IBM Storage Assurance Transforms Storage Ownership Experience

IBM Corp. announced new storage capabilities that give clients choice and control in the data center to maximize performance.

A new IT life cycle management option called IBM Storage Assurance provides access to FlashSystem hardware and software innovations to help protect clients’ investments from day one. Storage Assurance supports the new FlashSystem 5300 also announced, as well as the FlashSystem 7300 and FlashSystem 9500.

FlashSystem 5300 appliance

According to recent research from TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, 48% of companies expect to increase their IT spending in 2024. At the same time, IBM sees that organizations are looking for opportunities to maximize their spending without sacrificing performance. The Storage Assurance program, which complements existing consumption models for IBM Storage-as-a-Service and IBM Storage Utility, provides a path to simplifying the storage ownership experience with the expectation of extending the lifetime of clients’ storage investments.

“Our research indicates that IT organizations are looking for greater flexibility in how they acquire and sustain their storage,” said Simon Robinson, principal analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, part of TechTarget. “Storage Assurance program is designed to provide ongoing hardware and software upgrades while also offering budget certainty. With IBM providing this additional level of support for their storage systems, organizations can focus on their business priorities.”

Transforming storage ownership
Storage Assurance model offers a modern approach to IT lifecycle management with a subscription that provides regular hardware and software upgrades plus premium-level Expert Care support to help keep storage infrastructure up to date while seeking to address downtime, disruptive migrations, and recurring purchases. The new program is designed to minimize procurement obstacles and traditional storage lifecycle management challenges.

Key benefits for the FlashSystem 5300, 7300, and 9500 include the ability to:

• Leverage whole system refreshes with updates across drives, controllers, software, etc.
• Plan storage needs from day one with an all-NVMe FlashSystem portfolio designed for the most performance and data-intensive workloads supporting today’s businesses.
• Protect business, applications, and data with the company’s patented computational storage architecture enabled with hardware-accelerated and AI-augmented cyber threat detection.
• Safeguard storage purchases with a subscription that includes performance and lifecycle-based hardware and software upgrades over flat and transparently priced 4- or 8-year terms.⁽¹⁾
• Get access to the latest FlashSystem innovations in hardware and software with technology designed for non-disruptive migrations.
• Experience contract flexibility with the ability to receive a trade-in credit for out-of-cycle upgrades.
• Access IBM’s premium-level Expert Care support program, which is included with Storage Assurance.

“We are excited to introduce our customers to the new Storage Assurance program. This program offers full-system hardware refreshes and software upgrades, all covered by SLAs and a flat pricing contract,” said David Howard, senior consultant, Converge Technology Solutions. “With this new program, our clients can enjoy budget certainty and meet their business needs. We’re confident that this new program will bring many benefits to our clients.“

This program is designed to help clients stay at the forefront of technological advances in FlashSystem storage by providing an upgrade path to address end-of-support, capacity ceilings, and operating system requirements.

“Storage Assurance challenges the status quo of enterprise storage with a program that delivers client focused guarantees, computational storage with AI-powered data services, and an all-inclusive software integration designed to address customers’ most pressing problems, including a path for them to adopt future innovations from IBM,” said Denis Kennelly, GM, IBM storage. “As organizations feel increased pressures to maximize financial resources, improve operational agility, adopt energy efficient solutions, and safeguard their data, we are delivering with our intelligent, and simple all-flash portfolio.“

To further simplify storage management, optimize workload performance, and promote non-disruptive operations, The company is also announcing Flash Grid technology and Policy Based High Availability enhancements. Flash Grid allows clients to manage storage systems as a highly available and independently scalable environment, from a single control pane, with the ability to move workloads between FlashSystem devices.

Key benefits include:

• Simplified management: Clients can aggregate FlashSystem devices and manage them as a single scalable storage grid, engineered for high availability, replication, and non-disruptive application data migrations.

• AIOs automation and simulation: Clients can use AI-powered workload simulation to determine the best placement for workloads on the Flash Grid.

In addition, the company is announcing FlashSystem policy-based replication and high availability that is designed to provide easy-to-use, high-performance solutions for disaster recovery by enabling the system to automatically deploy and manage replication between two systems with minimal overhead, higher throughput, and lower latency. In 2H24, it intends to further enhance these features to support HA storage with replication to a 3rd system, to simplify the tasks associated with configuring, managing, and monitoring replication.

FlashSystem provides enhanced data resilience with the recently announced IBM FlashCore Module 4‘s cyber threat detection capabilities. All these capabilities will be available for the new FlashSystem 5300 also unveiled.

“We have IBM SAN Volume Controller sitting in front of all our storage, and IBM FlashSystem allows us to harness specific IBM functions. It’s fast, reliable, secure, and easy to manage,” said Kai Leibkuchler, senior manager, system and network engineering, Amadeus. “I am excited to see the new enhancements in FlashSystem 5300.”

Availabitity :
Both Storage Assurance program and the FlashSystem 5300 are generally available. Storage Assurance supports the FlashSystem 5300, as well as FlashSystem 7300 and FlashSystem 9500.

⁽¹⁾ The 8-year contract guarantees at least one full-system storage refresh during the contract period. The 4-year and 8-year contracts provide hardware and software contract guarantees when triggered.