StorageTek and JNI Certify FC HBA for Windows Server Platforms

JNI Corporation and StorageTek today announced the JNI 2 Gb Ready FibreStar. FCE-6460 Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA) has been certified to connect StorageTek’s leading tape automation and virtual backup/restore solutions to Windows-based servers. The FCE 6460 has now been certified as a supported Fibre Channel HBA for multiple operating system environments, including Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Solaris.

The JNI 2 Gb Ready HBA offers on-demand 2 Gb per second transfer rate native support for the StorageTek family of tape solutions, providing superior performance and reduced equipment costs in a Fibre Channel-based storage network environment, with automatic switching to 1 Gb data link rates for 1 Gb products.

Fibre Channel based tape backup solutions are a key enabler to SAN deployment today. SANs comprised of 2 Gb compatible tape drives will enable customers to more efficiently configure their systems to take full advantage of a increased server performance. 2Gb compatible tape devices operate more efficiently, spending less time sending and receiving data, freeing up the SAN for additional work loads.

“As StorageTek products lead the way in 2 Gb compatible tape devices, it will be important for the 2 Gb SAN infrastructure of HBAs and switches to be in place to take full advantage of increasing data transfer speeds,” said Gary Francis, StorageTek corporate vice president and general manager, Automated Tape Solutions. “JNI’s work with StorageTek to offer products for multiple operating systems is important in today’s heterogeneous data center environments.”

“StorageTek’s market and technology leadership in tape automation shows the vital role tape plays in today’s data center,” said Neal Waddington, president and CEO of JNI Corporation. “The joint certification of our 2 Gb Ready HBA on Windows, which compliments existing certifications, meets user data center integrity needs with a fully tested JNI and StorageTek solution.”

In addition to operating on servers running Windows 2000 and Windows NT, JNI’s FCE-6460 has been jointly certified to connect Sun Microsystems servers running Solaris 2.6, 7 or 8 to StorageTek products at 1 Gb or 2 Gb speeds, and is certified to run at 2 Gb speed to StorageTek’s 2 Gb T9840B capable Tape Drive.

StorageTek has worked with JNI to develop and perform joint certification testing for a variety of JNI Fibre Channel host bus adapters for use on multiple platforms across a broad range of its tape automation products. Those host bus adaptors include SBus-based 2 Gb Ready FCE-1473, FCE-1063, FCE2-1063, FC64-1063, and PCI bus FCI-1063 for Solaris platforms, as well as its PCI bus-based FCE-6410 for Solaris and Windows NT environments.

JNI HBAs passed StorageTek’s rigorous Compliance Test plan to meet the FC Tape portion of the ANSI standard, which outlines 154 test configurations necessary to achieve certification. The comprehensive testing ensures product robustness and reliability in the most demanding enterprise-level, mission critical applications.