IBM announces 'bulletproofed' midrange arrays

By SearchStorage.com Staff 10 Nov 2006 | SearchStorage.com

Storage Channel Update Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

IBM announces 'bulletproofed' midrange arrays
IBM announced the System Storage DS4700 Express Models 70-DC and 72-DC, which are compliant with the Network Equipment Building System (NEBS) Level 3 "hardening" requirements originally designed for the telecommunications industry. Products can be either NEBS certified or NEBS compliant, the distinction being that the former have been submitted to an independent lab for formal testing and the latter have not. NEBS certification/compliance comes in three levels, with Level 3 matching "carrier class" failover, hardening and service level requirements for critical systems within the telecom industry.

According to Mike Karp, senior analyst, Enterprise Management Associates and formerly an NEBS consultant, the distinction between NEBS-compliant technology and traditional high-availability features, such as redundant power supplies and fans, is a "hardened" outer casing and other materials used in its manufacture which allow it to operate at extremes of temperature, dust and other external hazards. "NEBS is about resisting external influences, like earthquakes and other natural disasters," Karp said.

THIS WEEK'S NEWS: NetApp adds a midrange box, tunes up software Softek rides IBM mainframe wave, plans acquisition NetApp to acquire Topio VMware users mull over Consolidated Backup High-end clustering users contemplate snapshots Users add disk to backup at low cost

The new DS4700 Express, Models 70-DC and 72-DC, and the EXP810 expansion unit, will feature built-in support for DC power and will be compliant not only with the NEBS Level 3 standard for U.S. clients, but also with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. The 70-DC, which features 2 GB cache and four host ports, starts at $26,045 with an included battery pack. Without the battery pack, the device starts at $19,499. The 72-DC, with 4 GB cache and eight host ports, starts at $51,995 with the battery, and $44,250 without. EMC Corp. said its Clariion arrays have been NEBS Level 3 certified since 2003; Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StorageTek 3510 and 3511 arrays are currently NEBS 3 compliant and Sun said it was working on NEBS/DC versions of its new Modular line; Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Hitachi Data Systems currently do not have NEBS certification and compliance with storage, but HP does have NEBS-compliant servers.

HP slots in new services chief

On Monday, HP was reeling from the "unexpected" departure of former services chief Steve Smith. On Wednesday, it named the vice president of its consulting division, John McCain, as the new head of its $15.5 billion global services business. Smith had led HP services since July of 2005 and had been with the company since January of that year.

Services revenue only increased by 1% in HP's third fiscal quarter compared with last year, although profit increased by more than 40%. Earlier this month, Todd DeLaughter, the former head of HP's $1 billion OpenView software business, resigned from the company to become chief executive of Canadian business software company Opalis.

EMC has also seen a shakeup in executives in the last month, which it attributed to turnover following acquisitions. HP recently closed the acquisition of application monitoring company Mercury Interactive and announced Mercury's IP will be integrated into both software and services within HP in a new organization called business technology optimization (BTO).

Vendors ride VMware wave at conference
Several vendors in the storage industry made announcements this week to coincide with the VMWorld conference in Los Angeles. Emulex Corp. announced the availability of its LightPulse virtual host bus adapter (HBA), which allows users to split the physical HBA into logical partitions to prevent "confusion" with multiple virtual servers on the same physical host. Vizioncore announced esxCharter 2.0, which provides storage bill-back to business units that use virtual machines. SteelEye Technology Inc. premiered Version 6 of both its LifeKeeper Protection Suite for Windows and SteelEye Data Replication, both of which will now support virtual environments, as well as 64-bit operating systems and Exchange 2007. EqualLogic Inc. announced that Babson College is using VMware with its PS Series storage; Xiotech Corp. announced that its Magnitude 3D 3000 storage system has received VMware ESX Server 3.0 certification.

Storewiz unveils worldwide channel partner program
Compression startup Storewiz Inc. unveiled its Vanguard channel partner program, which will allow value added resellers (VAR) to sell and support the company's STN-5000 compression product. Compression and deduplication are hot topics in the storage market lately. Storewiz has shipped over 120 units in the year since the company was launched, while data dedupe software company Avamar was snapped up by EMC last week for $165 million. Storewiz has already signed Comparex, Unique Digital and Asaiki Technology as partners.

Dell to resell ProStor removable hard drive
Dell Inc. announced its new PowerVault RD1000 removable hard drive, a cartridge-based backup system, which is a rebranding of ProStor Systems Inc.'s RDX hardware cartridge and Yosemite's backup software. Imation, Exabyte and Tandberg Data have original equipment manufacturer (OEM) deals for similar products with ProStor.

Paris Public Transport installs Atempo Exchange backup
Atempo Inc. announced that the Paris Public Transportation Department (RATP) is using its Time Navigator software to back up 45 terabytes (TB) of data on the buses, tramways, metro and regional trains it operates. RATP has been using Time Navigator as its data protection platform since 1994. Its most recent installation of Time Navigator extends back up support for 20,720 Microsoft Exchange mailboxes with a volume of 15 TB per day stored on 400 servers running Unix, Linux and Windows.

Reldata updates gateway
Reldata Inc. announced a new version of its Reldata IP Storage Gateway 9400 IP SAN/NAS gateway. New highlights of the IP 9400 are dual 4 Gbps Fibre Channel ports, robust multipath and failover, and the ability to resize volumes and file systems on the fly.

Caringo unveils CAStor file system gateway
Content addressed storage (CAS) startup Caringo Inc. announced the CAStor File System Gateway (FSG), which allows access to its back-end fixed-content repository through standard CIFS and network file system (NFS) interfaces.

Mendocino update allows multiple views
Mendocino Software announced the release of InfiniView, a new product architecture that splits the data capture engine from point-in-time views of continuous data protection (CDP) data, which will allow users to create and use multiple "virtual views" of production data. Users have the option to either maintain both engines on a single appliance or to scale up, as needed, on either the number of front-end or back-end appliances necessary to meet more frequent needs for either data capture or data viewing and presentation. Mendocino is also coming out with a new module for Exchange that filters mailbox data onto a blade appliance.

Quantum attributes revenue jump to ADIC acquisition
Quantum Corp. announced that revenue for its fiscal second quarter that ended Sept. 30, 2006, was $250 million, a 23% increase over the same quarter last year, "largely due to the inclusion of sales resulting from the acquisition of Advanced Digital Information Corp. (ADIC)," according to a press release. Quantum still reported a net loss of $30.7 million, including $14.7 million of in-process research and development expenses resulting from the ADIC acquisition, $9.6 million in amortization of acquisition-related intangibles, $6.7 million in restructuring charges, $2.2 million in stock-based compensation charges and $2 million related to a one-time, purchase accounting adjustment in inventory.

Seattle's Sound Transit uses Silver Peak
Silver Peak Systems Inc. announced that Sound Transit has deployed its NX Series appliances to speed up wide area network (WAN) networking between distributed employees, contractors and consultants, as well as VoIP. Sound Transit plans, builds and operates regional transit systems and services for Central Puget Sound in Washington and has hundreds of employees scattered over the state.

Fortiva adds features to email archiving service
Email archiving managed service provider Fortiva Inc. announced the addition of new features to its outsourced archiving product: Continuous Data Validation (CDV), which scans every message in the archive for errors once a month; message audit trails; a new setup wizard that reduces setup time from hours to minutes; and remote monitoring and maintenance of the customer's onsite appliance.

Tags: Disk arrays,  VIEW ALL TAGS

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Disk arrays IBM unveils new flagship storage system, DS8700 3PAR fattens its thin provisioning arsenal LSI adds solid-state drive, iSCSI support to denser Engenio 7900 disk array Low-cost MLC NAND flash gains in enterprise solid-state storage EMC remakes 8 Gbps FC/10 GbE Clariion provisioning in VMware's image IBM beefs up midrange storage arrays with 8 Gig FC, iSCSI, self-encrypting drives Dell shop switches EqualLogic SAN for 3PAR InServ F-Class disk array to meet performance needs Managing enterprise data storage more efficiently, Part 2: Reclaim storage and consolidate data Best practices for solid-state drive storage technology IBM adds thin provisioning to DS8000, asynchronous mirroring to XIV Storage System Disk arrays Research

RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary array  (SearchStorage.com) array-based memory  (SearchStorage.com) byte  (SearchStorage.com) column address strobe  (SearchStorage.com) Fast Guide to Storage Technologies  (WhatIs.com) giant magnetoresistive effect  (SearchStorage.com) gigabyte  (SearchStorage.com) hard disk drive  (SearchStorage.com) storage medium  (SearchStorage.com) terabyte  (SearchStorage.com)

RELATED RESOURCES 2020software.com, trial software downloads for accounting software, ERP software, CRM software and business software systems Search Bitpipe.com for the latest white papers and business webcasts Whatis.com, the online computer dictionary