... And Storwize Software V7.3.0

If storage requirements growing too fast and the costs of managing this growth taking more and more of your IT budget, IBM Storwize Family Software V7.3 can help solve these problems and get on the road towards a more flexible, responsive, and efficient storage environment.

Storwize Family Software capabilities are offered across platforms including SVC, Storwize V7000 (unified), Storwize V5000, and Storwize V3700 and V3500.

The Storwize Family of products are designed to deliver the benefits of storage virtualization and storage capabilities including FlashCopy, replication, real-time compression, and Easy Tier, in environments from large enterprises to small businesses and midmarket companies.

These offerings help customers reduce complexities and cost of managing their storage by:

Centralizing management of storage volumes to enable administrators to manage storage volumes from a single point
Improving utilization of storage capacity with virtual volumes to enable businesses to tap into previously unused disk capacity
Avoiding downtime for backups, maintenance, and upgrades
Performing data migration without disruption to applications
Enabling all storage devices to be organized into storage pools from which virtual volumes, whether standard, compressed, or thin-provisioned, are created with the desired characteristics
Delivering automation of storage management with Virtual Storage Center, Tivoli Storage Productivity Center (as applicable by platform), and Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager (as applicable by platform)
Increasing the performance efficiency of storage pools that use SSDs with Easy Tier
Restoring data access quickly with near and remote copy capabilities across FC, FCoE and IP networks

V7.3 improves Easy Tier capabilities to allow for up to three tiers of storage. Users can now define their tiers making it possible to turn on Easy Tier between more than just SSDs and HDD drives. These capabilities offer more alternatives for optimizing the storage you use. As you expand storage pools, V7.3 also now provides automation to re-stripe data across the pools for optimal performance.

Real-time compression has been enhanced to provide improvements in performance with the delivery of new SVC and Storwize V7000 hardware platforms, including use of the compression accelerator card feature. Updates to the cache architecture provide further improvements to overall performance.

V7.3 allows the use of up to nine expansion enclosures for both the Storwize V5000 and the Storwize V3700.

It also introduces new software licenses for Storwize V7000 and Storwize V5000. This new license structure and pricing provides licensing based on the functions customers wish to enable and use the most.

IBM Storwize V7000 Unified File Module Software V1.5 supports newer protocol versions to deliver higher levels of security with support of Network File System version 4 and greater performance with Server Message Block 2.1. File Module Software V1.5 provides departmental multitenancy allowing administrators to provision file sets to different departmental administrators. An external ID mapping server is no longer required for replication with the addition of deterministic ID mapping. IBM Active cloud Engine now has multiwriter capability which allows multiple users at different locations to be able to write to the same file set at a particular site. Security is enhanced by configurable password policies, session policies, and hardened boot and SSH configurations.

Software requirements

SVC V7.3 (5641-VC7 and 5641-CP7) has the same software prerequisites as SVC V7.2.
Storwize V7000 V7.3 (5339-CB7, 5639-XB7, 5639-EB7, 5639-VM7, 5639-EV7, 5639-RM7, and 5639-CP7) has the same software prerequisites as Storwize V7000 V7.2.
Storwize Family Software V7.3 is not available for the IBM Flex System V7000. Flex System V7000 V7.2 (5639-NZ7, 5639-EX7, 5639-RE7, and 5639-CM7) has the same software prerequisites as IBM Flex System V7000 V7.1.
Storwize V5000 V7.3 (5639-CT7, 5639-XT7, 5639-ET7, and 5639-ST7) has the same software prerequisites as Storwize V5000 V7.2.

Hardware requirements

Storwize Family Software for SVC requires at least one pair of System Storage SSVC (2145-DH8) storage engines with integrated battery backup units, or at least one pair of System Storage SVC (2145-CG8, 2145-CF8, 2145-8A4, 2145-8G4, 2145-8F4, or 2145-8F2) storage engines with dual uninterruptible power supplies for installation.
Storwize Family Software for Storwize V7000 requires at least one IBM Storwize V7000 Control Enclosure (2076-524, 2076-112, 2076-124, 2076-312, or 2076-324) for installation.
Storwize Family Software V7.3 is not available for the Flex System V7000. Storwize Family Software for Flex System V7000 V7.2 requires at least one Flex System V7000 (4939-A49, 4939-H49, or 4939-X49) Control Enclosure for installation.
Storwize Family Software for Storwize V5000 requires at least one Storwize V5000 control enclosure (2077-12C, 2077-24C, 2078-12C, or 2078-24C) for installation.

Planned availability date: