It's been a busy couple of months within IBM, and it seems that in this case Christmas has come early as we're getting a sneak peak at the toys under the tree. So we've got an interesting line up of new products to cover over the next month, some of which you may already have heard about. However here's an easy one to start with, the "EXP5060" or "1818-G1A" in IBM terms.

For the past couple of years the DS4000 and DS5000 series of storage has only had the one expansion enclosure to choose from, the EXP810 or the EXP520 respectively. Sixteen disks up front, power and connectivity in the back, 3U in height, and a selection of SATA and FC disks in various sizes. However there's now an additional option for disk expansion, the EXP5060.

Other than an example of IBM's inability to number items consistently, the EXP5060 is a disk expansion drawer for the DS5100 and DS5300 header units. (At the moment no news on support for the DS5020/DS3950, and since these units only support 112 disks in total I doubt we'll see that support any time soon.) So what does the EXP5060 offer over the EXP520? The new unit is slightly larger at 4U, however it packs a staggering 60 disks into the unit. And we're not talking those tiny little laptop ones either, but full 3.5" drives. So how does it achieve this density? Let me drawer your attention to the images below;

The disks are on pull out drawers, so that they're installed three disks deep, four across and five down. At this point I assume the disks maintain connectivity as the drawers are pulled out, the product claims high availability so one assumes it has the ability to swap out single failed drives without downtime. (I'll confirm this once the additional support documentation is released later this month.) The limit for the DS5100 and DS5300 is usually 448 disks, however there is a special code to up this to 480 purely for these expansion units, so with the correct licences you can have up to eight of these bad boys on one header unit.

Currently only 1TB/7.2K SATA disks are supported in the EXP5060, however 600GB/15K FC disks are hot on their heels and will be available in December. Both these disk types must be purchased in packs of ten, with a minimum of twenty disks installed per enclosure. An example configuration with LIST pricing for the EXP5060 is shown below.

So with a single DS5X00 unit you could have 480TB of raw disk in a single 42U rack! So this is great news for all those crowded data centres, isn't it? Not quite, this unit is as dense as a black hole, with the mass to match weighing in at 102.1 kg (225 lb) for a fully configured unit. So be careful what racks you install this in, it'll be even heavier with the FC disks. At nearly 5000BTU and 1.5KW it's going to keep you toasty while waiting for Saint Nick too. Also to use these large capacity spindles for performance workloads takes a certain amount of discipline, so it's not so suitable for some of the more naughty boys and girls out there.

Still, for those of you with space limitations and requirements high capacity storage, this could be a nifty little stocking stuffer.