IBM FlashSystem 900 Model AE3 Flash Storage Enclosure, 9843-AE3

9843-AE3 is the IBM FlashSystem 900 Model AE3, a 2U rack-mount all-flash storage enclosure built on IBM FlashCore technology with IBM-enhanced 3D TLC flash. IBM carries the Model AE3 under two machine types, 9840-AE3 and 9843-AE3.

The enclosure takes up to 12 hot-swappable IBM MicroLatency modules in Small (3.6 TB), Medium (8.5 TB) and 18 TB sizes. Small modules go in as 6, 8, 10 or 12, the larger sizes as 8, 10 or 12, and modules of different sizes cannot be mixed. RAID 5 usable capacity runs from 14.4 TB to 180 TB, with always-on inline hardware compression.

Hosts attach through up to 16 ports of 8Gb Fibre Channel, eight ports of 16Gb Fibre Channel, up to 16 ports of 16Gb NVMe over Fibre Channel, or up to eight ports of 40Gb QDR InfiniBand. Two redundant canisters each carry a RAID controller, two interface cards and a management controller with a 1Gb Ethernet port. The enclosure delivers up to 1.1 million random read 4K IOPS, 600,000 random write IOPS and 10 GBps of sequential read bandwidth.

Power comes from two hot-swappable 1300 W supplies on 200 - 240 V AC, with 625 W typical draw in RAID 5. Four fan modules and two batteries are also hot-swappable. Data at rest is protected by AES-XTS 256-bit encryption, with a local USB key or up to four SKLM key servers. The chassis measures 445 mm wide, 768 mm deep and 86.2 mm high, and weighs 34 kg with 12 modules.

The 9843-UF3 is the Storage Utility Offering model of the same range: functionally equivalent, but delivered with all 12 modules fitted at 3.6 TB or 8.5 TB.