IBM unveils storage sub-system

IBM has announced a high-density storage sub-system, the ProSCSI JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) DL200J, which provides an additional 40 per cent of storage sub-system capacity, and is aimed specifically at OEMs and resellers that integrate and sell external storage.

IBM has announced a high-density storage sub-system, the ProSCSI JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) DL200J, which provides an additional 40 per cent of storage sub-system capacity, and is aimed specifically at OEMs and resellers that integrate and sell external storage.

The ProSCSI allows for 14 disk drives, instead of the usual 10, providing 1Tb of storage space, and is available to resellers as either just a sub-system box, enabling them to purchase cheaper disk drives from distributors, or as a sub-system including IBM disk drives.

Suresh Panikar, director of product marketing at IBM, said: "Our sub-system is newly engineered and JBOD allows other drives to be out into the shell. It is part of a new family of products not offered before."

The ProSCSI also allows the user to 'daisy chain' sub-systems, whereby up to four boxes can be added to a server, to enable the user to get up to 4Tb of storage space. The unit is aimed at companies that require a large amount of storage space, such as departmental and web servers.

"The ProSCSI is explicitly targeted towards Sans [storage area networks]. The sub-system family is targeted at San applications, and JBOD complements existing Sans. The additional features added to the sub-system are most suitable for a San environment," said Panikar.

However, Panikar believed the future of storage lies mainly with fibre channel. "Newer technology and performance data reliability will be in the future for storage," he said. "Fibre to fibre and 2Gbit will be the biggest influence for performance, Raid features for data reliability, and larger numbers of drives in smaller sub-systems."