© 2009 IBM Corporation IBM Systems & Technology Group System x and BladeCenter® Why BladeCenter S SAN is the Right Choice Lowest cost, lowest complexity, and most capable SAN for the office environment

IBM BladeCenter® © 2009 IBM Corporation 2 At a Glance  RAID Capability  RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5  Dual controller support  Supports 2 Disk Storage Modules with up to ” SAS Drives  System Support  BladeCenter S chassis (only)  Legacy switch bays 3 and 4  60% Attach Rate to BCS Chassis  Cache  1GB per dual controller  Battery backed (72 hours)  Ease of Use And System Management  Simplified setup and out of box configuration  Storage Configuration Manager GUI Interface IBM BladeCenter SAS Controller Module Option Part Number - 43W3584 Now Shipping!!

IBM BladeCenter® © 2009 IBM Corporation With an all-in-one approach, an entire VMware stack (servers, networking, storage), can all be built within a BladeCenter S chassis, all that without having to cable up anything but the power! This fully supported solution is available on IBM ServerProven as well as VMware HCL today.ServerProvenVMware HCL Full-featured BladeCenter S SAN enables VMware & Vmotion Virtualize servers, storage, and even networking with BladeCenter S

IBM BladeCenter © 2009 IBM Corporation When buying a SAN, consider the 3 Cs of SAN buying 1.First C is Cost: Look for low cost, given the complexity is low, and capability is high. Features that will help lower the cost will be: 1.All-in-ones – less parts to buy almost always means lower cost 2.Now number of cables / options needed – Beware of getting charged a lot for must-have cables / options 3.Good installation tools – This will help keep installation overhead low 2.Second C is Complexity: Usually, the lower the complexity, the higher the cost, however, some products have the ability to keep both cost & complexity low, here is what to look for: 1.Point & click setup tools – This is most possibly the most important dimension, look for a single tool that can setup your entire SAN. Unfortunately, this is not easy to come by 2.All-in-ones – Integration out the factory usually means easier setup for you 3.Third but just as important C is Capability: At the end of the day, a SAN is all about capability. You have certain criteria to meet such as virtualization, applications, data serving… make sure your SAN is up to the task. Look for the following: 1.High transfer speeds – Usually enabled by Fibre Channel, which is costly. SAS technology is an excellent high- speed alternative 2.Large number of Terabytes – A good rule of thumb is 1TB per server. The SAN will let you share between servers for extra efficiency 3.Availability – The better the redundancy features, the more capable your SAN will be. Look for dual controllers, dual paths, and support for RAID 5. 4.High Interoperability – This is where the gotchas are, make sure your SAN support VMware, Vmotion, and all the latest OSs.

IBM BladeCenter © 2009 IBM Corporation Our approach to storage is radically different than others  There are three main areas of differences  Capacity advantage to BladeCenter S because:  BladeCenter S uses different hard disks which are lower in cost and higher in capacity than disks used by HP Shorty  BladeCenter S does not lose a server bay when using storage, HP Shorty loses 2 server bays when using HP recommended storage solution; AiO SB600c  Performance advantage to BladeCenter S because:  BladeCenter S uses latest SAS technology with 3 times as fast throughput as HP Shorty, which still uses slower iSCSI  Interoperability & redundancy advantage to BladeCenter S because:  BladeCenter S storage uses dual-controllers for redundancy, AiO uses a single HP E200i controller. When this fails, access to data is lost  BladeCenter S storage tested with Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) at shipment. AiO cannot be supported with MSCS because of the single-point of failure Difference is important to our clients