JNI(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:JNIC), the leading manufacturer of Fibre Channel host bus adapters for the Solaris market, today announced it has started shipping the 2 Gb Ready(TM) FibreStar(R) FCC-6460, the first product in a new family of storage adapters featuring the CompactPCI interface.
JNI today announed it is shipping in volume a full-featured, switched fabric 2 Gb Fibre Channel CompactPCI host bus adapter for the Solaris market. The new HBA targets Sun Microsystems’ new line of UltraSPARC III-based Sun Fire Midframe servers, including the Sun Fire 3800, Sun Fire 4800 and Sun Fire 6800 families.
The new FCC-6460 is based on JNI’s 2 Gb Emerald(TM) IV Fibre Channel controller and new family of drivers. It is available today from JNI’s global network of authorized resellers and distributors, including ACAL Fibre Channel Solutions, ACA-Pacific Technology, Bell Microproducts, Consan, GE Access, InfoX and Tidal Wire.
“JNI once again is first-to-market with a fabric-enabled storage adapter solution for the Solaris market, this time for Sun Fire Midframe customers,” said Neal Waddington, president and CEO of JNI Corporation. “JNI’s 2 Gb CompactPCI host bus adapter fulfills our ongoing commitment to offer the broadest open systems, best-of-breed support for the enterprise market. We’ve built our enterprise-quality reputation on seven years of experience building high-performance Solaris Fibre Channel storage adapters for SBus and PCI bus systems. Today we build on that heritage by shipping in volume our first CompactPCI host bus adapter.”
According to JNI, at 2 Gb speed, the FibreStar CompactPCI HBA offers peak throughput performance of up to 400 megabytes-per-second (MB) in full-duplex mode, approximately 200 MB in half-duplex. As with all JNI HBAs, the FCC-6460 offers full switched fabric support, as well as arbitrated loop and point-to-point protocol support. In addition, the CompactPCI HBA will include a host of enterprise-level features, including IP and SCSI protocols, FC-Tape support, and 1 or 2 Gb auto rate negotiation. This last, “on demand” feature will enable a smooth and automatic migration path to 2 Gb-enabled storage networks by operating in 1 Gb, 2 Gb or mixed 1 Gb and 2 Gb Fibre Channel environments. Widespread deployment of 2 Gb Fibre Channel infrastructure is expected to take place in 2002.
The 2 Gb Ready FibreStar FCC-6460 is available today.