IBM and INRANGE announce an expanded reseller agreement
07.16.2001
Rating: -4.11- (out of 5)
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< On June 12, 2001, IBM announced an expanded reseller agreement with INRANGE Corporation. IBM has expanded its portfolio of INRANGE products by adding the INRANGE FC/9000 Fibre Channel 128-Port Director. The INRANGE FC/9000 Director is designed to provide enterprise-class availability and Fibre Channel fabric connectivity for IBM servers supporting the FICON?rotocol. Existing INRANGE FC/9000 64 Port Directors can be field-upgraded to the 128 port capability. The INRANGE FC/9000 supports S/390?672 G5 and G6 and IBM eServer zSeries 900 Servers with FICON attachment. Also supported are UNIX-based servers from IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard and Intel-based servers running Windows NT and 2000. The Fibre Channel ports support either longwave or shortwave Gigabit Interface Converters, and are self-configuring, supporting fabric, loop (public or private), and inter-switch connections.
FC/9000 Product brief
The FC/9000 Director features redundant power and cooling plus redundant active components that support automatic failover. High availability features include dynamic component replacement, non-disruptive microcode updates and automatic fault detection and isolation. The FC/9000 High-Availability feature offers redundant internal pathing, control modules, and power modules for all active electronic components.
The INRANGE FC/9000 offers the following:
- Scalable with 24 to 128 Fibre Channel ports in 8-port increments (hot-pluggable)
- Full duplex, 100 MB/second per port, non-blocking
- Standard shortwave laser GBIC (500 meters), longwave laser GBIC (10 kilometers) and extended distance longwave GBIC (80 kilometers)
- High Availability option that supports concurrent hardware maintenance with firmware upgrades and automatic failover to redundant switching, control, and power modules.
- Fibre Channel attachments include FICON, FCP, Fabric, FC-AL public and private loops, and cascaded directors.
- The INRANGE IN-VSN Enterprise Manager includes call-home, pager, and SNMP notification
EVG Note: The complete product specifications for the INRANGE Directors are available on the ESOL database under SAN Components at http://www.evaluatorgroup.com/esol/
Pricing and availability
| Machine Type/Model |
Feature # |
Purchase $ |
| INRANGE FC/9000-128 FC Director |
- |
$215,000 |
| Shortwave GBIC (multimode fiber) |
2010 |
$385 |
| Longwave GBIC (single mode fiber) |
2020 |
$1,080 |
| Extended longwave GBIC (80 kilometers) |
2030 |
$4,500 |
| Additional FIO modules (8-ports) |
5010 |
$27,390 |
| HA Option/128-Port |
5022 |
$30,000 |
| IN-VSN Enterprise Manager Server Bundle |
7600 |
$9,900 |
The planned availability date for the INRANGE FC/9000 128-port Director is June 22, 2001.
Evaluator Group Comments:
The addition of the INRANGE 128-port Director was a natural addition to the IBM switch portfolio. IBM is following the trend of providing multiple fabric switch options to its customers. IBM offers the Brocade Silkworm family under its logo or directly from Brocade, the INRANGE FD9000 Directors, the McDATA switch family plus interoperability testing with the other major switch vendors. We believe IBM will soon endorse the new fabric switch offerings from Brocade.
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To view another analysis and commentary in this month's review series from the Evaluator Group, go to http://www.searchStorage.com/tip/1,289483,sid5_gci753772,00.html
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