Leveraging its experience with Fibre-Channel-based applications, Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. today unveiled the VSC120 Dual-Ported Fibre Channel Enclosure Management Controller.
The company said this device controls and monitors the environment within a storage enclosure, such as power, fans, intrusion and temperature. With its diagnostic capabilities and dual 1Gb/s or 2Gb/s Fibre Channel ports, the VSC120 can monitor the status of each disk drive to provide IT managers a proactive means of finding and diagnosing problems.
Vitesse said the VSC120 is ideal for Fibre Channel Disk Array, JBOD, RAID subsystem, switch and server designs where data availability, reliability, hardware redundancy and autonomous diagnostic support is required. It includes a 32-bit, 53MHz RISC CPU that operates in initiator and/or target modes for diagnostic flexibility, two integrated 1Gb/s and 2Gb/s Fibre Channel serial transceivers for backward compatibility and redundant data paths.
A VSC120 Software Development Kit (SDK) is available to simplify implementation by providing customers quick development of a complete SCSI-3 Enclosure Services (SES) and IPMI solution.
“Having an embedded controller that monitors and controls all aspects of a high-reliability, ultra-performance, storage enclosure gives OEMs the ability to guarantee uptime to their customers,” stated Tim Hornback, director of Datacom marketing at Vitesse.
“The VSC120, in conjunction with our industry-proven SDK, helps OEMs implement any enclosure management strategy. Since the firmware easily migrates between our complete enclosure management family, the task of developing and debugging firmware is shared across a variety of applications which reduces overall R&D costs and accelerates time-to-market,” concluded Hornback.
The VSC120 is priced at $55 in quantities of 1,000. Samples are available now, with production quantities scheduled for November 2001.
