A couple of DS8000 announcements

You know what, I'm always struggling with all those feature codes from the DS8000 family. And if the announcement has a wrong title, it's only adding up to the trouble. Here's e.g. 'Revised availability: Select IBM DS8700 MES features and feature conversions (ZG14-0135)'. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out this is actually about the DS8870 because it's about the 2421-961 up to the 2424-961 and not the 941 which is the DS8700. But the announcement is actually good news. Field upgrades from a P7+ core to another P7+ core will be possible as from today instead of June 6, 2014. On a DS8870 of course. GA for field upgrades from a P7 to P7+ remains on June 6, 2014 as was announced already last year over here (ZG13-0298).

But there is also news about the DS8700 in the following announcement : 'Hardware withdrawal: IBM System Storage DS8700 Expansion Unit and select features - Some replacements available (ZG14-0059)'. Let me try to translate some of the feature codes for you. First the DS8870. In April you will only be able to order a DS8870 with LMC R7.2 and as of July 7 only P7+ cores can be ordered. For the DS8700, as of October 1 no more expansion units can be ordered. And if I read the rest correctly you cannot longer order any host adapters, memory, cables nor 300GB, 450GB or 600GB disk drive sets. Since the 1TB drives were already withdrawn, there's nothing much left to order on a DS8700. I guess you might still be able to order some SSD drives, but I'm not too confident about that.