This week, IBM made over a dozen announcements related to IBM storage products. Here is part 2 of my overview:

IBM System Storage® DS8000 series microcode

One of the advantages of acquiring XIV as IBM's other high-end disk system, is that it allows the DS8000 team to focus on the IBM i and z/OS operating systems. As a result, IBM DS8000 has over half the mainframe-attach market share.

For both the DS8700 and DS8800 models, IBM Easy Tier now support sub-LUN automated tiering across three storage tiers: Solid-State Drives, high-performance spinning disk drives (15K and 10K RPM), and high-capacity disk drives (7200 RPM).

For System z customers, the latest DS8000 microcode has synergy with z/OS and GDPS, now supporting 4x larger EAV volumes, faster high-performance FICON (zHPF), and Workload Manager (WLM) integration with the I/O Priority Manager. IBM has a world record SAP performance of 59 million account postings per hour. DB2 v10 for z/OS queries were measured at 11x faster using the new zHPF feature.

IBM System Storage® DS8800 systems

On the hardware side, the DS8800 now supports a fourth frame to hold a total over 1,500 disk drives. Yes, we have customers that three frames wasn't enough, and they wanted more.

IBM is now also offering new drive options. Small Form Factor (2.5 inch) drives now include 300GB 15K RPM drives, and a 900GB 10K RPM drives. But wait! There's more! The DS8800 is no longer a SFF-only box, it now allows for mixing in Large form factor (3.5 inch) drives, starting with the 3TB NL-SAS 7200 RPM drive.

IBM XIV® Storage System Gen3

We announced the XIV Gen3 already, but we have two enhancements.

First, we now offer a model based entirely on 3TB NL-SAS drives. If you are thinking, what IBM is going to put 3TB drives into everything? Yup. Once we go through all the pain and suffering of qualifying a drive, we make sure we get our money's worth!

Secondly, we have now an iPad application to manage the XIV. This has nothing to do with Apple CEO Steve Jobs passing away last week, it was merely coincidence.

IBM Real-time Compression Appliances™ STN6500 and STN6800 V3.8

The latest software for RtCA now supports Microsoft SMB v2, and enhanced reporting so that storage admins know exactly the benefits of the compression ratios of different file extensions.

IBM System Storage EXP2500 Express®

The EXP2500 is for direct-attach situations, like the IBM BladeCenter. IBM adds LFF 3.5-inch 3TB NL-SAS drives, SFF 2.5-inch 300GB 15K RPM SAS drives, and 900GB 7200 RPM NL-SAS drives.

My colleague Curtis Neal refers to these as "B.F.D" announcements, which of course stands for Bigger, Faster, Denser!

technorati tags: IBM, DS8000, DS8700, DS8800, Easy Tier, FICON, zHPF, WLM, DB2, SAS, NL-SAS, , XIV, STN6500, STN6800, EXP2500, Curtis Neal

Tags:  ds8800 zhpf xiv stn6500 wlm stn6800 easy+tier ficon exp2500 ibm nl-sas curtis+neal ds8000 db2 sas ds8700