IBM is claiming that enhancements to its storage
virtualisation engine software extend its reach to greater
distances, greater speeds and a greater number of
platforms.
The IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller 4.1 (SVC) includes a
number of new technologies, including one that IBM says is designed
to help organisations virtualise their infrastructures more
efficiently and reduce costs over longer distances.
In the wake of regional disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, IBM
believes that businesses are increasingly seeking ways to support
continuing IT operations by placing the datacentres that share
resources at greater distances than in the past.
Thus, IBM has added a new global mirroring function designed to
help customers virtualise data at locations of greater than 100
miles. As well as being faster, the company believes it can also
perform the task more cost effectively than previously.
Ultimately, IBMO regards the announcement as further proof of its
leadership in storage virtualisation. IBM has already signed up
more than 2,000 SVC customers who, it says, are virtualising more
than 15 petabytes of data.
Research firm IDC has recently reported that the installed base
of appliance-based, virtualised networked storage capacity was 28.1
petabytes at the end of 2005. Based on this information, IBM
calculates that SVC manages more than half of the appliance-based
virtualised storage capacity in the market today.
In addition to the business continuity enhancements, SVC 4.1
also supports 4Gbps (gigabits per second) environments and has
extended capabilities to virtualise data on nearly 80 different
disk systems.
IBM SVC 4.1 will be available from 23June 2006 with combined
hardware and software list pricing starting at around $42,500.