IBM System Storage DS5000 series

Workload optimized storage for today’s demanding applications

IBM System Storage® DS5100 and DS5300 controllers and selected features are no longer available to be ordered directly from IBM. The IBMLink ServiceLink library of answered questions, features and other technical information for the product remains available. Please refer to the withdrawal announcement (PDF, 50KB) for more details.

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Highlights

  • Provide balanced performance—up to 700,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) and 6,400 MB/s—that is well-suited for virtualization and consolidation
  • Scale up to 448 drives (1.34 PB) using the EXP5000 enclosure and up to 480 drives (1.44 PB) of high-density storage with the EXP5060 enclosure
  • Allow for intermixing drive types (Fibre Channel, FC-SAS, FC-SAS nearline, self-encrypting drives [SEDs], SATA and solid-state drives [SSDs]) and host interfaces (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) for investment protection and cost-effective tiered storage
  • Support high availability with hot-swappable components and nondisruptive firmware upgrades

The IBM® System Storage® DS5000 series is designed to meet the demanding open-systems requirements of today—and tomorrow—while establishing a new standard for lifecycle longevity. Building on many decades of design expertise, the DS5000 storage system’s architecture delivers industry-leading performance, real reliability, multidimensional scalability and unprecedented investment protection. DS5000 supports IBM AIX® and IBM Power Systems™ T10-PI Data Integrity Initiative.

DS5000 storage systems are equally adept at supporting transactional applications such as databases and online transaction processing (OLTP), throughput-intensive applications such as high-performance computing (HPC) and rich media, and concurrent workloads for consolidation and virtualization. With relentless performance and superior reliability and availability, DS5000 series storage systems can support the most demanding service level agreements (SLAs) for the most common operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux and Apple Macintosh. When requirements change, you can add or replace host interfaces, grow capacity, add cache and reconfigure the system on the fly—ensuring that it will keep pace with your growing organization.

This multidimensional scalability allows the DS5000 series storage system to extend beyond the normal three- to four-year lifecycle, protecting your storage investment by delaying, or even eliminating, the expense of migrating data to a new system and allowing you to amortize acquisition costs over extended periods of time. This lifecycle longevity enables DS5000 storage systems to continue delivering value long after other systems have been retired. With drive-level encryption, DS5000 series storage systems support affordable data security with no performance penalty. The DS5000 storage system’s multiple replication options, drive-level encryption, and persistent cache backup can help ensure that any data in cache is captured and safe in the event of a power outage.

Common features

  • Efficient, compact 4U packaging designed for 19-inch rack
  • “Pay-as-you-grow” designed to support nondisruptive growth
  • Easy-to-use, easy-to-configure management interface able to manage IBM System Storage DS3000, IBM System Storage DS4000® and IBM System Storage DS5000 series storage systems
  • Concurrent hardware upgrades and firmware loads support high-availability design
  • Connectivity to IBM storage area network (SAN) switches, directors and routers
  • Heterogeneous support for the most common operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Linux and Apple Macintosh

Hardware summary

  • Next-generation enterprise controller technology
  • Field-replaceable host interface cards (HIC)—two per controller
  • Current release supports four 8 Gbps Fibre Channel HICs or one 10 Gbps iSCSI—dual ported (sixteen total host ports)
  • Sixteen 4 Gbps Fibre Channel drive interfaces support up to 28 EXP5000 drive enclosures or 8 EXP5060 drive enclosures
  • 448 Fibre Channel, FC-SAS/SATA, FC-SAS nearline, SSD or SED drives if using twenty-eight EXP5000 drive enclosures
  • or 480 SATA drives if using eight EXP5060 drive enclosures
  • Up to a total of 64 GB cache
  • Options include 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB or 32 GB of cache per controller
  • Dedicated cache mirroring channels
  • Persistent cache backup in the event of a power outage
  • Field-upgradable
  • Support for RAID 6, 5, 3, 10, 1, 0
  • Two performance levels (base: DS5100 and high: DS5300) with ability to field-upgrade performance levels

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