IBM Ushers in New Era of Storage as Virtualization Frees Customers to Manage Networks

PALISADES, N.Y. - 01 May 2003: IBM today introduced a new family of storage virtualization products that will help customers lower their IT costs while increasing business efficiency by reducing the complexity and management associated with storage in the data center.

IBM previewed these products at the company's annual industry analyst forum, one year after outlining its storage software technology roadmap aimed at unlocking the potential of storage networks. The emerging demand for this kind of software technology is expected to reach $8.6 billion in 2006, according to Gartner.

Virtualization software allows pooling of storage across disparate storage systems into a single, consolidated view. Without this capability, businesses have to manage storage within each storage system individually and are unable to leverage unused storage across disk systems without costly data movement and application down time.

"IBM's new products effectively untie servers from storage allowing truly independent storage," said Brian Truskowski, general manager for storage software, IBM Systems Group. "This offers customers a dramatic new way to visualize and ultimately virtualize their entire corporate information assets while improving storage capacity utilization, administrator productivity, and application availability."

A recent customer study by IBM suggests that businesses with mid-size to large SANs can save, on average, in the first year more than $250,000 through improved disk utilization and administrator productivity, as well as $2.6 million in lost storage-related opportunity costs by improving application availability.

"In today's difficult economy, there is tremendous pressure to reduce IT costs," said Jerry Campanella, Senior Vice President of National City Corporation, the Cleveland-based banking and financial services company with assets over $100 billion, which has deployed IBM's new virtualization engine to increase efficiency. "Business requirements are demanding large growth in open system storage and increased availability. I believe that the new functionality offered through storage virtualization products such as IBM's SAN Volume Controller will allow us to lower our costs and improve service to meet these increasing demands."

The IBM TotalStorage(TM) Virtualization family is comprised of a number of integrated, enterprise-ready solutions. These solutions adhere to the storage industry's open standard called Storage Management Interface Specification or SMI-S. Today, IBM is previewing its new virtualization family that includes:

• IBM TotalStorage SAN Volume Controller - a storage virtualization solution for integration into an existing midrange to high-end customer SAN environment. It is a combined solution of customized dual IBM eServer xSeries servers running embedded Linux operating system and IBM's virtualization software. An entry-level configuration will be priced at under $75,000 and will be available in July 2003.

• IBM TotalStorage SAN Integration Server - a complete SAN storage solution for customers implementing new SANs or for customers interested in the SAN Volume Controller who want a completely integrated solution. It is a pre-configured solution delivered and installed as all-in-one consisting of SAN Volume Controller, IBM TotalStorage FAStT600 storage (up to 83 terabytes of storage), redundant fibre channel switches and associated routers and hubs. The server will be available in August 2003.

These products include autonomic capabilities such as failover, mirrored cache, auto restart of nodes and non-disruptive upgrades and maintenance. They can also serve as a single point of control across all attached storage for optional copy services such as IBM FlashCopy® and Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC). Both products will be delivered through IBM and IBM Business Partners, especially through IBM's network of Business Partner centers called the IBM TotalStorage Solution Centers (TSSC). More than 30 TSSCs already have IBM's virtualization products installed and are ready to assist customers.

IBM also announced the IBM Storage Virtualization Family will include:

• IBM TotalStorage SAN File System - a SAN file system for centralized file management in a heterogeneous network. It is an integrated solution of customized xSeries Servers, running Linux and IBM's SAN File System Software, based on StorageTank(TM) technology from IBM research,, providing a common SAN-wide file system for an enterprise.

In addition, IBM is announcing the availability of the IBM TotalStorage SAN File System Protocol specification. This specification documents the protocols used between a SAN File System metadata server and SAN File System clients running on application servers. Third parties can develop additional SAN File System clients beyond what IBM will supply. The IBM TotalStorage SAN File System Protocol specification can be found at: http://www.storage.ibm.com/software/index.html. The SAN File System will be available in December 2003.

According to IDC, IT managers need to maximize the return on investment of their storage assets is already having a significant effect on the design and packaging of storage solutions. Storage solutions providers are delivering capacity at lower prices, in more modular packages and are taking advantage of improved networking and processing capabilities to address traditional storage management shortcomings, the underutilization of installed capacity and excessive administrative overhead.

"IBM's TotalStorage Virtualization Family is an excellent representative of this extension in storage solution design, extending the scalability and flexibility of companies' storage assets," said Richard L. Villars of IDC. "The SAN Volume Controller and SAN File System are the two complementary pillars for storage infrastructure, for block-based and file- based storage, respectively, as IT managers seek to optimize the use of storage assets across the enterprise."

Industry Support
The Virtualization Family has been designed to interoperate with storage management products from other vendors. The IBM Tivoli Software portfolio is the first to support this new virtualization technology with IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager and IBM Tivoli SAN Manager. In addition, IBM Tivoli SAN Manager provides the SAN device discovery and topology for the SAN Volume Controller which serves as the starting point for the administrator to manage the SAN. This allows customers to leverage current investments while benefiting from the new capabilities offered by the IBM TotalStorage Virtualization Family. Tivoli Storage Resource Manager and Tivoli Storage Manager also provide seamless. Other vendors supporting IBM's announcement include Computer Associates, LEGATO, InterSAN, McDATA.

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