New Capabilities for IBM DS8000

IBM Corp.’s System Storage DS8000 series (Machine types 2421, 2422, 2423, and 2424) increases data security and flexibility with new self-encrypting drive options.

New options include:

• Storage scalability: DS8800 provides 400GB SSD drives to address application performance requirements.
• Data protection: DS8800 provides 400GB SSD encryption drives and 3TB nearline SAS encryption drives to provide additional capacity option for data protection. Easy Tier fourth generation can support any type of encryption drives in addition to non-encryption drives.
• Thin Provisioning enhancement: Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, and Metro Global Mirror services are now supported on thin provision volumes (open systems).

Key prerequisites
All features and functions in this announcement are supported on the DS8700 and DS8800, and require a DS8000 licensed machine code as follows:

• DS8700 – level 7.6.3.xx.xx (bundle version 76.30.xxx.xx), or later.
• DS8800 – level 7.6.3.xx.xx (bundle version 86.30.xxx.xx), or later.

Planned availability date
April 20, 2012