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16 DS6000 Series: Concepts and Architecture
attachments, along with the flexibility to easily partition the DS6000 series storage capacity
among the attached environments, makes the DS6000 series system a very attractive
product in dynamic, changing environments.
In the midrange market it competes with many other products. The DS6000 series overlaps in
price and performance with the DS4500 of the IBM DS4000 series of storage products. But
the DS6000 series offers enterprise capabilities not found in other midrange offerings. A
zSeries or iSeries customer might ponder whether to buy a DS6000 series or a DS8000
series class storage subsystem or a competitive subsystem. When comparing the DS6000
series with the DS4000 series and DS8000 series of storage products it is important to have a
closer look at advanced functions and the management interfaces.
1.3.1 Common set of functions
The DS6000 series, the DS8000 series, and even the ESS storage subsystems share a
common set of advanced functions, including FlashCopy, Metro Mirror, Global Copy, and
Global Mirror.
There is also a set of common functions for storage management, including the IBM
TotalStorage DS Command-Line Interface (DS CLI) and the IBM TotalStorage DS open
application programming interface (API).
It is unique in the industry that IBM can offer, with the DS6000 series and the DS8000 series
of products, storage systems with common management and copy functions for the whole DS
family. This allows customers to easily expand their storage server farm to high end or
midrange systems without the need for the storage administrators to learn about a new
product. This will reduce your management costs and the total cost of ownership.
1.3.2 Common management functions
Within the DS6000 series and DS8000 series of storage systems, the provisioning tools like
the DS Storage Manager’s configuration GUI or CLI are very similar. Scripts written for one
series member of storage servers will also work for the other series. Given this, it is easy for a
storage administrator to work with either of the products. This reduces management costs
since no training on a new product is required when adding a product of another series.
1.3.3 DS6000 series compared to other members of the TotalStorage DS
Family
Here we compare the DS6000 series to other members of the IBM TotalStorage DS Family.
DS6000 series compared to ESS
The ESS clients will find it very easy to replace their old systems with a DS6800. All functions
(with the exception of cascading Metro/Global Copy and z/OS Global Mirror), are the same as
on the ESS and are also available on a DS6800.
If you want to keep your ESS and if it is a model 800 or 750 with Fibre Channel adapters, you
can use your old ESS, for example, as a secondary for remote copy. With the ESS at the
appropriate LIC level, scripts or CLI commands written for Copy Services will work for both
the ESS and the DS6800.
For most environments the DS6800 performs much better than an ESS. You might even
replace two ESS 800s with one DS6800. The sequential performance of the DS6800 is
excellent. However, when you plan to replace an ESS with a large cache (let’s say more than
16 GB) with a DS6800 (which comes with 4 GB cache) and you currently get the benefit of a