9848-AC2 IBM FlashSystem V9000 Control Enclosure

The IBM 9848-AC2 is the control enclosure of the IBM FlashSystem V9000. It is a 2U, 19-inch rack-mount unit that provides the host interface configuration and the primary management interface for the system's flash storage enclosures, and it supports Fibre Channel Protocol, Fibre Channel over Ethernet and iSCSI host attachment. The same enclosure is built under machine type 9846 as the 9846-AC2.

A V9000 uses two control enclosures for redundant host access. Each one is a 2U server node with two Intel Xeon E5 v2 Series eight-core processors, and each has integrated AC power supplies and battery units that keep the enclosure powered long enough to commit transactions after a sudden power loss. The node runs the V9000 software, which covers FlashCopy, thin provisioning, remote mirroring, external virtualization, Easy Tier and Real-time Compression.

Host connectivity comes from adapter features: AH10 adds four 8 Gb Fibre Channel ports, AH11 adds two 16 Gb Fibre Channel ports, AF44 adds four 16 Gb Fibre Channel ports and AH12 adds four 10 Gb Ethernet ports for iSCSI and FCoE. A pair of compression accelerator cards, feature AH1A, is required to run Real-time Compression and must be bought in a quantity of two.

The enclosure measures 445 mm wide, 746 mm deep and 86 mm high. It weighs 21.1 kg empty and 22.0 kg fully configured, draws 750 W from a 100-240 V AC supply, and takes 50-60 Hz power.

The 5639-RB7 base software that every V9000 requires is licensed by the number of storage enclosures, while the 5641-VC7 external virtualization licence (feature 0663) covers attaching outside SAN storage to a control enclosure. IBM made the 9848-AC2 generally available on 24 April 2015 and withdrew it from marketing on 13 December 2016, with the transition to end of support services dated 31 December 2022 and the 9848-AC3 as the recommended replacement.