Introduced in 2010, the IBM Storwize family of storage products is one of the most successful launches of a new product family in the long history of IBM storage. The Storwize family has also shown itself to be of very high quality with five nines availability—which translates to being offline for just five minutes per year. In 2012, IBM won the SearchStorage Midrange Array Quality Award in only the second full year of Storwize production. The Storwize family uses the same proven software from SVC and provides the same interface and similar capabilities across the product line. As a strategic element in the success of the IBM storage business, the Storwize family is planned for future growth over time.
Storage systems in the Storwize family
IBM Storwize V7000 and V7000 Unified
Highly scalable midrange, virtualized storage designed to consolidate workloads into a single system for simplicity of management, reduced cost, storage efficiency, superior performance and high availability.
IBM Storwize V3700
Easy to use, efficient and affordable entry block storage designed to address growing data requirements and infrastructure consolidation needs with sophisticated capability unusual for a system of this class.
IBM Flex System V7000 Storage Node
Powerful storage designed to enable rapid storage deployment and management simplicity through integration with compute, storage, networking, virtualization and management in IBM PureFlex System or IBM Flex System infrastructure.
IBM SAN Volume Controller
Industry-leading storage virtualization that enhances existing storage, helps improve productivity and availability, and reduces cost.
IBM Storwize V3700 Announcement Highlights
IT Directors, IT Staff, and C-Level Executives of Small to Medium businesses need easy to manage, affordable, efficient and flexible storage to address growing data requirements and consolidation needs. IBM provides an easy-to-use entry block storage system that delivers manageability, high performance, and sophisticated functionality at an affordable price.
Some fast facts from IBM:
- Customers through 1Q13 have purchased over 23,000 IBM Storwize systems and 56,000 enclosures totalling over 760 petabytes and one million drives while delivering five nines availability. These sales include the Storwize V3000, V7000 and V7000 Unified systems.
On August 27, IBM further enhanced the IBM Storwize V3700 with:
- increased maximum capacity by 30%
- new 4TB 7,200 rpm 6Gb SAS NL 3.5″ HDD
- lower list prices on selected existing disk drives
- new DC-powered models that meet telecommunications industry standards.
TRIAL: Coupled with the June 10th announcements, customers via the GUI can initiate a one time only 90 day trial for optional advanced functions to deploy SSDs more cost effectively with Easy Tier, or Increase performance up to 30% with Turbo Performance, or implement sophisticated data protection with optional FlashCopy upgrade and Remote Mirroring.
Or by simply upgrading the IBM Storwize V3700 7.1 machine code via download for no charge, customers can enable high performance shared storage to improve efficiency with SAS host attach connectivity.
Other Resources: IBM Storwize Infographic | IBM Storage Products
Matt Cleland is the Director of Storage Solution with Sirius Computer Solutions.
