5U IBM Power Systems LC DAS Provides Storage Expansion for Power LC Server

IBM Power Systems LC Direct Attach Storage (5U84) provides storage expansion for your IBM Power LC server to meet your big data needs

IBM Power Systems LC Direct Attach Storage is a 5U disk enclosure that offers up to 840TB of storage for attachment to an IBM PowerLC server.

This enclosure offers:

• 6Gb SAS interconnect to the server through 3m SAS cables
• 8TB or 10TB HDDs in increments of 14 drives
• Multiple cabling combinations based on redundancy requirements
• Support for the Linux OSs Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 and Ubuntu 16.04
• Support for up to four enclosures attached to a single PowerLC server

Power Systems LC Direct Attach Storage is designed to provide storage density for big data workloads and is an expansion offering for the Power LC servers.

Enclosure is 5U and has eighty-four 3.5-inch (LFF) bays supporting a 6Gb SAS interface. Each drive is mounted on a tray/carrier, which is specific to this enclosure and is designated LFF-2. Drives are large capacity 7200rpm of 8TB or 10TB.

Included in an enclosure are two drawers or ‘sub-enclosures.’ Each drawer has 42 bays consisting of three rows of 14 bays. A drawer can be slid forward in the 5U enclosure to access the drives for either concurrent maintenance or for adding drives.

Drives are ordered in groups of 14 of the same capacity or same feature code. An entire drawer row must be populated with each group of 14 drives ordered. Valid configurations have 14, 28, 42, 56, 70, or 84 drives. Different capacity drives can be included in the same drawer or enclosure, but must be the same capacity in a drawer row.

The two drawers should have a similar number of rows populated. For example, if 28 drives are in the enclosure, then each drawer should have one row populated. Or if 56 drives are in the enclosure, then each drawer should have two rows populated. Or if 42 drives (3 rows) are in the enclosure, then one drawer should have two rows populated and the other should have one row populated. The number of rows populated in the two drawers should not vary by more than one.

The drawer is attached to either the S822LC for big data (8001-22C) or S821LC (8001-12C) servers. Up to four enclosures can be attached to the S822LC or the S821LC. The server feature EKED (S822LC) or feature EKAD (S821LC) PCIe storage adapters (HBAs) run the server drives to the 5U enclosure bays.

Attachment is via 3m SAS cables with HD SAS connector for the adapter and mini-SAS connector for the drawer (IBM offered cable is feature ECCT).

Power Systems LC Direct Attach Storage supports multiple SAS cabling options to support multiple redundancy configurations.

Support for attaching one 5U enclosure to two different servers is not announced.

Cascading enclosures is not supported.

Four C19/C20 power cords are included with each 5U enclosure for the two 2,800W power supplies of the enclosure. Use the two most appropriate for your needs and discard the other two. Two are 1.5m and two are 2.5m.

The 19-inch, 5U enclosure uses fixed rails, which have adjusted depth of 713 to 884mm (approximately 28in. – 34.8in.).

Key prerequisites: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3 or Ubuntu 16.04

Planned availability date: June 23, 2017