New Transmeta gear hits the market as supplied by RLX Technologies, new optical cable promises to double distance delivery, VCs invest in storage, plus more.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [May 11, 2001]

Well folks, there were thousands of products released in coordination with this week's NetWorld+Interop show. We will highlight a few landmark SAN debuts made this week.

New stuff
Ixia debuted the Optixia, a performance analyzer and traffic generator with up to 480 ports of 10/100 Mbps Ethernet or 240 ports of Gigabit Ethernet in one chassis. The chassis is under $60,000, and load modules are priced according to application.

Sun N8600

Sun Microsystems, Inc. said its N8000 filers are now shipping and deliver up to 10TB with list prices starting from $53,800. They feature Oracle Storage Compatibility Program (OSCP) qualification and are RAID 5 (left). All N8000 filers provide 10/100-BaseT Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, and Quad Fast Ethernet options.

Emulex released the Emulex LightPuls LP9002L two gigabit per second (2Gb/s) Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA). It provides up to 400MB/s bandwidth on a full-duplex link, and its PCI speed is 66 MHz. It is backward compatible and interoperable with 1Gb/s SANs and features automatic speed selection. The product was debuted at N+I, but pricing was not available.

Ateonix Networks Inc. introduced the NASAS-2040 diskless server featuring an an upgradeable Flash ROM-based OS. The 1U-sized server supports up to 512 GB (in four 128GB disks) and has a standard 10/100 Ethernet port. The unit is priced at $1,800 and special discount schedules are available for volume buyers.

Procom Technology Inc. debuted the 5U-sized Pentium III-based NetFORCE 1700. A 1.8 TB fully loaded system costs $43,331. Features include three hot swappable power supplies, RAID 5, battery-backup cache, and a web-based GUI.

Conexant Systems Inc.'s Mindspeed Technologies released OC-192 (10 Gbps) and OC-48 (2.5 Gbps) framers. The OptiPHY-F10G (M29730) is priced at $595 and the OptiPHY-F2.5G (M29720) is priced at $275 in OEM quantities of 10,000. Both will be available in sample quantities in July 2001, and volume production will commence in the fourth calendar quarter of 2001.

New tech goodies
Network Storage Solutions included a Journaling File System in its latest software release, Version 4 of SPANStor.

Superior Essex Communications announced that its 62.5 micron TeraGain XT fiber optic cable can allow it to support the IEEE 802.3z Gigabit Ethernet standard to distances of 625 meters at 850nm and 1225m at 1300nm, which are greater than two times the industry standard of 200m and 500m for the respective wavelengths.

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., announced a trade-in program in which users of its Director switches could receive newer Brocade SilkWorm switches for old Director switches if they also purchased an unspecified number of SilkWorm switches.

VCs write checks
There was plenty of storage-related venture capital wheeling and dealing at this week's NetWorld+Interopshow including:

• MaXXan Systems, Inc., a provider of next-generation networking infrastructure technologies for the enterprise storage industry, received $26 million in first round venture funding. The company will use the investment to accelerate product development activities and staffing at its facilities in San Jose, California and Houston, Texas.
• SANgate Systems, provider of enterprise storage appliances, raised an additional $10 million in equity funding.
• BlueArc Corporation, developer of enterprise-class network storage systems, closed a $72 million round of financing.
• Sanrise, a managed storage service provider, announced the second and final closing of its second round at $115 million. Sanrise has raised a total of $203 million in equity and debt financing since being founded in May 2000.

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