IBM Tweaks DR550 Line for Performance, Availability

Published: May 18, 2006

by Alex Woodie

IBM recently started shipping new releases of its DR550 and DR550 Express offerings, which are self-contained storage systems for archiving data various servers. With version 3.0 of these products, IBM has added support for asynchronous replication to boost the solutions availability and reduce the chance of a disaster wiping out years of data. The new DR550 also sports dual-core Power processors (instead of single-core chips), new encryption and monitoring capabilities, and new rack mounting options.

The DR550 and its predecessor, the DR450, which was launched in 2004, are designed to help facilitate compliance with data-retention requirements by helping customers manage and simplify the retrieval of archival and backup data they must retain in accordance with strict record-retention policies and regulations.

The DR550 and its kid brother, the DR550 Express, which IBM launched last summer, are based on p520 servers, and include the AIX 5.3 operating system, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) for Data Retention software, and TotalStorage DS4000 and DS4100 serial ATA (SATA)-based disk subsystems. It also supports back-end connections to LTO-3 Write Once Read Many (WORM) tape for offline storage.

On February 28, IBM announced version 3.0 of the DR550 and DR550 Express products, and started shipping them March 17. With this release, the DR550 gets dual Power5+ processors (the DR550 Express remains a uniprocessor device), which will immediately be put to use supporting some of its new features--such as support for "Global Mirroring" asynchronous replication, in addition to the previously supported Metro Mirroring support--which enable real-time copies of the data to be maintained on DR550s in separate locations. Mirroring is not available on the Express version.

Other new features include better system monitoring via SNMP, which IBM says will help users be more proactive about potential performance problems. Version 3.0 also includes support for 128-bit AES and 56-bit DES encryption algorithms. The DR550 and Express models can manage encryption keys without impacting the application, or let external applications manage the keys.

Users can also install the DR550 Express in an industry-standard rack with this release. This can be an important consideration for small and midsize shops that don't have a lot of room in their data center. DR550 Express is smaller, as well as less expensive, than the full DR550. Its total physical storage capacity is limited to about 6.7 TB, whereas the full DR550 can hold up to 89.6 TB with a full complement of 16 IBM TotalStorage DS4000 expansion units. The DR550 Express lists at around $28,000 for 1.1 TB of raw near-line physical capacity storage, whereas the full-size DR550 starts at around $75,000 for 5.6 TB of storage.

Users of either the DR550 or the DR550 Express will benefit from their policy- and event-based retention features. For instance, data can expire on a predetermined expiration date, when a particular event occurs, when the user demands the expiration, or when a hold on a particular group of objects has been released.

The product's event-based management feature is designed to enable management of data that has no explicit retention period, such as employee and customer records. Until a specific event occurs, such as the separation of the employee or the closing of the customer's account, deletion of these records is prevented--a feature that can come in very handy when a record or set of records needs to be retained for legal, audit, or other reasons.

IBM says the DR550 products are particularly well-suited to managing electronic records such as e-mail, digital images, database applications, instant messages, account records, contracts, and insurance claim documents in the finance and banking; local, state and country governments; insurance; telecom; and healthcare industries.