New Self-Encrypting HDDs for System x and BladeCenter

New self-encrypting drives (SEDs) add high-capacity offerings to the System x and BladeCenter family from IBM Corp.:

The amount of confidential or propriety information that is gathered and stored by businesses continues to grow. As the threat of exposure of this data has increased over time, so have the government legislation and industry privacy requirements intended to safeguard this data. These provisions often mandate that corporations safeguard this information for an indefinite amount of time with penalties and other associated expenses attached should a security breach occur.

To reduce the vulnerability of data at rest to potentially costly exposures of proprietary data resulting from hard drives being stolen, misplaced or improperly disposed, IBM is adding 6Gbps SAS 2.5-inch SFF SED.

For small and medium or distributed large enterprise businesses, they provide data security with AES 128 disk encryption.

These new SED offerings also provide 6Gbps hot-swap SAS capability for performance and availability System x environment. SED functionality and 6Gbps SAS performance of these new drives are enabled when used with new 6Gbps System x servers and internal ServeRAID controllers with Advance Feature Keys for SED support.

When ServeRAID M1115 (81Y4448) or ServeRAID M5110 are installed, they offer internal RAID-0, -1, -5, -10, and -50 and the optional M5000 Series Advance Feature Key (46M0930) upgrade would be required for SED support as well as offering additional RAID-6 and -60 functionality. Intuitive Management is provided through the MegaRAID Management Suite (MSM), which offers a configuration path to disk encryption and local security key management, and also provides a suite of applications and tools that includes a spectrum of online RAID management and preboot setup utilities.

146GB, 300GB performance characteristics include:

Drive-to-host interface that supports up to 6.0 Gbps burst rate
Drive media to buffer interface that supports sustained interface data transfers of up to 151 MBps average on the 146GB drive, and 93 MBps on the 300GB drive
Spindle speed of 15,000rpm (146GB) or 10,000rpm (300GB)
Hot-swap capability
SAS interface

Reliability

SAS compliance enables these SEDs to connect directly to selected System x systems.
S.M.A.R.T. allows software utilities to alert of certain impending drive failures so replacements can be made before a problem occurs.
Rigorous testing through the ServerProven program instills confidence that the storage subsystem is compatible and will function reliably.

Warranty
One-year, customer replaceable unit (CRU), limited warranty1.

Key prerequisites
IBM System x system with SAS capability.

Planned availability date
May 31, 2012