IBM to unveil San virtualisation tool

IBM said its first virtualisation engine, which allows customers to pool storage capacity from different arrays so that  it can be served up to application servers like a utility, will be available on 25 July.

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IBM's TotalStorage San Volume Controller and San Integration Server are designed to provide a centralised point of control for volume management; increase storage administrator efficiency; provide a common platform for advanced functions like copy services, quality of service and security and improve storage capacity utilisation.

The Linux-based San Volume Controller will, initially, pool storage capacity only on IBM's own Shark and FAStT storage servers. Prices start at $60,000 (£36,767) and comes with two processing servers or engines and two power supplies for redundancy.

Additional engines will be sold for $27,000 (£16,551) a pair.

IBM is also offering a prepackaged system that combines the Volume Controller with a FAStT600 array and redundant fibre channel switches that will start at $150,000 (£91,945) for a 500GByte system that can scale to 83TBytes.

IBM earlier this year revealed Storage Tanks, a three-phase plan for delivering its storage virtualisation strategy which, it said, will eventually include a common file system for multivendor disk array installations.

Storage Tank is the centerpiece of IBM's virtualisation technology and is due out in December

The TotalStorage San File System device will combine the Storage Tank virtualisation software with specialised Linux-based versions of the company's xSeries servers.

IBM said it will release a development specification that will make it possible for other vendors to link storage subsystems on application servers to the San File System.

Lucas Mearian writes for Computerworld