Tuesday, September 19, 2006

TS7700 The drawbacks

I've been doing some reading on the TS7700 Virtualization Engine and there are a few items I would at least take into consideration when choosing a virtualization solution. I'm assuming readers are familiar with the TS7700 concepts in general.
First of all it's big. The difference between the current 216MB on the B10 and the minimum 6TB cache on the TS7700 is huge. There will come an upgrade path from the B20, but NOT from the B10. IBM should've considered giving the cache drawers as an option. In that way cache size would have started at 1.5TB.
There's no more ESCON support on this box. FICON is the future of course, so this is a logical course of action.
The TS7700 cannot connect to a 3494 Tape library, only to the TS3500.
The TS7700 connects to the TS1120 E05 but it has to run in emulation mode as a 3952 J1A. This also means you cannot fully use its speed nor the larger 500MB cartridges.
The GRID configuration "is only available as a plant offering; two standalone TS7700 Virtualization Engines cannot be combined in the field to form a grid". What if you begin with one TS7700 and want to put it in a grid combination afterwards. No can do ?

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