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IBM Storwize V7000 – a return to form for IBM?

I took some time out of my schedule to attend the storage launch of IBM’s latest and greatest mid-range

storage virtualisation product at the Tate Modern Museum in London last week. I was curious to see what was behind all this new marketing steam train of a new era in storage management. IBM hasn’t exactly set the world on fire over the course of the last number of years in the storage mid-range market, opting to OEM other technologies as part of the brand rather than develop their own IP. After all, IBM is a services company these days you know!

In a very low-key (squashed!) setting, there was a plethora of build up storage updates and announcements leading up to the new storage launch. After a short mid-stream break to waken up the sleepy audience, it was onto the big announcement of the day – the IBM Storwize V7000. The presentation was over in a flash, and even through Barry Whyte was on hand to give a hands-on demo of the new “child's play” management interface – the whole affair was a bit lacklustre – however, there was enough content to make us all sit up and listen as to what IBM was doing in this space. As an avid researcher and follower of trends in the data storage market, it's rare enough that a new storage product gets me excited – but this one did!

 

If you peel back the marketing branding layers that surround the new Storwize V7000 product  -there is in fact no Storwize compression technology at all. You mightn’t have even heard of it, but IBM picked up some more new storage technology IP back in August this year when it acquired Storwize – the real-time data compression folk. Unlike some of the other vendors, IBM doesn’t get involved in the usual goliath technology bidding wars such as the recent DELL/HP/3PAR debacle which HP finally managed to secure for a tidy sum of $2.35billion (a lot of cash when you consider HP only sells about $3billion of storage every year), instead they opt for the equally impressive, but less well known start-ups.

 

Storwize compression is not the only feature missing from this new launch – surprisingly even though the storage unit supports 1Gbps iSCSI connections, native IP replication is not available at launch – and probably not going to be available for another 18 months. Instead, TSM Fastback will be leveraged to deliver host-based replication in conjunction with the V7000.

So what's so interesting/groundbreaking about this new release? Well, thought you might ask that… but there are some very interesting/differentiating points to this new solution that I think will go down well very well with customers.

The Storwize V7000 is essentially the new IBM Virtual Disk System (VDS) in a new packaging format. It combines the existing VDS solution which comprised of the IBM SAN Volume Controller virtualisation appliance & DS disk with an enhanced version of the renowned XIV easy-to-use interface, the enterprise RAID code from the DS8000 storage systems and condensed into a smaller form factor disk enclosure which is clearly targeted at the mid-market sector. Add in all the usual extras such as automated data tiering (IBM EasyTier), iSCSI, 8Gbps FC, SSD, 10k SAS and high capacity 2TB SAS Nearline drives, Thin Provisioning and all the other usual features – it's quite the attractive bundle.  Combine the SVC code with EasyTier and you can now tier data outside of the internal disk within the V7000 onto IBM and non-IBM storage systems. You can also perform online data migrations, slashing the time taken to move data to the new storage system. The V7000 can also “virtualise” older legacy storage systems with new technologies such as Thin Provisioning, Replication and Automated Tiering – which will be especially useful to those organisations sweating assets that little bit longer.

What's even more interesting is the price – breaking with tradition where discounts are very small for any newly released product – the development costs for this new solution are very small considering the code has been inconstant development going all the way back to 1999 – meaning that this new product is going to be seriously disruptive in the market especially here in Ireland.

All of this however does create some challenges for IBM, particularly around the XIV product line. When you look at it in detail, the new V7000 is more scalable, performant (the SVC has consistently broken the world record SPC-1 benchmark records – with not even the sight of an XIV benchmark). The V7000 also has enough power in its controllers to manage a DS8000 in addition to a fully populated V7000 storage system!) and more flexible than XIV with the same nice interface – arguably the XIV’s biggest selling point. You also have to wonder how much of an impact the V7000 has had on Moshe Yanai’s departure from IBM in August this year (the founder of EMC’s Symmetrix storage line and the XIV company before being acquired by IBM).

IBM are clearly well aware of this challenge and are trying as best they can to position both products  within their portfolio with the XIV being positioned for 50TB+ situations – and the V7000 everything below it. I suspect the Vxxx labelling is IBM’s new marketing brand for mid-range storage, and I wouldn’t be surprised if IBM take the IP acquired from the XIV acquisition and develop a V9000 range that enhances the current V7000 offering with the GRID based architecture of the XIV.

In saying all of that, IBM do have to be applauded. This is a true return to form for IBM in the mid-range storage space doing what they do best.  They have been noticeably absent from this space for a number of years which has hurt their storage revenues, and while it does place a huge question mark over the current DS4000/5000 range which is OEMd from Engenio/LSI  - this new solution is bang on the money and delivers features that customers are looking for today.

When a new product such as the new Storwize V7000 becomes No.2 on their IBM Global priority list – second only to the new mainframe announcements – you begin to realise how important this is for IBM. 

 

Rowan O'Donoghue has over 17 years experience in the IT industry with organisations such as Digital, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, COMIT Gruppe and Perot Systems prior to joining Origina in 2000. He is the Director of Innovation & Development in Origina.