DS8000 - Withdrawal of hardware features

I've written about this before. Whenever there's an announcement of withdrawal of hardware features on the DS8000 it's always hard to determine whether it applies to your system as so many model numbers have passed by since its first announcement in 2004. Today there was another announcement : 'Hardware withdrawal: IBM System Storage DS8000 select features - Some replacements available (ZG13-0253)'.

So to help you read this here's a short summary. The machine type is always 2421, 2422, 2423 or 2424. The last number indicates the number of years of warranty that is delivered with the system. The model type indicates, yes, the model you've bought. Here's an overview :

DS8100 (Models 921 and 931)
DS8300 (Models 922, 932, 9A2, 9B2, 92E, 9AE)
DS8700 (Models 941 and 94E)
DS8800 (Models 951 and 95E)
DS8870 (Models 961 and 96E)

A letter in the model type indicates an expansion frame.

So let's turn to the whole list of features that's published in the announcement. I would summarize by saying that the last disks that were still available on the DS8100 and DS8300 are now no longer available : the 300GB and the 450GB disks. If you see the whole list, together with previous announcements I cannot think of anything that's still orderable on the DS8100 and DS8300. After all 9 years is a nice lifespan.

Furthermore the 2TB disks are withdrawn on the DS8700 and if you buy a new DS8870 it will be with Licensed Machine Code (LMC) R7.1.