IBM Gooses FlashSystem With Skinnier Flash, Faster Ports

June 2, 2014 Timothy Prickett Morgan

As part of the series of hardware announcements that Big Blue rolled out in May, the FlashSystem line of all-flash arrays that IBM got through its acquisition of Texas Memory Systems was updated. Among other new features, the new arrays have faster ports linking back to servers and can now be equipped with skinnier flash modules. The arrays also start at a lower initial capacity, which gives them a lower initial price and therefore makes the more amenable to the budgets of midrange and enterprise shops who want to have shared flash but who don’t want to have to lay down a lot of cash all at once.

IBM, you will recall, just delivered the FlashSystem 840, its first IBM-branded and designed product to come out of Texas Memory Systems, back in February. IBM is just starting to integrate the FlashSystem 840 with the IBM i operating system and to date, about half of FlashSystem shipments have been for attachment to X86 servers running Windows or Linux and half to Power Systems running AIX or Linux.

The FlashSystem 840 can now, as you will see in announcement letter 114-080, use a new 1 TB enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC) flash module that comes in a 1 TB capacity rather than the 2 TB capacity from earlier this spring. The FlashSystem 840 array has to have at least two flash modules to function, and this cuts the entry capacity of the array in half. This would seem to be a backward trend, considering that IBM just announced support for 2 TB eMLC modules that double the capacity and performance of the array, but not everyone needs from 4 TB to 48 TB of capacity in their flashes. Most databases in production machines are on the order of tens of terabytes or less, and most data warehouses that consolidate summary information from several production databases and other sources are well under a few hundred terabytes. If you want to replace tier one storage with FlashSystem units, and some customers are starting to do this because of the resiliency of flash, then not everyone needed the FlashSystem 840 as configured when it was previewed in January and launched in February. Some people want the doubling of performance (in terms of latency and throughput) with the new FlashSystem 840 versus the FlashSystem 820, but they donâ€™t need the doubling of capacity.

The FlashSystem 840 has two battery backup units in its front and a dozen flash module bays. The back of the box has two canisters that can be yanked out of the back, each of which with a controller for the flash (providing RAID 0 mirroring and RAID 5 data striping and parity). IBM already peddles 2 TB and 4 TB units, which is how it gets up to 48 TB in a single appliance. The 1 TB eMLC flash modules cost $14,450 a pop, and that is not a cheap component by any stretch of the imagination. eMLC is the Cadillac of the flash world, and it includes on year of maintenance in the price. If you want to pay three years of maintenance from the front end, then you pay $18,250 for each module.

IBM is also introducing a new low-end iSCSI connector aimed at customers on a tighter budget who don’t want to go with Fibre Channel links and who also don’t want to run Fibre Channel over Ethernet. The new iSCSI host interface card (which runs the iSCSI protocol over 10 Gb/sec Ethernet) costs $6,500, which again is a pretty pricey item, too. The 8-port host optics for the iSCSI card runs another $3,500. The array can have up to sixteen ports running iSCSI over 10 Gb/sec Ethernet. The FlashSystem 840 already supported eight ports of 16 Gb/sec or sixteen ports of 8 Gb/sec Fibre Channel connectivity out to SAN networks as well as up to 16 ports running at 10 Gb/sec using the FCoE protocol. Customers can also have eight ports of 40 Gb/sec InfiniBand linking the all-flash arrays to systems, and this is the lowest latency, highest bandwidth option.

The FlashSystem 840 can deliver 1.1 million read I/O operations per second and 600,000 write IOPs; rad latencies are as low as 135 microseconds and write latencies are as low as 90 microseconds. With 12 TB of capacity, RAID 5 data protection, and Fibre Channel links, a FlashSystem 840 will run you in the neighborhood of $100,000. That is with the 2 TB flash modules.

The new flash modules and iSCSI links for the FlashSystem 840 will be available on July 15.

IBM Enhances Disk And Flash For Power Systems

Sundry Power Systems I/O And Storage Enhancements

IBM To Pump $1 Billion Into Flash Storage

IBM Lassos Texas Memory Systems For Flashy Storage

Flash Storage Gets Cheaper, Disk Storage Gets More Expensive

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Do the Math When Looking at IBM i Hosting for Cost Savings

COVID-19 has accelerated certain business trends that were already gaining strength prior to the start of the pandemic. E-commerce, telehealth, and video conferencing are some of the most obvious examples. One example that may not be as obvious to the general public but has a profound impact on business is the shift in strategy of IBM i infrastructure from traditional, on-premises environments to some form of remote configuration. These remote configurations and all of their variations are broadly referred to in the community as IBM i hosting.

“Hosting” in this context can mean different things to different people, and in general, hosting refers to one of two scenarios. In the first scenario, hosting can refer to a client owned machine that is housed in a co-location facility (commonly called a co-lo for short) where the data center provides traditional system administrator services, relieving the client of administrative and operational responsibilities. In the second scenario, hosting can refer to an MSP owned machine in which partition resources are provided to the client in an on-demand capacity. This scenario allows the client to completely outsource all aspects of Power Systems hardware and the IBM i operating system and database.

The scenario that is best for each business depends on a number of factors and is largely up for debate. In most cases, pursuing hosting purely as a cost saving strategy is a dead end. Furthermore, when you consider all of the costs associated with maintaining and IBM i environment, it is typically not a cost-effective option for the small to midsize market. The most cost-effective approach for these organizations is often a combination of a client owned and maintained system (either on-prem or in a co-lo) with cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Only in some cases of larger enterprise companies can a hosting strategy start to become a potentially cost-effective option.

However, cost savings is just one part of the story. As IBM i expertise becomes scarce and IT resources run tight, the only option for some firms may be to pursue hosting in some capacity. Whatever the driving force for pursing hosting may be, the key point is that it is not just simply an option for running your workload in a different location. There are many details to consider and it is to the best interest of the client to work with an experienced MSP in weighing the benefits and drawbacks of each option. As COVID-19 rolls on, time will tell if IBM i hosting strategies will follow the other strong business trends of the pandemic.

When we say do the math in the title above, it literally means that you need to do the math for your particular scenario. It is not about us doing the math for you, making a case for either staying on premises or for moving to the cloud. There is not one answer, but just different levels of cost to be reckoned which yield different answers. Most IBM i shops have fairly static workloads, at least measured against the larger mix of stuff on the public clouds of the world. How do you measure the value of controlling your own IT fate? That will only be fully recognized at the moment when it is sorely missed the most.

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