IBM (NYSE: IBM) today expanded its lineup of storage solutions for small and medium businesses and extended its relationship with Network Appliance (NetApp) with new products and offerings. Today’s announcement includes a new unified storage system as well as expanded virtualization interoperability and database backup software.
“A key objective of IBM’s relationship with NetApp is to expand IBM's storage solutions for our business clients,” said Bob Mahoney, Business Line Executive N series, IBM System Storage. “We listened to our customers who told us that easy scalability, virtualization, resource optimization and database interoperability are all at the top their wish lists. Today’s announcement addresses these concerns and will assist IBM customers in maximizing the value of their IT infrastructures by empowering them with simpler and faster access to their information.”
The new IBM® System Storage™ N5600 appliance is the latest member of IBM’s
N series storage family. The new device is aimed at small to medium-sized businesses poised for growth, offering an easy migration path to the company’s enterprise class offerings, scaling to 252 terabytes of physical capacity. Two models are offered: The N5600 A10 is a single storage controller offering, while the N5600 A20 comes with dual storage controllers. The N5600 will be positioned between IBM’s N5500 and N7600 appliances, and offer simultaneous connectivity to 4Gbps Fibre Channel and high speed GbE iSCSI networks and features a 64-bit architecture and PCIe controllers, designed to allow for easy, seamless updates.
Because the N5600 uses the same disk drives, expansion units and advanced software features as the other N series products, upgrades are seamless. The N5600 increases the performance of the N5500, with 50% more spindles and capacity as well as twice the memory and up to three times the maximum total bandwidth.
IBM also announced today interoperability between N series gateways and the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC). This allows customers to attach N series gateways to their SVC storage pool, helping to enable heterogeneous file sharing and block level virtualization. At the file level, the N series gateways offer an IP portal that enables them to connect to a Fibre Channel attached storage subsystem. IBM’s SVC is designed to provide block level virtualization, to help enable centralized management of managed storage resources and non-disruptive migration. This heterogeneous mix allows SAN storage access through a single IP portal without the high cost of Fibre Channel host bus adapters and port attachment fees.
Finally, SnapManager® for Oracle is designed to automate and simplify the complex manual and time-consuming processes associated with the backup, restore, recovery and cloning of Oracle databases. It is designed to provide the ability to create, use, and clone a database for use by test and development teams while maintaining a high level of availability to end users. SnapManager automatically identifies the backup data set and puts the database in hot backup mode while a snapshot copy is created to ensure consistency. This allows database administrators to easily efficiently perform database backup, restore, and recovery and clone operations while minimizing the risk of data loss.
Pricing and Availability
The IBM System Storage N5600 and SnapManager for Oracle will be generally available on December 8, 2006. The N5600 will be offered at a starting list price of $97,500, while SnapManager for Oracle will be offered at a list price of $3,125 per managed host. Interoperability between N series gateway devices and IBM’s SVC will be generally available on December 8, 2006.
“A key objective of IBM’s relationship with NetApp is to expand IBM's storage solutions for our business clients,” said Bob Mahoney, Business Line Executive N series, IBM System Storage. “We listened to our customers who told us that easy scalability, virtualization, resource optimization and database interoperability are all at the top their wish lists. Today’s announcement addresses these concerns and will assist IBM customers in maximizing the value of their IT infrastructures by empowering them with simpler and faster access to their information.”
The new IBM® System Storage™ N5600 appliance is the latest member of IBM’s
N series storage family. The new device is aimed at small to medium-sized businesses poised for growth, offering an easy migration path to the company’s enterprise class offerings, scaling to 252 terabytes of physical capacity. Two models are offered: The N5600 A10 is a single storage controller offering, while the N5600 A20 comes with dual storage controllers. The N5600 will be positioned between IBM’s N5500 and N7600 appliances, and offer simultaneous connectivity to 4Gbps Fibre Channel and high speed GbE iSCSI networks and features a 64-bit architecture and PCIe controllers, designed to allow for easy, seamless updates.
Because the N5600 uses the same disk drives, expansion units and advanced software features as the other N series products, upgrades are seamless. The N5600 increases the performance of the N5500, with 50% more spindles and capacity as well as twice the memory and up to three times the maximum total bandwidth.
IBM also announced today interoperability between N series gateways and the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC). This allows customers to attach N series gateways to their SVC storage pool, helping to enable heterogeneous file sharing and block level virtualization. At the file level, the N series gateways offer an IP portal that enables them to connect to a Fibre Channel attached storage subsystem. IBM’s SVC is designed to provide block level virtualization, to help enable centralized management of managed storage resources and non-disruptive migration. This heterogeneous mix allows SAN storage access through a single IP portal without the high cost of Fibre Channel host bus adapters and port attachment fees.
Finally, SnapManager® for Oracle is designed to automate and simplify the complex manual and time-consuming processes associated with the backup, restore, recovery and cloning of Oracle databases. It is designed to provide the ability to create, use, and clone a database for use by test and development teams while maintaining a high level of availability to end users. SnapManager automatically identifies the backup data set and puts the database in hot backup mode while a snapshot copy is created to ensure consistency. This allows database administrators to easily efficiently perform database backup, restore, and recovery and clone operations while minimizing the risk of data loss.
Pricing and Availability
The IBM System Storage N5600 and SnapManager for Oracle will be generally available on December 8, 2006. The N5600 will be offered at a starting list price of $97,500, while SnapManager for Oracle will be offered at a list price of $3,125 per managed host. Interoperability between N series gateway devices and IBM’s SVC will be generally available on December 8, 2006.
