We are looking for a complete IBM SAN replacement for our PACS system.

Currently we have two X336 IBM servers connected via fiber channel to a inline corp brand SAN, with 16 X 300gb SAS Drives. ( all with a expiring warranty, and the array company has just sold to another company )

However, with our current image usage, we were quoted at needing 6-9 TB's of storage in 5-7 years.

Therefore, I need a scalable system, with a fairly low starting cost, but huge upgrade potential.


I was looking at the IBM BladeCenter S Chassis.

It supports up to 3.6 TB of SAS drives with modules, per chassis. Can you team more than one Chassis to make a single large partition? 3.6 TB X 2 or X 3.

This would also let us add servers as needed for the future.

If so, that would give us room for now, and we could always add the DS4000 series of SAN. But the DS4200 series of SAN, with a maxed SAS configuration is quite expensive.


OR

Are there other options that are worth looking at from IBM?

An ideal system, would be something that we could start out with about 4-6 TB of SAS drives, and could move up to 10-15 TB if needed. With something like scalable partitioning, and raid for redundancy.

This system will only be used for our PACS, and we will use our existing SAN for departmental and house wide use.

The software vendor would prefer us to use IBM systems