International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) announced on Thursday, July 9, a new storage system that aims to improve data storage for companies in a budget.
The Elastic Storage System 5000 is an all-hard disk system that focuses on storing all-flash systems. It features a faster Spectrum Scale system, which organizes file systems and high volume data. The ESS5000 comes with the IBM Spectrum Scale software for all disk models.
According to the company, this new storage system is made for data lake use, which offers great functions for big data, artificial intelligence, analytics workloads, and others. IBM claims that this system allows customers to run the software themselves, without needing to hire experts.
The ESS5000 came nine months after the previous offering of ESS3000 all-flash storage. For the new offer, the company enhanced the system to cater to mixed types of data variants.
Chief marketing for IBM Storage Eric Herzog said, “Some people need the performance of all-flash and some people need the capacity of hard drives. We mixed the all-flash variant and the all-hard-drive variant in the same name space.”
IBM claims they use the all-flash and hard-drive systems together for the new ESS5000. More than the variety of data stored, this new system helps customers to keep data altogether and provides faster performance and better storage densities.
The ESS5000 supports both opex and capex reduction, all the while streamlining the performance of the storage system. With this in place, it is easier to have a single name space, avoiding data silos.
Excellent Features for Data Acceleration
The ESS5000 has a density of 13.5 PB in 36 rack units. According to IBM, it is faster, less expensive from the model it replaced. It has a wide array of rack units up to 55, with 8 PB densities. This simply means the 5000 model requires less rack space, floor space, cooling, and management.
The ESS3000 only has 36GBps, while the new system has 55Gps for wider bandwidth capabilities. The single eight-disk enclosure node can handle massive data configuration and is suited for longer-term data collection.
IBM also announces an update on the Spectrum Scale software for the fourth quarter. This will enhance the data acceleration for artificial intelligence and AI workloads. The upcoming software eliminates the reason for data to get siloed altogether.
