I/O Enhancements for IBM POWER6 Servers

Numerous enhancements for POWER6 processor-based servers by IBM expand configuration options and offer I/O performance enhancements. Key enhancements include new 12X I/O drawers, new PCIe adapters, a new large cache disk adapter, and high-speed solid state drives (SSD). Additionally, the Power 520 can now support SFF disk bays in the system unit. SFF disk drives are offered for the Power 520, 550, and new 12X I/O drawers. The Power 5201, 5501, 560 and 570 have refreshed DVD options. The Power 570 has enhanced split backplane capabilities and a new monitor is being announced.

New 12X I/O drawers expand server I/O performance and capability in both 19-inch and 24-inch environments by supporting higher-speed connections to the server and by supporting PCIe 8x adapters and SFF disks. The 24-inch I/O drawer is available with or without SFF disk bays. New 12X DDR (Double Data Rate) cables supporting the higher-speed connection are required for the new 12X I/O drawers and are available in four lengths.

With the new 24-inch 12X I/O drawers, the Power 595 supports PCIe adapters previously available on other POWER6 servers as well as new PCIe adapters. This includes support for the 8 Gb Fibre Channel adapter that supports NPIV, with proper OS levels.

New PCIe I/O adapters are announced
for the Power 520, 550, 560, 570, 575, and 595, including:

• The PCIe Dual -x4 SAS Adapter controls SAS disk (SFF or 3.5-inch), tape, or removable media. This PCIe adapter is functionally similar to the PCI-X DDR Dual – x4 SAS Adapter.
• The PCIe 380 MB Cache Dual-4X SAS RAID Adapter is an excellent solution for higher-performance applications controlling SAS disk (SFF or 3.5-inch) drives. It also supports SSDs. Pairs of these adapters are required when used to provide mirrored write cache data and mirrored RAID parity footprints between the adapters for superior availability. The PCIe adapter feature 5903 is functionally similar to the PCI-X DDR Dual – x4 3 Gb SAS RAID Adapter.
• Two additional PCIe 10 Gb Ethernet adapters provide either SR optic or a CX4 twinax copper cabling.
• The PCIe 4-Port Async EIA-232 Adapter connects asynchronous data terminal equipment and data circuit terminating equipment.

The PCI-X DDR 1.5 GB cache SAS RAID Adapters have extremely large write and read caches to help SAS disk drives and SSDs provide a higher level of I/O performance to the server. This is a double-slot adapter, which includes auxiliary write cache protection. Three features are available, two for the different blind swap cassette and one without cassette.

New solid state drives provide for storage and retrieval of data that is much faster than spinning disk drives. These 69 GB drives leap over bottlenecks in disk drive technology. The root cause for disk’s slower performance is waiting for the movement of the disk platter and the disk arm. SSD random reads/writes can occur in microseconds, not the milliseconds that it takes for spinning drives (also called hard disk drives or HDD). I/O performance increases, resulting in overall system performance (depending upon configuration and applications).

SSD has more than just performance advantages. SSD has no moving parts, increasing its reliability. SSD has no motor and needs far less electrical power or cooling than disk drives. Moreover, unlike HDDs that are often run at 50% or less of their storage capacity to help maintain consistent performance, SSD can be run much closer to 100% storage capacity and still provide excellent performance.

The 69 GB SSD plugs into a standard SAS drive bay slot and is controlled by a SAS controller. SSD is available in two form factors, a 3.5-inch and in SFF . The 3.5-inch SSD is used in the EXP 12S Enclosure Drawer and is controlled by the PCI-X 1.5 GB Cache RAID adapter or a pair of PCIe 380 MB Cache RAID adapters. The 3.5-inch SSD is also used in the Power 560/570 CEC and is controlled by either the imbedded controller or the PCI-X 1.5 GB Cache controller. The SFF SSD is used in Power 520/550 CEC SFF slots and is controlled by the imbedded controller or the PCI-X 1.5 GB Cache controller.

Power 520 can be ordered with either the new eight 2.5-inch SFF SAS drive slots or the previously announced six 3.5-inch SAS drive slots. Split backplane options are supported with either SFF or 3.5-inch slots. The SFF slots can support either SFF disk drives or SSDs. System unit SFF capability is now consistent between both the Power 5201 and 5501. Three SFF disks are available for the Power 520 and 550 and for the new 12X I/O drawers with SFF disk bays: 10K RPM 146 GB and 15K RPM 73.4 GB with AIX/Linux, and 15K RPM 69.7 GB with IBM i.

The Power 520, 550, 560, and 570 system units have refreshed DVD options using a SATA interface. Select from two DVDs: the SATA Slimline DVD-ROM Drive and the SATA Slimline DVD-RAM Drive. The Power 560 and 570 use a new media backplane for support of one SATA media device in a single CEC enclosure.

The Power 560 and 570 CEC enclosures have an enhanced SAS adapter for internal Split DASD option that supports attachment of a removable media device external to the CEC enclosure. This is in addition to providing a connection for three SAS disk drives in the system unit such as the feature 5909 provides.

Planned availability date: May 22, 2009, except for some features.