IBM Storwize With New Features

The IBM Storwize products are virtualized, software-defined storage systems designed to consolidate workloads into single storage systems for simplicity of management, reduced cost, highly scalable capacity, and high performance and availability.

Selected Storwize family products offer the following new features and functions:

16Gb FC connectivity:
Storwize V7000 Control Enclosure supports 16Gb FC connectivity with an optional 2-port 16Gb FC adapter card. Both models support up to four 16Gb FC adapter cards providing a total of eight 16Gb FC ports per Storwize V7000 control enclosure (four ports per node canister).

Encryption:
Storwize V7000 supports encryption for data at rest. Encryption is performed by the Storwize V7000 control enclosure for data stored within the Storwize V7000 system (the control enclosure and attached expansion enclosures) and does not require the use of special disk drives. Encryption is enabled through the acquisition of the Encryption Enablement feature.

System scalability:
Storwize V5000 systems can scale up to 480 drives with the attachment of 19 Storwize V5000 expansion enclosures. A Storwize V5000 two-way clustered system can scale up to 960 drives.

Storwize family products support the following disk drive options:

6TB 7,200rpm 12GB SAS 3.5-inch disk drive
1.8TB 10,000rpm 12GB SAS 3.5-inch disk drive Storwize V3700 and V5000 only)
1.8TB 10,000rpm 12GB SAS 3.5-inch disk drive Storwize V3500, V3700, and V5000 only)
1.8TB 10,000rpm 12GB SAS 2.5-inch disk drive

These drives are dual-port, hot swappable, and support data transfer to rates of up to 12Gb per second when installed in Storwize V7000. They support data transfer rates of up to 6GB per second when installed in all other Storwize models.

Key prerequisites
All items in this announcement require Storwize Family Software version 7.4.0.2, or later, or Storwize licensed machine code level 7.4.0.2, or later.

Planned availability date: February 17, 2015

The Storwize V7000 Encryption Enablement feature and the Encryption USB Drive Pack feature (machine type and feature numbers respectively) are not available in the following countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, People’s Republic of China and Russia.