IBM System Storage DS8000 series

High-performance disk storage for business-critical enterprise workloads

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Highlights

Delivers up to three times performance improvement for faster transaction processing and real-time analytics
Provides extraordinary system availability with full hardware redundancy and advanced business-continuity solutions integrated with IBM enterprise servers
Optimises performance and cost objectives with five generations of IBM® System Storage® Easy Tier® and other advanced self-tuning features
Scales up to 1 terabyte (TB) of system cache and up to 2 petabytes (PB) capacity
Enables consolidation through tremendous scalability, self-optimisation, drive tiering and support for a broad range of workloads

We all struggle to manage the exponential growth of data and the increasing complexity of our IT environments. Much of this is the result of the variety of server environments spread across multiple data centers, each typically with a distinct storage platform that must be managed separately. And as the amount and variety of data accelerates, the challenge to manage it, let alone make sense of it, further complicates matters. In fact, most business leaders expect their IT environments to grow even more complex than they are today.¹

Smarter storage, such as the IBM System Storage DS8000® series, can help users maintain control of their storage environments so they can focus on using timely data to grow their businesses. Quick and reliable data access is the driving force behind real-time business analytics, and this flagship IBM disk system sets the standard for what an enterprise disk system should be with extraordinary performance, reliability, and security. And its scalable capacity ranges from 5 TB with the entry-level Business Class option to more than 2 PB for a full system.

As the latest model in the DS8000 series, DS8870 can bring simplicity to your storage environment by flexibly supporting a mix of random and sequential application workloads on an extensive variety of distributed server platforms, as well as the mainframe. And with the self-tuning agility to manage all these workloads simultaneously, DS8870 can greatly reduce the challenge of managing your increasingly complex storage environment as your business requirements change over time.

DS8870 offers a range of self-tuning features—such as intelligent caching algorithms, automated quality-of-service (QoS) management and advanced storage tiering—that can even coordinate optimal data placement between the system itself and the enterprise servers attached to it. This is smarter storage for a smarter planet, and for organisations seeking the ultimate in performance and agility, DS8870 is the right choice.

The System Storage DS8000 series offers high-performance, high-capacity, secure storage systems that are designed to deliver the highest levels of performance, flexibility, scalability, resiliency and total overall value for the most demanding, heterogeneous storage environments.

Common features

Easy Tier automatically helps optimise performance and capacity utilisation of multi-tier and single-tier systems.
Flexible drive options include enterprise spinning drives, nearline drives and ultra-fast solid-state drives (SSDs).
High-capacity cache and intelligent caching algorithms accelerate performance.
IBM Storage graphical user interface simplifies and centralizes storage management, enabling more effective consolidation.
Fully redundant design and greater-than-five-nines* availability are provided with market-proven IBM Power Systems™ architecture.
IBM FlashCopy®, Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, Metro/Global Mirror and Global Copy provide flexible replication services to address backup and business-continuity needs.
Storage Pool Striping can prevent disk “hot spots.”
I/O Priority Manager automates quality of service (QoS) for all application volumes.
Advanced integration with IBM server platforms and IBM database software.
Provides efficiency capabilities such as agile storage pool design, solid-state storage, thin provisioning, Easy Tier and Dynamic Volume Expansion
Self-encrypting drives and standards-based key manager provide advanced protection of data at rest.

Hardware summary

IBM Power-based symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) controllers
Host adapters: 4- and 8-port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel/IBM FICON®; scalable from 2 to 32 adapters and up to 128 ports
Drive adapters: Up to 16 4-port, 8 Gbps Fibre Channel adapters
Drive options: SSDs, enterprise 15k rpm and 10k rpm drives, 7.2k rpm nearline drives; scalable from 16 to 1,536 drives
All-flash option for ultra fast data access
Processor memory for cache and nonvolatile storage scalable from 16 GB to more than 1 TB
System capacity scalable from 1 TB to more than 2 PB of physical capacity
Business Class option for entry-level deployments

¹ IBM CEO Study, “Capitalizing on Complexity,” 2010.
* IBM Internal Performance Benchmark Results; five-nines and six-nines are terms used to denote that a piece of equipment is functioning with 99.999 and 99.9999 percent availability on average.

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