IBM Power5 With SAS HDDs

IBM enhanced its IBM POWER5 systems with SAS disk drive and smart Fibre Channel IOA support.

Expanded support for IBM POWER5/POWER5+ systems includes:

• SAS disk drives
• SAS disk drawer
• SAS large cache controller
• Smart Fibre Channel adapter for IBM DS8000 and DS6800

SAS disk capability allows POWER5/POWER5+ systems to take advantage of the newer SAS disk technology used on IBM POWER6 machines. Users can stop investing in incremental SCSI disk drives and instead invest in SAS drive technology for higher disk performance. You also gain the longer-term capability to acquire your disk drives from IBM, as IBM is withdrawing SCSI disk drives from marketing later in 2009.

Smart Fibre Channel IOA support (IOP-less) with IBM i 6.1 can offer POWER5/POWER5+ users a significantly faster SAN disk attachment while using fewer PCI slots. The IBM DS8300, DS8100, and DS6800 are all supported.

Planned availability dates

May 22, 2009: Smart Fibre Channel support
and 5372-IS5 features

• 4 Gbps Fibre Channel (2-Port)
• Routing Code (7778-23X)
• SDI Serialize Only

July 17, 2009: SAS disk capability

• 428.43 GB 15k rpm SAS Disk Drive
• 139.5 GB 15k rpm SAS Disk Drive
• 283.7 GB 15k rpm SAS Disk Drive
• SAS Cbl (YO) 1X Adapter-Enclosure 1.5M
• SAS Cable (YO) 1X Adapter-Enclosure 3M
• SAS Cable (YO) 1X Adapter-Enclosure 6M
• SAS Cable (YO) 1X Adapter-Enclosure 15M
• EXP 12S SAS Disk Drawer
• PCI-X DDR 1.5 GB SAS RAID Adapter
• PCI-X DDR 1.5 GB SAS RAID Adapter

August 21, 2009: 5372-IS5 features

• Spreadsheet Client (5733-QU2)
• SQLServer Adapter (5733-QU2)

For features with a planned availability of May 22, 2009, IBM configurator support is April 28, 2009. For features with a planned availability of July 17, 2009, IBM configurator support is June 9, 2009. For features with a planned availability of August 21, 2009, IBM configurator support is August 11, 2009.