IBM Summer Announcements : Storage : StorWize and XIV

This summer there were storage announcements about StorWize and XIV.

About StorWize, as mentioned in announcement 'Hardware withdrawal: Select drive features for IBM Storwize V7000 - Replacements available (ZG12-0187)', effective August 18, 2012, the 300GB 2.5-inch E-MLC SSD drive is replaced by 200GB or 400GB 2.5-inch E-MLC SSD drives. Also 300GB, 450GB, 600GB and 900GB 2.5-inch 10k RPM SAS HDD drives are replaced by 6Gb 2.5-inch 10K RPM SFF HDD drives effective October 27, 2012. You can find out more about these new drives in 'IBM Storwize V7000 introduces new 300 GB, 600 GB, and 900 GB SAS drives (ZG12-0188)'.

About XIV,  the announcement 'Hardware withdrawal: IBM 2810 XIV Storage System Model A14 and IBM 2812 XIV Storage System Model A14 - Replacements available (ZG12-0203)' indicates that from October 26, 2012 Gen2 models can no longer be ordered. Only Gen3 models remain available. Two other announcements (ZG12-0224 and ZP12-0324) offer some new functionalities for Gen3 :

• "1 TB raw capacity per drive option: XIV now supports configurations as small as 27 TB of usable storage making it a viable option for customers with smaller capacity needs.
• XIV USGv6 certification: The enhanced security available with IPv6 is of particular interest to enterprise customers that adopted IPv6., such as federal agencies.
• SCVMM: Microsoft Hyper-V customers using XIV can now manage XIV storage through the standard Hyper-V tools for managing Virtual Machines for increased ease of management".

Then there's one more announcement about the XIV (ZG12-0226) stating that "effective July 24, 2012, new purchases of IBM XIV Storage System machine type 2812 models 114 and A14, will include both a 3-year hardware warranty period and 3-year warranty for XIV Software Maintenance. Customers who desire longer than 3-years software maintenance contracts will be able to purchase the 3-year hardware warranty period with 4- or 5-year software maintenance". I'm not really sure how to interpret this because as far as I know this already was the case in the past. It seems more likely IBM deleted the option of ordering 1 or 2 years of software warranty with this box of 3 years hardware maintenance. Correct me if I'm wrong !