“Introducing Flash System 5200 – NVMe Flash storage array in a Pizza size box !!”

“Introducing Flash System 5200 – NVMe Flash storage array in a Pizza size box !!”

When it comes to Flash storage arrays, IBM is an established technology leader. The Flash System family leverages end to end NVMe and IBM's unique IBM Flash Core Modules (FCM) offer leading capacity, performance and reliability. The offerings are differentiated with common Spectrum virtualize software that enables advanced storage efficiencies, modern backup & replication and Hybrid cloud, which is the core tenant to IBM Storage strategy.

 With the all-new Flash System 5200, It’s really time to revolutionize the entry-enterprise storage space!!

 Just launched 2 days ago on 9th Feb 2021, File Systems 5200 is a hybrid entry enterprise storage and the smallest (1U) flash storage in the industry designed for entry level environments. It comes with powerful Skylake 8 core 2.3 GHz processor, supports up to 4 DIMMs (up to 512 GB Cache options). It’s a PCIe gen3 box that offers complete redundancy with Dual canisters, Dual PSUs, Multiple fans and supports up to 12 NVMe/SCM drives that can support up to 340TB usable or 790 effective usable in 1U. With data reduction it can support up to 2.3 PB of data only in 1U!

 It supports end to end NVMe flash and offers high-end enterprise capabilities for entry storage.

Supports Hybrid drive configurations

This is probably the only compact array in the industry which supports different drive types in 1U, so you could intermix SCM, FCM, industry NVMe SSDs and SAS Drives. Our competitors either don’t support so many drives in a single box or are not able to scale it. With the support of different drives types in the box, you can have smart data placement, i.e., position your most active data in SLC flash for highest performance, and then in FCMs and rest in NVMe SSDs/ SAS drives.

Multi-dimensional  Scalability

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 This is really exciting, as Flash system is not only talking about scale up and scale out but offers various options for you to scale your environment:

·     Scale Up - Flash system 5200 can “scale up” to 748 drives with Flash System expansion enclosures, up to 32 PB usable capacity.

·     Scale out - It can “be clustered” up to four flash systems and up to 2,992 drives! This scale out capability is unique at entry level & so important for business application growth. It really gives you the ability to scale performance linearly.

·     Cloud Tiering – Ability to move data in and out from multiple clouds in a true hybrid cloud environment

·     Storage Virtualization – It gives the ability virtualize over 500 heterogeneous storage systems. Gives you consistent management across on premise and on cloud for a true hybrid cloud environment.

·     Dynamic DRAID 1/6 expansion - granular increments of 1-12 drives on FS5200 without disruption

 Unmatched Performance

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What performance would you expect from an entry level system that’s just 1U? Well, quite a lot actually for an entry-level system:) and that makes Flash System 5200 best in the industry.

              It offers 1.5M IOPs per system (66% more performance than FS5100) and 19 GB/s of throughput per system (40% more than FS5100). IBM NVMe QLC FCMs deliver as low as 70 Microseconds latency which is lower than what most of the competitors could offer. Overall, if we look at the performance metrics, this system is offering a VERY significant performance bump !          

 With 4-way clustering, one can achieve 6M IOPS which is very very significant for an entry level product.

 One key update worthy to note, FS5200 has streamlined the inter-canister system messaging, introducing PCI-NVMe based inter canister link messaging replacing the legacy SCSI based inter canister link messaging. This offers tangible performance benefits for all customers and use cases i.e .more than 50% latency reduction and more than 20% max IOPs increase !! 

Ideal for edge and entry deployment opportunities

Edge computing brings data storage closer to where it’s needed and would help reduce response times & bandwidth. So, for space constrained environments like retail outlets, this offering is well suited as It brings great performance with a small footprint. With only 3 NVMe FCMs, FS5200 delivers the same performance as FS5030 with 24 SAS SSDs. The best part is, one can start super small with as low as 2 drives and introduce NVMe performance to entry customers, but capability to grown big is there.

Like to have a quick look at performance & other key features ? Click below

 In Summary, Flash System 5200 offers compact 1U design for data center & Hybrid cloud efficiency and space constrained edge environments. It has all in license to support enterprise features like flash copy, remote copy, easy tier and virtualization. It’s not only a Pizza box size array but it also offers significant performance bump as compared to the other entry level products. All in all, it a compelling flash storage array that offers great specs and robust software with the NVMe based implementation, giving significant boost to the performance.

 If you wish to know, check out at this link  Or simply pls reach out to me !! 

 


Craig McKenna

Vice President, Worldwide Storage Channel Sales, IBM Systems

3y

Another cool thing we're doing on the back of the FlashSystem 5000 launch is donating up to $1M to COVID-19 relief. Small footprint, even bigger impact! Use the hashtag #IBMFlash4Good to promote the cause.

Deepthi Anne

Technology Strategist | Architect | TechAthena

3y

I have always been in awe about flash systems and I still am in awe seeing new developments everyday. I still remember 6 years back we use to talk about 1 ms latency and we are now talking about 70 micro seconds. New improvements in NVMe, RDMA and SCM are just wonderful. 😀

Deepak Yadav

Helping clients build agile information architecture and modern data protection | IIM Lucknow Executive Alumni |IBM Golden Circle Awardee | Tech and Soul Tales Blogger

3y

This is revolutionary. Imagine usable 750+ TB of data in just 1 U rack space. The datacenter saving itself will repay the cost of this flashsystem.

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