The IBM System Storage® DS8000® 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.
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World-class performance to help optimize responsiveness in an on-demand world

The DS8000 series and is built on powerful and market-proven IBM POWER microprocessors in dual two-way or dual four-way shared Symmetric Multi-Processor (SMP) complexes. The new DS8800 model introduces a new generation of hardware and is the fastest disk system in the IBM storage portfolio. With dual IBM POWER6+ controllers, 8 Gb/s host and device adapters, and 6 Gb/s SAS (serial-attached SCSI) disk drives, the DS8800 delivers a new level of performance in a design that condenses more data in a smaller footprint. Compared to the POWER6® processor in DS8700 models, the POWER6+ processor offers up to over a 40 percent performance improvement. What’s more, the new 8 Gb/s host adapters effectively double the single-port performance of the DS8700. These upgrades, along with the new 2.5-inch SAS drives, deliver a dramatic boost in data throughput in a more compact footprint – a powerful combination aimed at taming the most demanding enterprise applications.

The decision to base the DS8000 design on the IBM Power architecture is complemented by two additional tiers of high-performance processors within the system’s host and device adapters, which are designed to further add to the DS8000’s outstanding, balanced performance.   Data Sheet

The efficiency of a storage system’s cache can also greatly improve input/output (I/O) performance, as well as reduce the system’s overall cache requirements. The caching algorithms in the DS8000 series are designed to intelligently and dynamically adapt system caching to the specific needs of the current workload. This is intended to help the system deliver an unimpeded flow of information for outstanding throughput. One example is the Intelligent Write Caching algorithm, which combines and balances the benefits of the most effective read and write caching algorithms to determine how the write cache should be managed for optimal throughput. Another is the Adaptive Multistream Pre-fetching (AMP) algorithm, which is designed to dramatically improve performance for sequential and batch processing applications, such as data backup, business analytics and data warehouse workloads.

The DS8000 series also includes a variety of features designed to extend the performance of IBM server environments. The Cooperative Caching and I/O Priority functions can help enable greater cache efficiency and performance for higher priority IBM DB2® applications running on IBM System p® servers with the IBM AIX® operating system. And recent enhancements for High Performance FICON® for System z® enable users to enjoy faster performance over longer distances.

In addition to its performance gains, the DS8700 model reuses over 90 percent of the microcode of the previous DS8300 model to help provide the reliability and high availability requirements expected of high-end disk systems. The new DS8800 model reuses over 85 percent of the microcode of the DS8700. Existing clients will also appreciate the fact that most remote mirror and copy functions are interoperable across both older and newer DS8000 models, as well as with older IBM TotalStorage® Enterprise Storage Server™ (ESS) models. This underscores our commitment to providing our clients the performance, reliability and value you’ve come to expect from IBM.

Make business continuity a reality with high-availability architecture

The DS8000 series is designed to help address the needs of dynamic environments requiring the highest levels of availability. It is designed to support dynamic system changes, such as online system microcode updates and online hardware upgrades. The DS8000 also features redundant, hot-swappable components to help support continuous operations. This highly resilient design and its five-nines availability can make the DS8000 series an ideal storage platform for supporting today’s round-the-clock, global business environment.

All disks are RAID-protected, such that multiple spare disks are configured in a RAID group to allow a failed, RAID-protected disk to be rebuilt quickly and automatically to maintain access to information. The DS8000 series supports RAID-5, RAID-6 and RAID-10 configurations for increased flexibility. Each DS8000 system is built to monitor its own internal functions, so it can “call home” automatically to alert service personnel if it detects a potential problem arising. Sophisticated Light Path Diagnostics also facilitate system maintenance, and the DS8000 series also offers an audit log security function designed to log changes made by administrators to aid in root cause analysis.

In addition to its exceptionally resilient architecture, the DS8000 series offers an array of advanced functions for data backup, remote mirroring and disaster recovery. The DS8000’s advanced two-site and three-site business continuity capabilities can give you the peace of mind of knowing your mission-critical applications will be available when you need them during both planned and unplanned system outages. For applications that cannot suffer any data loss in the event of a failure, IBM Metro Mirror provides the foundation for exceptionally fast mirror-based recovery time. IBM Global Mirror can keep data at the remote site current to within three to five seconds of the local site. With this type of resiliency and high availability, it’s no wonder clients turn to the DS8000 to support their most important business applications.
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Adapt to a changing world with exceptional flexibility and scalability

The DS8000 series is known for its unique combination of flexibility, resiliency, performance, and scalability, which can help address the many challenges stemming from the exponential growth of data across the enterprise. Savvy businesses are looking for innovative ways to manage and adapt in today’s increasingly competitive, global business environment, and the DS8000 series is designed to meet this challenge with broad interoperability and support for open industry standards.

To help accommodate real-time workload fluctuations, the DS8000 series supports the addition, deletion and dynamic expansion of storage capacity on the fly to help meet sudden spikes in demand or to react to other environmental changes. Dynamic Volume Expansion and Thin Provisioning can not only help reduce the need to disrupt your applications to add capacity, these features also can significantly reduce the amount of time administrators spend provisioning new storage, which can help reduce management costs across your environment.

If your organization needs the flexibility to run a mix of performance-optimized workloads alongside those that might require a little less performance, yet still provide the reliability that a tier-one disk system affords, the DS8000 can help with that, too. With the capability to adeptly balance workloads on different tiers of drives (e.g. SSDs, Fibre Channel, SAS, SATA), you can have all the flexibility you need to consolidate a variety of disk platforms on a single DS8000 system, and the Easy Tier feature makes workload optimization even easier. Another example of the flexibility and modularity of the DS8000 series is the ability to increase physical storage capacity within a frame or a drive enclosure without system disruption

The DS8000 series also supports a variety of major server platforms, including IBM z/OS, z/VM®, Linux® on System z, OS/400®, i5/OS® and AIX operating systems, as well as Linux, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Novell NetWare, VMware and Microsoft® Windows® environments, among others. With such broad platform support, the DS8000 series can easily accommodate a wide array of applications and their distinct service levels.

Common features		Hardware summary
Built with market-proven IBM POWER server architecture Drive packages containing 8, 16 or 24 drives ranging from 73 GB up to 2 TB disk capacities (solid-state, Fibre Channel, SAS-2 and SATA)   IBM FlashCopy, Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, Metro/Global Mirror and Global Copy provide flexible replication services to address backup and business continuity needs   IBM System Storage Productivity Center centralizes heterogeneous storage management with an easy-to-use graphical interface   IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager offers application-aware backup and restore capabilities.		Options include 4-port 4 Gb/s or 4- and 8-port 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel/FICON host adapter interfaces   Options include from 2 to 32 host adapters and up to 128 FC/FICON host ports   Fibre Channel arbitrated loop (FC-AL) or 6Gb/s serial-attached SCSI (SAS-2) drive interface options   Minimum of 8 drives and maximum of 1,056 drives   Dual Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) processor complexes   Up to 384 GB memory with innovative caching algorithms   From less than 1 TB and up to 2048 TB of physical capacity, upgradeable without system disruption

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Dual Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) IBM POWER® processor complexes Reduces cycle times and accelerates response times for faster access to data

High-capacity cache with innovative caching algorithms Helps optimize the current workload with dynamically self-tuning cache usage   Supports unimpeded flow of data to facilitate smooth data flow

Internal Fibre Channel interconnect Boosts performance for improved all-around throughput

High-performance solid-state, Fibre Channel, SAS-2 and high-capacity SATA drive options* Helps support tiered storage environments and consolidation of multiple storage systems onto single DS8000 system

IBM System Storage Easy Tier Monitors data throughput and automates placement of data across the appropriate drive tiers to optimize current workload requirements

IBM DS8000 Storage Tier Advisor Provides an easy-to-use tool that can help determine which volumes are likely candidates for Easy Tier optimization by analyzing the performance of their current application workloads

Scalable from less than 1 TB up to 2048 TB of physical capacity, upgradeable without system disruption Enables capacity upgrades to address the dynamic needs of your business   Increases capacity while avoiding business disruption

Thin Provisioning Reduces storage administration costs by automating process of capacity provisioning

IBM Full Disk Encrypting drives Protects sensitive information from internal and external threats

Support for IBM deduplication technology Helps substantially decrease the capacity needed to perform disk-to-disk backups and helps enable additional storage consolidation

IBM server synergy Helps improve performance and efficiency for IBM System z® environments and features with advanced support for High Performance FICON® for System z, z/OS® Metro/Global Mirror Incremental Resync, Parallel Access Volumes (PAV), HyperPAV, z/OS Global Mirror Multiple Reader, Extended Address Volumes, Extended Distance FICON, Basic HyperSwap®, and support for IBM System z MIDAW facility   Helps enable greater performance and efficiency for higher-priority IBM AIX® DB2® applications running on IBM System p servers with the Cooperative Caching feature   Provides outstanding support for IBM System i®, IBM System p and IBM System x® environments

IBM FlashCopy Helps ensure data recovery in the event of source data loss with point-in-time data copies for backup or replication   Enables data to be copied in the background while making both source and copied data available to users almost immediately

IBM FlashCopy SE Provides a space-efficient snapshot capability that can greatly reduce the storage capacity needed for point-in-time copies

IBM Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy Manager Provides application-aware FlashCopy for popular enterprise applications

IBM Metro Mirror, Global Mirror, Metro/Global Mirror, z/OS Metro/Global Mirror and Global Copy           Creates duplicate copies of data at remote sites Provides flexible options to support multiple two-site and three-site business continuity scenarios Provides users access to data during planned and unplanned system and site outages

Support for Internet Protocol Version 6 Provides next-generation IP protocol with increased security, addressing space, and routing performance and services