IBM 7214 Express Offers DVD and Tape Storage
April 13, 2010 Alex Woodie
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IBM last week announced a new external storage device that combines DVD and DAT or LTO tape technologies into a single unit. The rack-mountable offering, which IBM officially calls the “IBM System Storage 7214 Tape and DVD Enclosure Express,” give users an external option when internal storage bays on customers’ POWER 5-7 servers are full. The 7214 Express is ideal for organizations that are facing a space crunch with existing server and storage systems, but still need to grow their removable storage capabilities for long-term and archival storage. The device, which becomes available April 16, offers two bays that can be occupied by a range of slim DVD and tape drives, and takes up a minimum of space within a standard 19-inch rack. The 7214 Express can be outfitted with a variety of storage drives, including any mix of: 80 GB DAT160 drives; 160 GB DAT320 drives; half-high 800 GB LTO Ultrium 4 drives; or slim 9.2 GB DVD-RAM or DVD-ROM drives. The 7214 Express attaches to specific models of IBM’s Power Systems servers equipped with POWER 5, POWER 6, and POWER 7 processors running i/OS, AIX, and Linux operating systems. The device supports i5/OS V5R4M5 and IBM i 6.1 operating systems running on POWER 6 or POWER 7 servers. Only POWER 5 servers equipped with AIX can connect to the 7214 Express, and the boot function is not supported. Up to two 7214 Express devices can be attached to servers through an external serial attached SCSI (SAS) adapter–specifically, the PCI-E Dual-x4 SAS Adapter. Internal SAS adapters are not supported. IBM did not provide pricing details in its announcement. For more information, see IBM United States Hardware Announcement 110-096 (pdf).
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