IBM Focuses on Data Management in Hybrid Cloud with Latest Storage Launches

IBM is updating its storage portfolio to improve data access and management across the hybrid cloud.

The company will debut a new container-native software defined storage (SDS) solution, IBM Spectrum Fusion, this quarter. IBM designed it to integrate the company’s general parallel file system technology with its data protection software. This, IBM says, offers a simpler approach to accessing data within the data center, at the edge and in the hybrid cloud.

IBM said Spectrum Fusion will come as a container-native hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) system. This will integrate compute, storage and networking into a single solution. Delivered with Red Hat OpenShift, it will enable organizations to support environments for both virtual machines and containers. Moreover, it will provide software-defined storage for cloud, edge and containerized data centers.

In early 2022, IBM plans to release an SDS-only version of IBM Spectrum Fusion.

IBM based Spectrum Fusion on a containerized version of its general parallel file system and data protection software. This provides customers with a streamlined way to discover data from across the enterprise, said the vendor. Furthermore, customers can use the software to virtualize and accelerate existing data sets by leveraging the most pertinent storage tier.

Additionally, organizations will be able to manage only a single copy of data. They won’t be required to create duplicate data when moving application workloads across the enterprise. This eases management functions while streamlining analytics and AI. In addition, customers can strengthen data compliance activities – GDPR, for instance – by a single copy of data, while reducing security exposure from the presence of multiple copies.

IBM also is engineering Spectrum Fusion to integrate with IBM Cloud Satellite. This will help businesses manage cloud services at the edge, data center or in the public cloud with a single management pane. It can also integrate with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Manager (ACM) for managing multiple Red Hat OpenShift clusters.

IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) Updates

Elsewhere, IBM introduced updates to its IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) family of high-performance solutions. The revamped model, ESS 5000, now delivers 10% greater storage capacity, and the new ESS 3200 offers double the read performance of its predecessor.

Both the ESS 3200 and ESS 5000 feature containerized system software and support for Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI), CSI snapshots and clones, Red Hat Ansible, Windows, Linux and bare metal environments. The systems also come with IBM Spectrum Scale built in.

Furthermore, the 3200 and 5000 work with IBM Cloud Pak for Data, the company’s containerized platform of integrated data and AI services, for integration with IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog (WKC) and Db2.

The ESS 3200 and 5000 are also fully integrated with IBM Cloud Satellite.