IBM Rolls Out New POWER7+ Microprocessor and DS8870 Storage Systems

IBM has announced a new top-of-the-line DS8870 storage system which the company says performs three times faster than the previous top performer in its DS8000 storage family. Along with the new DS8870, IBM has announced a variety of new technologies to improve security, take advantage of cloud computing, and manage large datasets.

IBM has announced a new top-of-the-line DS8870 storage system which the company says performs three times faster than the previous top performer in its DS8000 storage family. Along with the new DS8870, IBM has announced a variety of new technologies to improve security, take advantage of cloud computing, and manage large datasets.

IBM Power7+ Processor

IBM’s new offerings include Power 770 and Power 780 servers featuring the POWER7+ microprocessor. According to IBM, POWER7+ provides a performance boost of up to 40 percent on Java workloads and as much as 30 percent with OLTP and ERP environments compared to the standard POWER7. POWER7+ also expands the POWER7’s L3 cache by 2.5x and maintains the same energy usage as POWER7 processors.

The IBM System Storage DS8870 is the newest member of the DS8000 family of high-density enterprise storage systems. With advanced POWER7 processors and up to 1TB of system cache, the DS8870 delivers up to three times more performance for transaction processing applications than the DS8800. The DS8870 has achieved the highest ranking in the Storage Performance Council’s SPC-2 benchmark.

IBM DS8870 Hardware Overview

• Dual symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) processor complexes
• Support for 2 to 32 host adapters and up to 128 Fibre Channel/IBM FICON host ports
• Options include 4-port 4 gigabits per second (Gbps) or 4- and 8-port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel/FICON host adapters
• Fibre Channel arbitrated loop or 6 Gbps SAS-2 drive interface options
• Minimum of eight drives and maximum of 1,536 drives
• Up to 1 terabyte (TB) system memory
• Supports 5 TB to more than 2,300 TB of physical capacity, upgradeable without system disruption

Other Enterprise Roll-Outs

IBM has updated its IBM Virtualization Engine TS7700 with Release 3, helping storage administrators virtualize tape storage systems with end-to-end encryption and the ability to connect up to six systems in a grid for improved access and redundancy. IBM has also announced a Software Defined Networking controller that provides intelligent software for IBM RackSwitch and other OpenFlow-enabled switches to create virtual networks.

IBM’s updated Security zSecure Suite V1.31.1 spots unusual activity before a system is compromised, with real-time alerts, network behavior analytics, and management for security audits. IBM Security zSecure V1.31.1 can be integrated with QRadar SIEM for security information and event management to provide enterprise-wide security monitoring.

IBM’s Smarter Computing Initiative

IBM System Storage DS8870

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