NEW - DS3000 FIRMWARE Update with Additional Features

Announcement Date: October 14, 2008 / General Availability: October 27, 2008

IBM has enhanced the functionality of the System Storage DS3000 series entry storage family by adding support for RAID 6, expanding the number of storage partitions, increasing the number of FlashCopies per volume, adding support for a higher-capacity SAS disk drive, and introducing Solaris server support and other enhancements.

Some of the major enhancements include:

• RAID 6 support - DS3000 controllers employ high-performance, hardware-enabled RAID 6 support. RAID 6 technology is designed to provide improved data protection against multiple disk drive failure.
• Expanded storage partitions - The number of storage partitions supported by the DS3000 has been expanded up to 32 partitions. This enables DS3000 controllers to provide isolated data storage for a larger number of host servers.
• Increased number of FlashCopies - The number of FlashCopies per volume on DS3000 controllers has been expanded to eight. This allows more frequent data backups and increased data protection.
• 450 GB/15,000 rpm Hot-Swap SAS HDD option - Support for a new 450 GB/15K SAS disk drive has been added. This increases the total amount of high-performance storage capacity available to servers and applications.
• DS3000 Solaris Host License - The DS3000 series now includes host support for Sun Solaris on Intel® and SPARC servers. This new option gives small and medium-sized businesses a new low-cost storage alternative.
• Greater than 2TB LUNS - new size is ~4PB, depending on host OS
• RAS enhancements.
• Ability to import/export an array set - Array Migration Feature is productized
• Up to 48 drives in a RAID0 and RAID1 array
• Expanded support for DS3200 support for Bladecenter - Previously, the DS3200 wasn’t exactly supported (we had the Bladecenter Boot systems that was only used for boot volumes only). Now the DS3200 can be used for both boot volumes and for Data volumes (just like the DS3300 and the DS3400).

The firmware being released soon is considered a major update (similar to the SM10.x update for the DS4000). Because of this, it will require some downtime, and it does have a separate firmware update utility.

The good news is that the webcast was recorded and can still be viewed in playback mode. Just go to the URL:

http://sym6.centra.com/main/Customers/Engenio/fasttu/User/GuestAttend.jhtml?s_guid=00000125d92c0000011c69d5213683c9

And select the playback option.

44W2136 DS3000 Solaris Host License
44W2138 DS3000 8 Partition License
44W2140 DS3000 32 Partition License
44W2142 DS3000 8 to 16 Partition Upgrade License
44W2144 DS3000 8 to 32 Partition Upgrade License
44W2149 DS3000 FlashCopy Expansion Plus License
44W2152 DS3000 16 to 32 Partition Upgrade License