SNW: Product news highlights |
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By SearchStorage.com Staff
03 Apr 2006 | SearchStorage.com |
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Dell and EMC have new AX to grind
Storage partners Dell Inc. and EMC Corp. announced a new version of the popular entry-level AX100 array that Dell also resells. The new AX150 is more of a tweak to the AX100 than a major overhaul. The changes in the new model include a redundant power supply, an additional iSCSI port and enhanced snapshot capabilities. The controller in the AX150 is the same as that in the AX100 but adds SATA-II support. According to Howard Shoobe, senior manager of Dell Enterprise Storage, the enhancements were largely in response to customer requests. Shoobe also expects that the AX150 will show "double digit" performance improvements over the AX100 although the "numbers aren't complete as yet."
Cisco launches giant director
Cisco Systems Inc. is the first major switch vendor to unveil a 528-port director. The MDS 9513 supports 1, 2, 4 Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) and was announced alongside two new 4 Gbps and 10 Gbps switching modules. These can be deployed in the MDS 9513 or in the existing 9509 boosting its port count to 336 and in the 9209 taking it up to 192 ports. New features in SAN OS 3.0 include improved port bandwidth management and increased FICON capabilities.
A Fortune 500 manufacturing company, who agreed to talk with us on condition of anonymity, is buying the 9513 to consolidate two fabrics made up of eight Cisco directors into a single, giant fabric. "The more we can do in one chassis, the lower our costs," said the company's IT manager for storage.
The firm uses Cisco's VSAN technology to carve up its SAN into about 30 virtual fabrics, segmented along lines of business. "We give the businesses control over their area," the user said. A system of gold, silver and bronze storage is sold by the IT department to the business units. The company is also looking at storage management software from CA, AppIQ Inc. [now owned by Hewlett-Packard Co.] (HP) and Symantec Corp. to provision storage via zoning through the Cisco director. "A lot of software to date lets you see the storage through the switch but not actually manage it … we must have that [management] integration with Cisco."
HDS replaces midrange box
Hitachi Data Systems Inc. (HDS) is replacing its Thunder 9585V midrange storage system with the Hitachi TagmaStore Adaptable Modular Storage model AMS1000. The new box provides 32 logical cache partitions, nondisruptive data movement across tiers of storage and embedded multiprotocol support for iSCSI, NAS and FC.
With an eye on performance, the AMS1000 delivers 13 GBps of cached bandwidth, full 4 Gbps FC connectivity, support for 4,096 LUNs, and 16 GB of cache, increases of 70%, 100%, 100% and 100%, respectively, over its predecessor -- with no increase in price for similar capacity configurations, according to Hu Yoshida, chief technology officer (CTO) at HDS.
The company also announced version 5.0 of its HiCommand storage management software. It can now manage all hosts from a central console and each management tool can now be launched from this central window.
Iron Mountain gives users no choice in the backup matter
Upgrade to Iron Mountain Inc.'s Connected Backup PC 8.0, and you'll never wonder again whether or not users backed up their PCs. In previous versions (formerly known as Connected DataProtector), end users were prompted to begin the backup job -- and many of them chose not to. Now, Connected runs in the background, "improving the reliability of your backups," said Jennifer Brock, director of product management. Other improvements include MyRoam, a Web-based interface from which end users can restore their own files.
Microsoft sports iSCSI SAN boots
Microsoft announced the ability to boot Windows servers from an iSCSI SAN using technology the company picked up via its acquisition of String Bean Software Inc. last month. It will be generally available to resellers and Windows Server 2003 R2 customers as part of a service pack this summer.
According to Claude Lorenson, group product manager in the storage division at Microsoft, the company will also continue to support hardware-based boot from SAN functionality. Hardware-based boots require a special host bus adapter (HBA) to be installed in SAN arrays in order to boot servers from the SAN fabric. Lorenson said they appeal to some customers because the use of a separate hardware unit helps distribute processing loads within SAN hardware. However, he said the expense of adding extra HBAs across a large SAN system is burdensome for many companies, and a software-based version will be cheaper to deploy. Software-based SAN boot can also be managed from a central console, he said.
As with any time the mighty Microsoft makes a move, smaller companies are jumping at the chance to declare themselves supporters or partners for the new SAN boot feature (for more information on the iSCSI feeding frenzy, see ISCSI competition heats up, March 23). EqualLogic Inc., especially, is working overtime to ingratiate itself to Microsoft partners and will announce its partnership with emBoot Inc. as well as Microsoft NAS partner PolyServe, Inc. and Microsoft security partner KOM Networks at Storage Networking World (SNW).
Finally, 10-Gigabit Ethernet (GigE) adapter maker Neterion Technologies will be putting the new SAN boot stuff through its paces on the show floor with a 10-GigE system, the better to give show attendees a glimpse at the "wave of the future."
Do you Decru? Quantum says 'yes'
Security appliance maker Decru Inc., now owned by Network Appliance Inc., says Quantum has signed on to resell its line of DataFort products. As Quantum joins EMC as a Decru reseller, Kevin Brown, Decru's vice president of marketing, suggests that more deals are coming. "We do have a number of companies that are interested in extending their relationships with us." Brown also hinted at possible integration of Decru technology into other products: "You could imagine that our large partners have approached us and are interested in working with our platform."
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