IBM Sets New Storage Performance Record With Industry-Standard Benchmark

IBM (NYSE: IBM)announced that the IBM System Storage DS8300 Turbo, introduced on August 22, 2006, is the fastest enterprise class storage system in the industry as measured by the Storage Performance Council's SPC-1 Benchmark™, outperforming the previous DS8300 SPC-1 Results by 22 percent.

The Storage Performance Council's industry storage benchmark SPC-1™ highlights IBM's storage performance leadership. SPC-1 consists of a single workload designed to demonstrate the performance of a storage subsystem, while performing typical functions of business critical applications. Those applications are characterized by predominately random I/O operations and require both queries as well as update operations.

The IBM System Storage DS8300 Turbo demonstrated the best performance for a single enterprise disk system by producing an SPC-1 Result of 123,033.40 SPC-1 IOPS™. [1] This industry leading result builds on IBM's leadership in this area. Last year, IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller demonstrated the best performance for a virtualization solution with an SPC-1 Result of 155,519.47 SPC-1 IOPS. In addition, the SVC has produced an SPC-2 Result of 4,544.35 SPC-2 MBPS™. Based on those two SPC Results, the SVC remains the fastest storage system in all categories. [2]

"This latest benchmark result demonstrates IBM's continued performance leadership in the storage industry," said Kristie Bell, vice president IBM System Storage. "The top performance results for the IBM System Storage DS8300 Turbo system exemplify the strength of the DS8000 Turbo Series. The systems provide our customers with the high-performance, high-capacity storage systems that they require, delivering the scalability and flexibility needed to optimize their IT infrastructure and meet their business goals."

The IBM System Storage DS8300 Turbo Series exploits IBM POWER5+ processors to set a new standard in enterprise storage. This new SPC-1 Result demonstrates an SPC-1 performance improvement of up to 22 percent over previous versions of the IBM DS8300 for transaction processing workloads. The addition of 4Gbps Fibre Channel and FICON technology allows for the reduction of the number of network resources supporting simplified management and reduced infrastructure costs.

Additional features of the IBM System Storage DS8000 Turbo models include improved tiered storage options, functions to enable greater performance and efficiency for DB2 applications on IBM System p servers, and support for three-site business continuity solutions.

The IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller, launched more than three years ago and installed in more than 2,200 businesses worldwide, continues to help reduce the cost and complexity of managing SAN-based storage to clients in many industries across the globe. Now in its fourth version, SVC is being used by customers including ShopKo, Care New England Health System and Palm Beach Community College.

"With this new SPC-1 Result, IBM has achieved a significant industry milestone in demonstrating the performance of its enterprise disk subsystem storage products," said Walter E. Baker, Administrator for the Storage Performance Council. "The goal of the SPC is to serve as a catalyst for performance improvement in storage subsystems and to provide a comprehensive view of storage performance for customers seeking to assess performance based upon objective, verified benchmark results."

SPC-1 Results have been released for a wide range of storage products. Each SPC-1 Result has been both audited and peer reviewed for compliance to ensure consistency and accuracy.

About SPC

The SPC is a non-profit corporation founded to define, standardize and promote storage system benchmarks and to disseminate objective, verifiable performance data to the computer industry and its customers. SPC membership is open to all companies, academic institutions and individuals. The SPC created the first industry-standard performance benchmark in 2001, targeted at the needs and concerns of the storage industry and its goal is to serve as a catalyst for performance improvement in storage. For a complete list of SPC-1 and SPC-2 Results, visit http://www.storageperformance.org/home

[1] Details of the DS8300 SPC Result are available at: http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all#A00049 and http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_spc1#A00049

[2] Details of the SAN Volume Controller SPC Results are available at: http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all#a00043 and http://www.storageperformance.org/results/benchmark_results_all#b00011