Maxed Out
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May 12, 2008
IBM Gets Nimble With New Tape Drive
IBM usually churns out one product after another in a fairly predictable fashion, following the conventions its customers have come to expect all these years. However, in a rapid response to customer demand, later this month IBM will ship a new tape drive ahead of schedule -- so much so that a formal IBM announcement letter describing the offering isn't even available yet. The solution? New support for a high-speed LTO Ultrium 4 SAS tape drive for the Power 520 and Power 550 systems. Previously, IBM only offered support for a 4mm DAT tape drive.
Kurt Rump, from IBM's Executive Briefing Center in Rochester, Minnesota, contacted me with the information. Here's the background from Kurt, as well as the details:
Background:Recently, in the interest of getting a new capability into the marketplace faster, IBM circumvented the normal announcement letter process, so there will be no formal announcement letter to reference. Meanwhile, we still want the i community to be aware of this new capability.
When we announced the Power 520 and Power 550 in April, the system units provided space for one half-high media bay for an SAS tape drive. However, the only tape drive available to mount in that space was a 4mm DAT drive. The product team got a lot of feedback on that because so many customers are using other technologies such as LTO or QIC (Quarter Inch Cartridge) drives. In response, the team accelerated the development of a SAS LTO Ultrium 4 drive that could be mounted in the same space, resulting in a higher speed, higher capacity, and more compatible offering. The drive is announced with a planned availability of May 30, 2008.
Details:
Support for a high-capacity, high-speed LTO Ultrium 4 SAS tape drive has been announced for the Power 520 (9407-M15, 9408-M25) and the Power 550 (9409-M50) systems. This drive mounts into the embedded half-high bay in the system unit. Previously, only a 4mm DAT tape drive was available for this bay. General availability of the LTO Ultrium 4 drive (hereafter referred to as LTO-4) is planned for May 30, 2008.
The capacity of an LTO-4 tape cartridge is 800 GB uncompressed or 1.6 TB with typical 2x compression. The rated native data transfer of the tape drive is up to 120MB/sec. The drive is compatible with LTO-4 (Read/Write), LTO-3 (Read/Write), and LTO-2 (Read) media. It is priced very attractively compared to the 200 GB LTO-2 SCSI tape drive, which is available in the POWER5 515, 520, and 525 system units, while offering up to 4x the capacity and up to 5x the transfer rate of that tape drive. Performance and capacity compare even more favorably to the 36 GB DAT 4mm tape, previously the only SAS tape option available for the embedded tape bay in these new POWER6 systems. The LTO-4 SAS tape drive is ordered as feature #5746 and is placed in the half-high tape bay/slot of the system unit.
There is also an optional #5747 feature that ships five LTO-4 tape cartridges for customer convenience.
The LTO-4 tape drive will require PTFs to be loaded on the system for either IBM i 5.4 or 6.1. IBM plans to have the PTFs available by May 30.
Required PTFs for the tape drive:
- V5R4M5 = MF44592
- V6R1 = MF44593
Optional, but highly recommended:
- V5R4M5 = MF44542 and MF44543
- V6R1 = MF44640 and MF44641
This tape drive can either be shipped with a new system or ordered as an MES for installation in an existing Power 520 or Power 550. It is a customer set-up (CSU) feature.
The prerequisites for this tape drive are
- an empty tape drive bay/slot in the Power 520/550 system unit
- a #3655 half-high SAS cable which goes inside the system unit
- required PTFs
In an effort to be responsive to feedback from the i community, IBM made some significant schedule improvements to bring this tape drive to market ahead of plan; however, due to the accelerated schedule, there is no formal announcement letter for this product enhancement.
Overall
IBM's Rump noted that although the new LTO Ultrium 4 SAS tape-drive option has been fast tracked, there is enough information available at IBM to get it configured, priced, ordered, and installed.
Posted by cmaxcer at May 12, 2008 7:11 AM
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