IBM DS5020 Midrange Disk System

IBM System Storage DS5020 Midrange Disk System and IBM System Storage EXP520 Storage Expansion Unit offer new high-performance 8 Gbps midrange disk storage solution.

IBM System Storage DS5020

The IBM System Storage DS5020 disk system is IBM’s newest midrange disk offering, specifically designed to help address midrange or departmental storage requirements.

The DS5020 supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, and 10, with scalable capacity of up to 112 TB physical storage capacity. The DS5020 has SAN-attached 8 Gbps FC host connectivity, as well as optional features to add 1GbE iSCSI host connections for flexibility in host connectivity and encryption-capable Fibre Channel disk drives for applications that require additional data security.

The DS5020 disk system is designed to deliver up to a two-fold IOP performance increase over the current-generation DS4700 offerings and represents the eighth-generation architecture within the midrange disk family.

DS5020 Disk System members:

• DS5020 Disk Controller (1814-20A)
• EXP520 Storage Expansion Unit (1814-52A)

The DS5020 controller comes packaged in a 3U rack-mountable enclosure with dual-active RAID controllers, accommodates up to 16 disk drives installed within the base 3U enclosure, and provides 8 Gbps FC host ports and optional 1GbE iSCSI host connectivity.

The EXP520 Expansion Unit is a high-capacity 16-drive bay unit packaged in a 3U rack-mountable enclosure. The DS5020 disk unit can attach up to six EXP520 expansion units, providing modular and highly scalable storage solutions that range up to 112 TB physical storage capacity.

Both the DS5020 and EXP520 accommodate SATA, FC, and encryption-capable FC disk drives. The intermix of these disk drives is supported and provides added versatility.

Key prerequisites:

• Specific options for the DS5020 must be ordered during the initial plant order for the DS5020.
• IBM Power Systems, IBM BladeCenter, or IBM System x servers.
• Selected Sun and HP UNIX servers and Intel-based servers running Windows 2008, Windows Server 2003, or Linux

Planned availability date:
September 4, 2009