IBM TotalStorage DS3500

IBM TotalStorage DS3500

The flexibility, scalability, and midrange performance of the IBM DS3500 family makes it perfect for the ever changing work environment.  The IBM DS3500 SAN has energy saving features to reduce annual costs. It also has data consolidation and full disk encryption to ensure efficiency, data availability, and security. The entry-level pricing of the IBM DS3500 storage makes it a cost-effective storage solution that is perfect for Bladecenters, System X Servers, and Power Systems alike. The DS3500 comes standard with dual active hot swappable controllers for a high level of redundancy. Each controller has 1 Gigabyte (GB) cache with a 2GB upgrade possible. The DS3500 by default provides four 6Gbps SAS ports, with the option to add four more 6 Gbps SAS ports, 8 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC)ports, or eight 1Gbps Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) expansion ports.

The DS3500 IBM Storage Area Network (SAN) supports up to 192 Near-Line and high performance SAS drives when fully scaled out with up to fifteen EXP3512 shelves or seven EXP3524's with virtually no downtime.  The EXP3512 is a 2U chassis that holds twelve 3.5" drives, while the EXP3524 is a 2U chassis that holds twenty four 2.5" drives. The 2 different expansion enclosure options available to DS3500 storage systems can be intermixed in any combination up to a total 192 drives. The mixed host interfaces allow for SAN and Direct Attached Storage (DAS), reducing acquisition and overall operation costs.  The DS Storage Manager Graphical User Interface (GUI) offers features like Partitioning, Volume Copy, Flashcopy, and Remote Mirroring via FC host ports.  The IBM DS3500 Storage Area Network allows for superior scalability, functionality, price to performance ratios, and offers the customer peace of mind.