There’s been a lot written about the new IBM StorWise V7000 disk array, the first time in years that IBM have developed an entirely new storage array in-house.

Sitting firmly in the middle of the storage range, the obvious question now that IBM has the Storwise V7000 is “What happens to the DS5000 range?”. With the LSI designed DS5000/DS4000 range showing something of it’s age, some people have taken the view that the DS5000 range will disappear from the IBM line up very quickly.

I’ve put together a comparison chart to show that right now, the high-end DS5300 model certainly still has the edge over the V7000 in some areas, something IBM will have to rectify before they can simplify their storage range.

The figures above are all taken from the various datasheets supplied by IBM on the 2 products except for the V7000’s external virtualisation capacity – the 1PB figure is how much the IBM SVC can currently virtualise, and since the V7000 runs the same code-base, they should be the same. Whether IBM supports that or not, I don’t know yet.

If you find any additional figures you’d like to add to the comparison, or any figures that you believe are wrong, please let me know in the comments below, or email me.