What's new

IBM Storage DS8000® (10th Generation) Version 10, Release 0 introduces the following new features.

Version 10, Release 0

This table provides the current technical changes and enhancement to the IBM Storage DS8000® (10th Generation).

Function Description
Improved Bandwidth with PCIe Gen4 The DS8000 10th generation is designed with PCIe Gen4 enabled infrastructure. This is a significant upgrade over the PCIe Gen3 connectivity in the DS8900F, providing double the internal bandwidth across key components:
  • New Power Servers with PCIe Gen4 support
  • New IO Bays with PCIe Gen4
  • New zHyperlink and HPFE RAID adapters
Next Generation zHyperlink Adapter The zHyperlink adapter on the DS8000 G10 is built on PCIe Gen4 technology and will support connections at up to Gen4 speeds. The latency of the new adapter is reduced for reads and writes. The throughput of a single link on the new adapter is also improved.

With the reduced latency provided by the new adapter it is also now possible to support larger read sizes. The default maximum read size supported is now 16 KB and z/OS provides the ability to increase this up to 32 KB if needed for specific workloads.

Next Generation High Performance Flash Enclosure The next generation High Performance Flash Enclosure includes a new RAID Adapter with improved performance and uses NVMe Flash drives with RAID6 and RAID10 for data protection.

The RAID functionality has been moved from the ASIC used in the HPFE Gen2 and now runs on dedicated processors within the RAID adapter. The HPFE Gen3 provides improved bandwidth and IOPS compared to the HPFE Gen2.

Support for NVMe drives including IBM FlashCore Modules The new high-performance flash enclosure pairs are compatible with both industry-standard NVMe flash drive media and IBM FlashCore Modules (FCM), which feature built-in compression. Given the enhanced performance offered by the latest RAID adapters and NVMe drives, it's anticipated that users transitioning from earlier generation storage systems will have the option to upgrade to larger drive sizes compared to their current setup. To verify that a specific configuration will satisfy workload requirements, use the IBM Storage Modeller.
Compression with IBM FlashCore Modules The DS8000 10th generation supports compression for both CKD and FB data when configured with IBM FlashCore Modules. Implemented completely in hardware with no processor intervention means that these added benefits do not slow down the rest of the storage system.
Improved Capacity Scalability

The DS8000 10th generation system provides double the capacity scalability compared to previous generation systems when configures with small extents. The maximum usable capacity of the A05 increases from 2 PiB to 4 PiB (1.15 PiB to 4.3 PiB for CKD) and for the A01 this increases from 512 TiB to 1 PiB (551 TiB to 1.08 PiB for CKD).

The maximum provisioned capacity is also doubled enabling larger provisioned capacity for thin provisioning and Safeguarded Copy. The maximum provisioned capacity of the A05 increases from 4 PiB to 8 PiB (3.68 PiB to 718 PiB for CKD) and for the A01 this increases from 1 PiB to 2 PiB (971 TiB to 1.78 PiB for CKD).

Security
  • Improved Security for From Local Key Manager to PKS for Local DAR Key Manager
    • The DS8000 10th generation will exploit the IBM POWER PKS feature which creates an encrypted non-volatile store.
  • Data at Rest Encryption and FIPS 140-3
    • All drives in the DS8000 G10 support Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), data-at-rest encryption, and are FIPS 140-3 compliant.
Simplification

For the 10th generation of DS8000, the following changes will be made to simplify the configuration and operation of the system supported:

  • Simplify Configuration in GUI/CLI
  • Remove duplicate options
  • Remove extended remote copy (XRC) support
  • Move code stack to SW with abstraction layer to HW
  • Removal of custom HW/FW and replace with standard HW/FW shown below:
    • POWER 9 based HMC
    • Rack Mounted Ethernet Switches