New Models in IBM DS8888 All-Flash Storage Family

IBM DS8888 all-flash storage model with three-year warranty delivers world-class performance and data management in a single solution

The IBM DS8880 family now offers an all-flash storage array with new models (DS8888 Model 982 with its associated DS8888 Expansion Unit Model 98F) that can be ordered with one, two, three, or four years of support, which covers both the hardware and advanced function features.

These new model systems include a one-year standard warranty and up to three additional years of extended warranty services are available to make these flexible offerings an option to address business and financial needs. Clients should consult with their financial personnel on the appropriate financial treatment for this offering.

DS8888 delivers performance and data management in a single solution. It changes the way companies do their business by accelerating application performance and improving server efficiency, delivering the benefits that make all-flash systems ready for broad enterprise deployment.

IBM DS8888 configuration options

This model delivers up to 2.5 million IO/s random I/O workload environments. DS8888 supports 24- and 48-core processors, with 1 and 2TB system memory respectively, 128 host adapter ports, and 16 high-performance flash enclosures, up to 480 flash cards.
DS8888 advanced function features can be purchased based on customer usage and not the total physical capacity of the system (excluding base function licenses).

In addition to all-flash storage arrays, following capabilities are offered:

RAID-10 support for flash
Three-phase power support
Small extents for configuration
Thin provisioning for CKD
SuperPAV support
Enhanced security

RAID-10 support for flash
RAID-10 will be supported for flash in addition to the already supported RAID-5. No intermixing is allowed for different capacities or different RAID types within a single flash enclosure. To support RAID-10, the flash enclosure must be fully populated with flash cards.

Three-phase power support
Three-phase power will be available for DS8886 and DS8888. It reduces DS8886 individual rack capacity by two drive enclosures, however maximum system capacity remains at 1,536 drives.

Small extents for volume allocation

DS8000 now supports the ability to configure underlying storage using small extents. Before being allocated to volumes, each RAID rank is divided into equal-sized segments that are known as extents. Current extents use 1,113 cylinder/1GB extent size the DS8000 now supports small extents of 21 cylinders/16MB in size.
DS8884 and DS8886 support the ability to configure FlashCopy target volumes in small extents for CKD and FB.

Thin provisioning for CKD

Support for the use of thin provisioning with extent space efficient (ESE) volumes is now available for CKD. In combination with the use of small extents, this replaces the previous track space efficient volume function, delivering a higher performance capability for sequential write workloads.
DS8884 and DS8886 support the ability to configure FlashCopy target volumes as thin provisioned.

SuperPAV
SuperPAV extends upon the previous HyperPAV capabilities by enabling alias devices to be used across multiple logical subsystems (LSS). With this release, an alias device can be used for any base device on the same DS8000 sever and in the same path group on the server. SuperPAV will enable performance to be sustained with fewer overall alias devices and offer greater parallelism for individual larger volumes, improving scalability and performance.

Security enhancement

The DS8000 audit log can now be stored on a central syslog server for audit purposes using the rsyslog protocol.
DS8000 supports customer-generated certificates to control authentication for any network connections made through the customer’s certificate authority.
Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) will be supported to offer an alternative encryption key manager.

Key prerequisites
All announced features and functions are supported on the IBM DS8000 series require DS8000 LMC 8.8.10.xx.xx (bundle version 88.10.xxx.xx), or later.

Planned availability dates

June 10, 2016: All features and functions for DS8884 (model 980/98B) and DS8886 (model 981/98E), except in Korea
June 24, 2016: DS8888 (models 982 and 98F) and all its associated features and functions in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Mexico, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East
September 9, 2016: Field (MES) availability for the following:
- Field install Model 98F
- Field merge of expansion frames
- Cache and processor options
- High-performance flash adapter pair II
- 8/16 Gb/s PCIe based host adapters
- Flash cards
- High-performance flash enclosure