Tantia Tech hopes that its proprietary file transfer program, said to be 25 times faster than FTP, supplants the old-standby protocol in LAN-less apps. Plus CA World makes its own news and investors throw cash at SAN the sector.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [July 13, 2001]

Tantia Technologies hopes to displace good old FTP with HFT—its High-speed File Transfer program crafted to transport data at rates in excess of 50 GB per hour per stream. While FTP cannot maintain transfer rates over 2 GB per hour per stream, the company figures enterprise-class SANs can make more money they faster they transfer data. Prices vary as Tantia charges a a flat license fee, based on the number of OS/390 or open-systems servers used.

Tantia HFT is a LAN-less protocol that works with Hitachi Freedom Storage and HP Surestore XP disk arrays; or through channel-attach options from Bus-Tech, Crossroads Systems, and IBM; or also through direct application-to-application data transfer via applications that recognize named pipes.

It's a small world after all
Computer Associates International, Inc. made its own news just in time for CA World in Orlando, Fla.

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. and CA are using the Brocade switching platform to demonstrate serverless backup for Oracle database applications at CA World. The solution employs CA's BrightStor Enterprise Backup solution

CA is also working with Emulex Corporation to enable high-speed data transmission for backup or other purposes in solutions that combine CA software with the latest Emulex storage networking host bus adapters (HBAs).

As if that isn't enough, CA also announced that its software is now compatible with Network Appliance's Data ONTAP 6.1 and NetApp F700 and F800 series filers. Thankfully CA World only happens once a year.

Loading tapes for you
Exabyte introduced its EZ17-A autoloading tape drive this week, accelerated now with AIT-2 technology transferring up to 56 GB of data per hour. The system stores 910 GB in each of seven tapes, based on a compression ratio of 2.6:1 and retails for $6,899 (below).

EZ17-A autoloading tape drive Texas Instruments made available its ADS7823 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for OEMs this week. The converter features low-power consumption—just 2.7V to 5V keeps it humming. It supports all three I2C serial bus and data transmission protocols—standard operation up to 100kbps, fast mode up to 400kbps and high-speed mode up to 3.4Mbps. The IT OEM unit sells for $2.98—minimum order of a thousand. Hewlett-Packard introduced a pay-for-use program for its UNIX HP Superdome server lineup. The system inspired by pay-per-view also supports HPs Intel IA-32-based servers for free. Clients are only charged for the computing space used each month. Each box has an internal meter allowing HP to monitor when the server is on, how capacity is used, and how much to charge the client. CONTEC Microelectronics USA Inc. announced 2.5" and 3.5" IDE Silicon Disk Drives for use with Windows, Linux or DOS applications. The drives contain no moving parts so the unit can keep on ticking after an 8-ft. drop. The IDE drives are available in 32MB to 1024MB versions.

Dell released PowerVault 136T and PowerVault 128T tape libraries, based on the emerging Linear Tape-Open (LTO) standard. The PowerVault 136T starts at $17,000 and supports up to 14.4 TB, 72 LTO cartridges, and six LTO tape drives. The PowerVault 128T starts at $10,000, is scalable to up to 4 TB, holds up to 20 LTO cartridges, and Web-based remote management.

We're in the money
Investors continue to shimmy off to the storage sector love shack this week.

ANTEC, which in April signed an agreement with Nortel Networks to merge with Nortel's Arris Interactive unit, received permission to complete the merger. Nortel will own about 49.2 percent of the ANTEC-plus-Arris company. ANTEC also released an intelligent fiber jumper cable in celebration of its union with Nortel.

And intelligent storage solutions provider Intransa went to the VC buffet and gorged on more than $15 million in venture capital financing.

3PARdata, hardware and software for information storage systems provider, pocketed $100 million in third round financing. The company says it is now funded to breakeven somtime in 2003.

Refusing to leave the table hungry, Broadband Storage, provider of storage services and products, obtained $16 million in Series A funding.

—End