End of Marketing of Disk Modules on DS6000 and DS8000

Every time we see a new DDM appearing, some time later the oldest generation is withdrawn from marketing. Some time ago we saw the announcement of the 600GB DDMs. So, now we see the end of marketing announced of the 146GB DDMs on the DS6000 (ZG10-0193) as well as on the DS8000 (ZG10-0198).

For the DS6000 it's a pretty straightforward message : you can order them until September 30,2010 and afterwards you have the choice between 300GB or 450GB disks.

For the DS8000 it's a bit more complicated. The announcement is only made, for the moment, for the DS8100 (Model 931) and the DS8300 (Model 932), but not for the DS8700 (Model 941). And there's more than just the 146GB disks. You might say, wasn't there an announcement that the DS8700 would replace the DS8100 and the DS8300. Yes, there was and I discussed it over here. Still, as I indicated then, too, this only prohibited customers from buying new DS8100/DS8300 systems. You could and can still make upgrades to existing systems. However, this announcement limits these upgrades.

The three parts of the announcement I want to mention :

• If I read this correctly new DS8100s (Model 931) and new DS8300s (Model 932) can still be ordered until September 30, 2010 instead of the earlier announced June 11, 2010.
• The 146GB disks will also be End of Marketing as of September 30, 2010.
• On top of this, also the 1TB disks are End of Marketing. These even have an earlier date : last chance to order is on July 2, 2010.

For further details, do check out the announcement itself.

DS8700 replaces DS8100, DS8300 ànd DS6800

Of course we were expecting to see the withdrawal of the DS8100 and the DS8300 when the DS8700 was announced last year. But, we see that also the DS6800 is withdrawn from marketing in favor of the DS8700. This is summed up in three announcements.

• ZG10-0079 : Hardware withdrawal of models 931 (DS8100) and 932 (DS8300) for all DS8000 machine types (242x). They are replaced by model 941 (DS8700).
  As there is no mention of model 92E, the expansion unit, does this mean that you can still add expansion frames to your existing boxes ? And, I didn't notice this before, but apparently the DS8700 no longer has the Earthquake Resistance Kit.
• ZG10-0067 : Hardware withdrawal of the DS6000 Series Model 522. The DS6800 is also replaced by the DS8700. No mention of the expansion unit either.
• ZG10-0074 : Revised availability : IBM System Storage DS8700 model conversions. The following model conversions will be available : from 931 to 941 (2-way), from 932 to 941 (4-way) and from 92E to 94E.
  

The withdrawals become effective June 11, 2010. The model conversions will be available March 26, 2010.

October 2008 Announcements : Disk Storage

Here's my last of four posts on the IBM announcements of last week. I've already discussed most of the really new stuff like e.g. zHPF (High Performance FICON for System z). So here's a summary.

The DS6000 follows the DS8000 regarding old and new harddrives. The 73GB disks will be withdrawn from marketing as of March 27, 2009 (ZG08-0890). But, don't worry, just like on the DS8000, new 450GB 15k rpm disks are available on November 21, 2008 (ZG08-0911). But, what should be really nice about this, is that there seems to be no performance loss as compared to the 300GB disks, on the contrary. Tony Pearson mentions this on his 'Inside System Storage' blog. Just look at the graph he's including in this post. And, by the way, if you want to follow the IBM Storage scene closely, be sure to check out his blog regularly !

On to the DS8000 : Here we have announcements for zHPF and RMZ resync (z/OS Metro/Global Mirror Incremental Resync). I would really want to refer once more to Tony Pearsons post as he really has a very intelligible description of the two features. To make things easy for those who want to read the announcements, there're four of them, two for each DS8000 machine type. For the 2107 : ZG08-0905 and ZG08-0907. For the 242x series : ZG08-0906 and ZG08-0908.

DS8000-DS6000 : EOM of 500GB FATA drives

I was a bit surprised to read these announcements last Tuesday about 'Hardware withdrawals of selected features ' for the DS6000 (ZG08-0837) and the DS8000 (ZG08-0836).The announcements are quite short : the 500GB 7.200rpm FATA drives are withdrawn from marketing and are no longer available as of October 17, 2008. But what I still find more suprising is the replacement section : 'None'.
But then it occurred to me that there had been a 'preview' of a 1TB 7.200 rpm SATA disk in the latest DS8000 announcement (ZG08-0394) : "IBM intends to enhance the configuration options of the DS8000 series with support for 1 TB 7,200 RPM SATA disk drives, doubling the raw capacity of existing models up to 1024 TB for DS8300 Turbo Models and up to 384 TB for DS8100 Turbo Models. IBM intends to provide this capability in early 2009". So most likely FATA will be out of the picture but it's a bit strange that the 500GB drives disappear some months before the 1TB drives are likely to be marketed ?

Announcement : DS6000

There are some announcements on the DS6000 too.

First of all, similar to former announcements on the DS8000 there's the withdrawal of the 146GB 10k rpm and the 300GB 10k rpm disks. These will be replaced by the 146GB 15k rpm and the 300GB 15k rpm disks. This will be effective January 11, 2008. Hence the announcement of new 300GB 15k rpm disk drives for the DS6000.

Secondly there's the withdrawal of the 1-, 2- and 3-year extended warranty one could choose when purchasing a new DS6000. I'm a bit puzzled by this one as I've no idea why this has been withdrawn.

A quick capacity table for DS6000 and DS8000

This "Quick Capacity Table for DS6000-DS8000" is also published at Techdocs. It's a spreadsheet that lets you do a quick capacity sizing for the DS6000 and the DS8000 showing physical as well as effective capacity. Watch out, there's several tabs to the spreadsheet. The third e.g. is the DS8000 sizing tab. You have to specify the DS8000 Model, Disk type and format and the Raid type. After you've initialized the capacity table, you can still switch between 'decimal' and 'binary' capacity and you can change individual disk packs and/or raid configuration for these. Interesting document !