IBM has made a high-speed networking technology available on one of
the company's main storage products, giving users better data
transfer rates on mainframe-class hardware and opening new ways to
link storage products with a user's existing infrastructure.
IBM will now support a high speed I/O technology called Fibre
Connection (FICON) on its TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server,
code-named Shark.
FICON connects mainframe computers to storage devices, allowing
data to transfer between the hardware six times faster than current
Enterprise System Connection (ESCON) technology, said Chris Saul,
programme marketing manager for Shark products at IBM.
In addition, since FICON is a Fibre Channel-based connector, users
can connect to hardware in storage area network (SAN) environments
that also use Fibre Channel.
Large customers sending huge amounts of information across their
servers and storage products have started to push the limits of
ESCON technology and have been awaiting more FICON-ready products,
Saul said.
IBM claims it has taken a strong lead with FICON technology.
Neither Hitachi nor EMC have yet announced a FICON product, Saul
claimed.
IBM has also added several other pieces of new hardware to its
storage arsenal. The company will introduce two new models of its
Virtual Tape Server (VTS), which for the first time will use copper
chip technology. The B20 VTS and B10 VTS should offer much higher
data write rates than older VTS products, Saul said.
Available later in the third quarter, the B10 version with an
entry-level configuration costs $80,000 (£55,901) and the B20 with
an entry-level configuration costs $230,000.
IBM additionally released the TotalStorage SAN Controller 160,
which is a serial disc controller built to provide Fibre Channel
connections for Unix servers from IBM, Sun and Hewlett-Packard
along with Windows NT/2000 servers.
Further information
IBM:
www.ibm.com