new processor and bringing it back online. Not much data on the XIV yet so unfortunately I can't see how long it would take for the other 168 disk to sync up the other 12 drives in the module.
DS8000 - high end?
It may be IBM's high end product but it's hardly a high end storage product.
EMC, HDS and 3PAR cna beat the socks off this product - it's woefully slow and lacks scale/functionality.
Moreover, here's IBM charging for functionality that EMC just announced is free - GRATIS - in the DMX.
DS8k frontend
Yup, the RIO connection certainly is the DS8ks weak spot. Since it already was the ESS weak spot, I was pretty disappointed they still kept it in the design.
They should build a bigger XIV, using SAS drives, inifiniband and multi-frame scalability. I´d buy that.
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