Big Blue has also begun selling OEM’ed versions of Network Appliance Inc’s FAS6000 disk arrays, filling out its line-up of re-badged NetApp gear and software.

The updates to the DS8000 see the birth of DS8100 Turbo and DS8300 Turbo arrays, which are powered by the latest Power5 processors and give up to 15% better performance in transaction processing than their predecessors, according to IBM.

The base units of these boxes carry prices 25% lower than previous comparable systems, according to IBM. That sounds like a hefty price cut, but it did not hugely impress Brian Babineau, an analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group.

How many people ever actually get to know what the list price is anyway? he asked. But while list prices for high-end gear are often eyes-only internal information, IBM’s press release for the DS8000 and DS6000 updates says that the starting list prices for the DS8000 Turbo and DS6000 are $213,4000 and $102,600 respectively.

IBM itself said that if it had to cut its base prices because it has reworked the pricing of additional features for the DS8000. If it had not the base price, the total price of some configurations would have been higher than previously, the company said.

The reworks to DS8000 option pricing has seen items that were previously only available in packages split into individual features, for example allowing metro and global mirroring software to be bought separately.

Some customers get over-focused on acquisition prices, and others end up with more software features than they need or want, IBM said. Now the overall prices are lower, said IBM marketing director Charlie Andrews.

Babineau said the cut is not a reaction to any slide in sales, as IBM has seen a stable share of the high-end disk array market. In any case, the sector does not see huge turn-over. The high-end is stable. There’s only about 10% churn each year, as some customers go for the latest and greatest features, he said. Presumably IBM is hoping to stir some churn with its latest and greatest features.

The DS8000 is the first array from any vendor to sport 4Gbit Ficon port, and the first high-end arrays from a tier-one vendor to offer 4GFC support. Big Blue’s mid-range arrays have been sporting 4GBit FC ports since last year, and the company explained that it waited for a number of new features to package together and put through qualification testing in one overall DS8000 update.

Babineau said that 4GFC support is in fact less needed on high-end arrays than on mid-range boxes.

4Gbit support is not game-changing. It’s more necessary in the mid-range, where the arrays have less front-end ports, he said.

FATA Fibre Channel ATA disk drives feature FC electronic interfaces and ATA-style low-cost, lower reliability mechanical components. By offering an option to fit 500GB FATA drives to the DS8000 and DS6000, IBM said it is offering multiple tiers of storage within the same arrays. It is also following in the footsteps of EMC Corp, which began offering the same drives dubbed FC-LC by EMC on its Symmetrix DMX arrays last year.

The DS8000 has also gained three-site replication software. IBM said it has been selling this feature on a one-off or RPQ basis for some months. The new GA software is more sophisticated however, and with features such as incremental re-synchronization and better automation of failover from site to site.