New business storage from IBM

IBM has announced new additions to its disk and tape storage line, targeted towards small and large businesses.

IBM launched new N7700 and N7900 models, which can be used as both appliances and gateways. It claimed the products would improve scalability for large scale data centres and storage consolidation for large open system enterprises as well as mid-market businesses. It would also enable customers to consolidate SAN and NAS storage needs to a single system.

The company also announced enhancements to archive and data retention systems with the IBM System Storage DR550 v4.5. The company claimed that it was a better way of protecting business critical information for long term security. Two versions were announced - the DR1 for mid-market businesses with a 25U tall rack, and the DR2 for large enterprises with a bigger 36U rack.

IBM also released a new data centre director, the IBM System Storage SAN768B which was capable of running Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), a new disk system designed to run with next generation SMB telecoms with the IBM System Storage DS3300 DC power model 32T, and Linear Tape Open (LTO) tape drives in TS3100 and TS3200 models.

"IBM's goal is to provide the leading technologies and solutions for storage, servers, software and services - to address the challenges and realities IT customers are facing," said vice president of IBM storage stack solutions Barry Rudolph.