IBM today announced a block and file storage service for its Softlayer subsidiary aimed at both traditional large vertical-stack enterprise applications and new highly transactional, customer-facing cloud applications. What differentiates this new service is that it comes with guaranteed, graduated service levels ranging from .25 input/output operations per second (IOPS) to 4 IOPS, said Softlayer Storage Product Manager Michael Fork. Customers can also negotiate custom service levels. The service is intended to support production systems in the cloud and specifically the traditional large vertical applications like enterprise resource planning (ERP) that are the core of most medium to large enterprise IT as well as new, cloud-based transactional services.

The Endurance layer of the Softlayer Block and File Service offers three tiers of predefined guaranteed storage performance at different price levels:

• The .25 IOPS level is intended for low access applications such as a corporate mail system, in which many emails are stored, but only a few accessed at a time.
• The 2 IOPS level is best for midrange companies and for enterprise applications that do not require the highest quality-of-service (QoS) levels, including many virtualized applications, Fork said.
• The 4 IOPS service is designed for customer-facing cloud transactional applications and other use cases where very high QoS is essential.

The Performance option allows customers to select a custom performance level for stable, well-understood applications.

The Endurance option also includes backup based on snapshots and replication. Users can set their own schedules for taking snapshots of their data and then for replicating a backup copy of the database from those snapshots.

“Softlayer has always provided block and file storage, going back to before it was acquired by IBM,” Fork said. “This new service is designed at the request of both traditional Softlayer and IBM customers.”