Announcement Day – October 6th Edition

It’s Tuesday, and that means that it’s time for IBM product announcements.  October is a big month for storage announcements, as is evidenced by the number of online training sessions I’ve been instructed to attend.  Today’s announcements are just the start.

So what’s new this week?  Five new DS5000 enhancements are now available for order.

1. Dual 1 gigabit ethernet iSCSI host ports for the DS5100 and DS5300.  This is in addition to the existing 4 gigabit Fibre Channel and 8 gigabit Fibre Channel connectivity options.  With the addition of iSCSI, the DS5000 now has the ability to fit just about any host connectivity need.
2. 32 GB & 64 GB cache memory options for the DS5100 and DS5300.  These are available as both initial order and field upgrade options.
3. 73 GB Solid State Drives (SSDs).  A 73 GB high-performance SSD option is now available for the EXP5000 storage expansion.  SSDs are supported on both the DS5100 and DS5300.
4. Attachment support for up to 448 disk drives on the DS5100.  The DS5100 is now capable of supporting 448 drives (up from the prior limit of 256 drives).  Drives can be a mixture of SSD, Fibre Channel, and SATA.
5. High-bandwidth OM3 fiber optic cable option.  These are 10m host-side OM3 fiber optic cables with LC/LC connectors.

All of these enhancements are planned to be available on October 16, 2009 with the exception of the 64 GB cache option.  The 64 GB cache option has a planned availability date of December 21, 2009.

For more information on these announcements or any other IBM product, please contact your local IBM representative.