Managing your Data Retention Requirements with the DR550
by Ricardo Haragutchi
Data Replication and Data Retention Product Manager
IBM
The IBM TotalStorage DR550 is designed to help businesses meet the growing challenge of managing and securing retention managed data and other critical information assets with operational efficiency. It is designed as a preconfigured solution to help store, retrieve, manage, share and secure regulated and non-regulated data.
To help simplify the definition and management of data retention policies and procedures, IBM offers the new IBM TotalStorage DR550.
The IBM TotalStorage DR550 is a SATA disk offering that provides a fast access platform for archiving and retrieving data in non-erasable and non-rewritable fashion, a function traditionally found only in “write once, read many times” (WORM) technologies such as optical disks. Such WORM-like functionality and capabilities are increasingly important to users as they seek to address data retention requirements driven by business and legal imperatives. The IBM TotalStorage DR550 can also be connected to WORM tape like the IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive 3592 enabling it to manage data retention repository in Petabyte size and to have a lower storage total cost of ownership especially for large amount of data which requires a very long retention period. Using the IBM TCO Tool, we considered the following parameters:
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Analysis duration: 10 years
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Initial load: 2TB migrated from existing storage
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Addition: 1TB per year
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Time of ownership: 7 years
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Technology turns:
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Disk: 3 years
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Tape hardware: 5 years
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Tape media: 10 years
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Disk-only approach requires disk storage at backup location
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Disk-Tape approach requires tape storage at backup location
This input provided the following result:
The IBM TotalStorage DR550 is also scalable on price enabling customers to grow without having a proportional impact in their budget. Disk can be added to the basic configuration from 3.5TB up to 56TB without the cost of additional controllers.
The IBM TotalStorage DR550 includes:
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Dual IBM POWER5* 520 processors (optional single node for non high-available configuration)
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One or two DS4100 storage controllers (3.5TB to 56TB of physical capacity)
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1 to 14 DS4000 EXP 100 SATA expansion drawers
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Gigabit Ethernet ports
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Integrated console
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Call Home support for DS4100 and POWER5 servers
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Tivoli* Storage Manager (TSM) for Data Retention
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Interoperability with IBM 3592 WORM Tape Drive
The IBM TotalStorage DR550 has two configurations (3.5TB and 7TB of physical capacity) for the single-node option and five configurations (3.5TB, 7TB, 14TB, 28TB and 56TB of physical capacity) for the dual-node high-availability option. The figure below shows all configurations except the 56TB configuration:
Data-retention policy management is done by IBM TSM for Data Retention. The IBM TotalStorage DR550 includes all lower layers up to TSM, which interfaces with the application through the TSM API. The next figure shows the IBM Content Manager as one of the applications that can interface with the IBM Data Retention DR550:
IBM TotalStorage DR550 provides interface through this API to applications from IBM (Content Manager), Ceyoniq, Comprendium, Easy Software, Hummingbird Ltd., Hyperwave, iLumin Software Services, IRIS Software, IXOS Software, KVS, a business unit of VERITAS Software, Neeb and Partner, OuterBay Technologies, Princeton Softech, SAPERION, SER Solutions and Waters. IBM is working with several independent additional software vendors (ISVs) to increase even more the list of supported application. The list of supported ISVs can be found online in the DR550 Interoperability Matrix (
www.ibm.com/servers/storage/disk/dr/interop).
Datatrend's TrendSetter eNewsletter
January 15, 2005
