Seeking to offer its customers interoperable storage technologies that reduce the complexity of storage area networks, IBM Corp. on Wednesday announced a new product portfolio.
The new storage offerings serve to assist with data consolidation, data protection, disaster tolerance and data sharing, IBM said in a statement.
The products announced include:
– IBM TotalStorage Networked Attached Storage 300G – The NAS (network attached storage) gateway allows LAN (local area network)-based clients and servers to interoperate with an existing SAN (storage area network). It is a file server that resides between the LAN and the SAN and it works on an open system able to work with multiple storage systems. The single engine version starts at US$44,000 and will be available by March 9, while the dual engine version will cost $95,000 and be available April 27.
– The IBM TotalStorage IP Storage 200i – The iSCSI (small computer system interface) storage appliance connects users to pooled storage on a network using Internet protocols and is designed for department/workgroups, mid-market customers and service providers. ISCSI is an IP (Internet Protocol) storage standard, which transmits native SCSI over a layer of the IP stack. The TotalStorage IP Storage 200i will cost $20,000 and will be available by June.
– Pre-packaged offering – IBM will introduce pre-tested, plug-and-play storage networking packages to assist businesses of all sizes. The packages depend on the business and include the following components: IBM Modular Storage Server (MSS), Ultrium LTO (Linear Tape-Open) tape automation, IBM StorWatch resource management software, Flash Copy and PPRC (peer-to-peer remote copy) advanced copy middleware, plus a SAN Gateway and switches. The pre-packaged offerings are available now and price is based on customer needs.
In addition to its new offerings, IBM announced some enhancements to its SAN capabilities. These include native fiber channel for IBM’s 3584 UltraScalable Tape Library and a 32G byte cache upgrade to IBM’s Enterprise Storage Server (ESS, code named Shark). Native fiber channel will allow router-less SAN connections for the eServer family, Intel Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. platforms, the company said.
The new storage product portfolio will be on display Feb. 25-28 at IBM’s PartnerWorld conference in Atlanta.
IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., can be reached at http://www.ibm.com/.
