IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new and enhanced storage virtualization products for disk and tape storage, increasing IBM's lead in storage virtualization innovations. Today's announcement includes the addition of the new IBM System Storage N series Virtual File Manager™ and enhancements to the IBM Virtualization Engine TS7520 tape solution.
"IBM has been delivering virtualization capabilities for more than four decades, and today we add to this legacy of innovation with new and enhanced storage virtualization products," said Charlie Andrews, Director, IBM System Storage Product Marketing. "Businesses today require that the management and storage of their data be done better, cheaper and faster. In other words, they want information on demand, and IBM is the only vendor poised to offer this level of solution with storage virtualization, as well as disk, tape and services offerings."
In a recent report, analyst group IDC predicted that over the next five years, virtualization will emerge as an important competitive battleground in the storage industry, driving changes in storage system architectures, encouraging significant investments in new storage software solutions, and potentially disrupting the current competitive environment. According to the report, the deployment of block, file and tape virtualization will play a key role in helping companies pool storage resources across multiple classes of storage and applications while helping reduce the complexities of configuring storage systems and managing backups.*
IBM adds to its virtualization portfolio today with the announcement of the IBM System Storage N series Virtual File Manager (VFM®) in both Enterprise and Migration Editions. This file virtualization offering provides a comprehensive solution for managing unstructured file data across an enterprise. VFM software supports the virtualization of file systems residing on UNIX, Linux, Windows file servers and on IBM N series -- a unified storage solution that meets the needs of customers from the midrange up to the large enterprise. VFM provides non-disruptive data management functionality for server and storage consolidation, migration, remote office data management and disaster recovery. This provides continuous user access to data, which is intended to ensure business continuity, by providing uninterrupted user access to data in the event of a disaster, or while performing storage consolidation or data migration.
VFM provides all of this functionality through automated policy-based data management leveraging a global namespace that aggregates distributed files located on UNIX, Linux, Windows and IBM N series storage systems to present a single, consolidated view of all files residing on multiple file servers within an enterprise's network. For example, Windows users usually have to manually setup connections to multiple file servers to access their data, but with VFM users only have to connect to the one network drive, which presents folders and subfolders containing all their files. VFM addresses three major challenges associated with file systems. First, VFM eliminates the need to manually re-configure multiple network drive mappings when files are migrated from one server to another. Second, VFM enables storage administrators to add, consolidate and migrate data on file servers without disrupting users access. And third, because each storage device that needs to be managed independently can greatly increases the administrative costs in distributed file storage environments, VFM helps IT managers simplify file system management, enhance data access, and reduce their data management costs.
VFM Enterprise Edition is a solution for file data management in heterogeneous customer environments, and VFM Migration Edition is a subset of Enterprise Edition that is focused solely on migration functions.
The IBM System Storage N series Virtual File Manager Enterprise and Migration Editions will be generally available on October 26, 2007, at a starting price of $2,000 for the Enterprise Edition and $1,200 for the Migration Edition.
IBM Virtualization Engine TS7520
Additionally, IBM today announced enhancements to its Virtualization Engine TS7520, a member of its family of virtual tape solutions. The IBM Virtualization Engine TS7520 now offers 750 GB disk drives to lower overall storage costs; and enhanced scalability with maximum capacity increased to 1.3 Petabytes. In addition, the TS7520 will now support IBM's encryption capable LTO Gen 4 tape drives to provide higher capacity and improve data security. The enhanced TS7520 supplies a comprehensive tape virtualization solution for customers, provides improved business continuity with enhanced backup and restore functions, and supports improved information lifecycle management and infrastructure simplification.
The enhanced IBM Virtualization Engine TS7520 will be generally available on December 7, 2007, at a starting price of $105,000.
These disk and tape enhancements today further extend IBM's storage virtualization portfolio. From its heritage in the mainframe, IBM has been a leader in virtualization for more than 40 years. According to the independent industry organization Storage Performance Council, IBM's flagship storage virtualization solution -- SAN Volume Controller (SVC) -- is the fastest benchmarked storage virtualization solution in the world today, with speeds over 75 percent above its predecessor; IBM had the fastest growth in the storage software information management business for 2Q'07, growing by 19 percent; and IBM SVC was certified in October for VMware Infrastructure.
IBM Global Financing (IGF), the lending and leasing business segment of IBM, can provide competitive rates to qualified applicants to access these new offerings. For more information, payment calculators and information about the benefits of financing visit the IGF website, www.ibm.com/financing.
For more information about IBM, go to: www.ibm.com.
"IBM has been delivering virtualization capabilities for more than four decades, and today we add to this legacy of innovation with new and enhanced storage virtualization products," said Charlie Andrews, Director, IBM System Storage Product Marketing. "Businesses today require that the management and storage of their data be done better, cheaper and faster. In other words, they want information on demand, and IBM is the only vendor poised to offer this level of solution with storage virtualization, as well as disk, tape and services offerings."
In a recent report, analyst group IDC predicted that over the next five years, virtualization will emerge as an important competitive battleground in the storage industry, driving changes in storage system architectures, encouraging significant investments in new storage software solutions, and potentially disrupting the current competitive environment. According to the report, the deployment of block, file and tape virtualization will play a key role in helping companies pool storage resources across multiple classes of storage and applications while helping reduce the complexities of configuring storage systems and managing backups.*
IBM adds to its virtualization portfolio today with the announcement of the IBM System Storage N series Virtual File Manager (VFM®) in both Enterprise and Migration Editions. This file virtualization offering provides a comprehensive solution for managing unstructured file data across an enterprise. VFM software supports the virtualization of file systems residing on UNIX, Linux, Windows file servers and on IBM N series -- a unified storage solution that meets the needs of customers from the midrange up to the large enterprise. VFM provides non-disruptive data management functionality for server and storage consolidation, migration, remote office data management and disaster recovery. This provides continuous user access to data, which is intended to ensure business continuity, by providing uninterrupted user access to data in the event of a disaster, or while performing storage consolidation or data migration.
VFM provides all of this functionality through automated policy-based data management leveraging a global namespace that aggregates distributed files located on UNIX, Linux, Windows and IBM N series storage systems to present a single, consolidated view of all files residing on multiple file servers within an enterprise's network. For example, Windows users usually have to manually setup connections to multiple file servers to access their data, but with VFM users only have to connect to the one network drive, which presents folders and subfolders containing all their files. VFM addresses three major challenges associated with file systems. First, VFM eliminates the need to manually re-configure multiple network drive mappings when files are migrated from one server to another. Second, VFM enables storage administrators to add, consolidate and migrate data on file servers without disrupting users access. And third, because each storage device that needs to be managed independently can greatly increases the administrative costs in distributed file storage environments, VFM helps IT managers simplify file system management, enhance data access, and reduce their data management costs.
VFM Enterprise Edition is a solution for file data management in heterogeneous customer environments, and VFM Migration Edition is a subset of Enterprise Edition that is focused solely on migration functions.
The IBM System Storage N series Virtual File Manager Enterprise and Migration Editions will be generally available on October 26, 2007, at a starting price of $2,000 for the Enterprise Edition and $1,200 for the Migration Edition.
IBM Virtualization Engine TS7520
Additionally, IBM today announced enhancements to its Virtualization Engine TS7520, a member of its family of virtual tape solutions. The IBM Virtualization Engine TS7520 now offers 750 GB disk drives to lower overall storage costs; and enhanced scalability with maximum capacity increased to 1.3 Petabytes. In addition, the TS7520 will now support IBM's encryption capable LTO Gen 4 tape drives to provide higher capacity and improve data security. The enhanced TS7520 supplies a comprehensive tape virtualization solution for customers, provides improved business continuity with enhanced backup and restore functions, and supports improved information lifecycle management and infrastructure simplification.
The enhanced IBM Virtualization Engine TS7520 will be generally available on December 7, 2007, at a starting price of $105,000.
These disk and tape enhancements today further extend IBM's storage virtualization portfolio. From its heritage in the mainframe, IBM has been a leader in virtualization for more than 40 years. According to the independent industry organization Storage Performance Council, IBM's flagship storage virtualization solution -- SAN Volume Controller (SVC) -- is the fastest benchmarked storage virtualization solution in the world today, with speeds over 75 percent above its predecessor; IBM had the fastest growth in the storage software information management business for 2Q'07, growing by 19 percent; and IBM SVC was certified in October for VMware Infrastructure.
IBM Global Financing (IGF), the lending and leasing business segment of IBM, can provide competitive rates to qualified applicants to access these new offerings. For more information, payment calculators and information about the benefits of financing visit the IGF website, www.ibm.com/financing.
For more information about IBM, go to: www.ibm.com.
