IBM Shatters Midrange Price-Performance Barrier With Ultra-Powerful Storage Server

In a performance benchmark and testing developed by The Storage Performance Council, the DS4800 set a new standard for midrange storage server performance delivering a maximum of more than 42,000 SPC-1 IOPS. The DS4800 achieved these breakthrough performance metrics with its high-performance architecture incorporating four gigabit per second technology.

"IBM's new DS4800 is an excellent choice for clients with high-performance computing needs that store and utilize vast amounts of data for high-bandwidth programs and complex application processing, such as those in the energy, entertainment and scientific research segments," said Rich Lechner, vice president of storage, IBM. "With the proven high performance of the DS4800, we believe we are introducing a compelling new alternative for our clients that can't be matched by EMC or HP products in the same class."

In addition to outstanding performance, the IBM DS4800 offers scalability designed to support up to 67 terabytes of data. It also designed to provide data failover software, availability and integrity features, all managed through an easy to use graphical user interface (GUI). The DS4800 will also support the recently announced integrated backup for databases with the AIX operating environment and IBM DB2 Universal Database. Other unique features include a "call home" function to help provide alerts if there is a problem with the system, long battery life to help provide increased uptime in the event of an outage, a second Ethernet port so diagnostics can be conducted, and a switched expansion drawer to allow for easy scalability.

The DS4800 is designed to operate in a heterogeneous operating system environment which includes AIX, HPUX, Solaris, Windows®, and various Intel® and POWER(TM)-based versions of Linux(TM). IBM's TotalStorage Productivity Center is designed to provide advanced management capabilities including discovery, asset and capacity reporting, monitoring, and configuration/provisioning for the DS4800. The DS4800 also is supported by the most popular versions of clustering software such as IBM's HACMP(TM), as well as Microsoft Novell Clustering Steeleye Lifekeeper and Veritas VCS.

Breakthrough Storage Virtualization Software

The new DS4800 will take the leading enterprise-class spot among IBM's full line of DS4000 storage servers, and will support all of IBM's storage software offerings, including the latest generation of IBM's TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) also announced today.

This seventh generation of IBM's storage virtualization technology continues to expand scalability and interoperability to help enable SVC to manage larger and more diverse environments. SAN Volume Controller is now designed to support up to 256 hosts to access the storage managed with SVC. IBM also enhanced SVC's ability to manage storage within high availability environments, such as IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) and High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing (HACMP) for AIX, including the extended distance option HACMP/XD. IBM is also introducing a smaller, more efficient Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for SAN Volume Controller to help enhance its data protection capabilities. With the help of Cisco, SAN Volume Controller now supports significant new functions available with the Cisco MDS9000 family of switches/directors, designed to enable heterogeneous SAN fabrics to work together and more efficiently.

The IBM TotalStorage DS4800 models 82A and 84A are scheduled to begin shipping on June 17 with a starting list price of $54,000. The IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller version 2.1.1 will be available May 13 with a starting list price of $44,500.