IBM Announces 8-Gig 'Super Director'

IBM unveiled its first "super director" to support 8 Gbit/s Fibre Channel as part of a major hardware refresh today.

Aimed at high-performance computing and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCOE), the 8 Gbit/s SAN768B is being touted as a core component in IBM's long-term data center strategy.

"[The director] is more of a future-looking statement -- there's not a lot of 8 Gig infrastructure out there today, but were moving in that direction," says Charlie Andrews, worldwide marketing manager of IBM's systems storage division.

The SAN768B, which is OEM'd from Brocade, offers double the data transfer rate of its predecessor, the 4 Gbit/s SAN256B. Andrews explained that the SAN768B will also benefit from Brocade's $973 million acquisition of McData, which was completed just over a year ago.

"This is their first high-end director that will interoperate with the previous McData infrastructure," he says, adding that Brocade and McData directors can now be linked in a Fibre Channel SAN.IBM's decision to throw its weight behind 8 Gbit/s Fibre Channel comes at a time when many storage vendors are starting to ramp up their efforts in preparation for next-generation data centers. "What we're seeing is the beginning of the next horse race," says Mike Kahn, managing director of analyst firm Clipper Group. "We're just beginning to see 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 8 Gigabit Fibre Channel SANs."

The SAN768B will be available later this month with an entry-level price of $390,000, although IBM's long-term director roadmap remains cloudy. The vendor says that the SAN 768B and the SAN256B will "co-exist for awhile," though IBM won't say just when the SAN256B will be phased out.

Other vendors that have also OEM'd Brocade's recently announced DCX Backbone include NetApp and Sun.

Clipper Group's Kahn says that many users are not even using all of their 4 Gbit/s Fibre Channel bandwidth at the moment, adding that we are unlikely to see the first real 8 Gbit/s deployments until 2009.

"It will be some time before it becomes the norm," he says, explaining that the first users to deploy the technology are likely to be finance and retail firms with heavy transaction processing demands.Other hardware unveiled by IBM today includes:

DR550 Archiving Systems

IBM launched the DR1 and DR2 versions of its DR550 archive today, claiming tighter integration of core components and the addition of IBM Director software to boost the archives' management capabilities.

"We have some new functionality using the IBM Director," says Andrews. "We're using that to provide unified management, simplified component reporting, and error management."

The 25 rack-unit high DR1, aimed at mid-market users, will be available later this month, priced at $26,000. The high-end, 36 rack-unit high DR2, will be available at the same time, priced at $73,000.

SMB Telco Disk Systems
IBM took the wraps off a telco-specific version of its DS3300 disk system today, the DS3300 DC.The device, which is compliant with the NEBS telecommunications standard, is significantly different to previous versions of the technology, according to Andrews. "The DS3300 DC is an iSCSI box, as opposed to a Fibre Channel box, so it can interoperate over IP networks," he says.

Available later this month, the DS3300 DC will be priced at $9,495.

New LTO drives
Claiming cost savings for users, IBM added "half-height" LTO Ultrium 4 drives to its TS3100 and its TS3200 tape libraries today.

"It's a low-cost, low price, offering that is designed for smaller customers," says Andrews, explaining that the libraries are IBM's first to use the five and quarter inch drives.

The 19.6 Tbyte TS3100 and the 38.4 Tbyte TS3200 will be available next month, with entry-level pricing for the smaller version starting at $8,300. Pricing for the TS3200 starts at $13,605.N7700 & N7900 NAS Systems
The first versions of IBM's high-end N7000 NAS devices, which are both OEM'd from NetApp, were unveiled today. The N7700 and N7900, re-branded versions of NetApp's recently launched FAS 6040 and FAS 6080 devices, support up to 840 Tbytes and 1.2 Pbytes of data.

"This is really for high end of customers that have lots and lots of file-based data, so that they can consolidate that data onto one physical system and reduce all their associated power and cooling costs," says Andrews.

The two devices, which are aimed at large enterprise users looking to consolidate their file-based data, will be available in mid-April. Pricing for the hardware starts at $125,000.

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