Interesting blog from Anthony Vandwerdt (thank you) on the history of the IBM XIV. Good stuff !
Today IBM is announcing a new member of the XIV family, which we are calling XIV Gen3. I thought I would give a brief history of how we got here before I get too carried away with details.
What was Generation 1 of the XIV?
In 2002 an Israeli startup began work on a revolutionary new grid storage architecture. They devoted three years to developing this unique architecture that they called XIV.
They delivered their first system to a customer in 2005. Their product was called Nextra(does it look familiar?).
What was Generation 2 of the XIV?
In December 2007, the IBM Corporation acquired XIV, renaming the product the IBM XIV Storage System. The first IBM version of the product was launched publically on September 8, 2008. Within IBM we refer to this as Generation 2 of the XIV.
The differences between Gen1 and Gen2 were not architectural, they were mainly physical. We introduced new disks, new controllers, new interconnects, improved management, additional software functions.
As anyone who has read my blog knows, I have been working on the Generation 2 XIV since the day IBM began planning to release it as an IBM product. So it is very exciting to be able to share with you that we are now releasing Generation 3 of the IBM XIV Storage System. Read on here
Storage CH Blog 