IBM today announced a lineup of storage networking products and enhancements, including NAS and tape products. IBM says these product introductions mark the delivery of the next phase of IBM’s storage networking initiative launched in February 2001, which featured the NAS Gateway and iSCSI product lines.
Today’s NAS highlights include:
– IBM TotalStorage NAS 200 — a tower (one processor and up to 216 GB), designed for xSPs, workgroup and branch office environments for applications such as video streaming or e-mail storage, or the rack (two processors and up to 1.74 TB) version designed for departmental and regional office locations for applications such as sales force support. The NAS 200 tower and rack have high levels of Windows performance.
– IBM TotalStorage NAS 300 — with its dual engines and redundant systems, it is designed for mission critical applications such as customer support, accounts receivable, and payroll. This solution provides high levels of Windows performance.
– IBM TotalStorage NAS 300G — bridges the gap between the local area network (LAN) and a storage area network (SAN) with a new high availability clustering technology that provides high levels of increased performance and availability.
IBM has also enhanced its tape storage products, making them ready to interoperate in an open network environment. Here are the highlights:
– IBM TotalStorage Linear Tape-Open Libraries — a new optional gateway now provides native Fibre Channel support for the Ultrium Scalable Tape Library via dual 2GB ports. For both the Ultrium Scalable and the UltraScalable Tape Libraries, native Fibre Channel support is being announced for connection to eServer iSeries hosts, along with new remote management capability accessed via a Web browser. Additional enhancements for the UltraScalable Tape Library include new hot swap drive and redundant drive power availability features and mixed media support for DLT 8000.
– IBM Magstar Virtual Tape Server Family — enhancements include increased support for up to double the number of virtual and physical tape drives, larger blocksizes, and a new Peer-to-Peer configuration as well as improved capacity with the addition of support for the High Performance 3590 Cartridge, additional Open System attachment and SAN attachment for a standalone VTS.
Furthermore, IBM also announced today that it has begun reselling and servicing the INRANGE FC/9000-128 Fibre Channel Director, a high availability 128-port switch. IBM also announced a simple upgrade feature for the INRANGE FC/9000 Fibre Channel Director, a 64-port switch which provides an enterprise-class switching infrastructure for both open systems Fibre Channel and IBM FICON storage networks. The new model and upgrade will be particular attractive to IBM’s largest zSeries server customers, who are beginning their migration from S/390 ESCON to FICON switching technology.
