Clustra says its enterprise-level database is a monumental step forward for business computing capabilities. These and other new products debut while equipment-makers wheel and deal among themselves. .

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [August 31, 2001]

Clustra is showcasing its enterprise-level database at LinuxWorld. The product appears to resemble a RAID—it replicates the database across several servers but provides seamless interactions with regular databases that use ODCB or JDCB application interfaces. It also has special "self-repair" features—a 100 GB database is designed to "self-heal" in less than one second and stay available while it is repairing itself. The product costs $20,000 per CPU, with a minimum purchase of a two-CPU license.

Tarantella, Inc. (Nasdaq: TTLA) said the latest version of its Linux networking software, Tarantella Enterprise 3, combines Linux reliability with a great low price—U.S. prices start at $999 for 10 users in the United States. The product is available on Red Hat, Caldera, Turbo, and SuSE versions of Linux, along with UnixWare and OpenServer.

Hare-core hardware
INRANGE released a new series of optical networking products for storage solutions, co-branded with ADVA Optical Networking. There are three products (the Spectrum 1000, 2000, and 3000) each of which is designed to aggregate a specific number of channels into a single fiber pair.

Gadzoox Networks (NASDAQ: ZOOX) unveiled the Slingshot 4210 (right). The company says that with 10 ports in a half-rack-wide, 1U high package, the Slingshot 4210 offers the highest port density in the server cluster market. Additionally, the Slingshot 4210 provides investment protection for customers with the ability to scale up to 8 servers, which is two more than current cluster switches, and the capability to auto-negotiate between 1Gb and 2Gb speeds on every port.

Sun Microsystems announced that the Netra X1 UNIX server is still $995 but now features an UltraSPARC IIe 500 MHz processor (up from 400 MHz, 128MB memory (up from 64 MB, with 2GB max), and a single 40GB hard drive (2 drives max).

Adaptec released more RAID subsystems. The DuraStor family is targeted at mid-sized companies. The DuraStor 6220SS SCSI external RAID subsystem (which combines a 1U RAID appliance and a 2U storage enclosure with 12 drive bays) will ship in the United States at an MSRP beginning at $7,999. The MSRP for the DuraStor 312R storage enclosure (which supports 12 one-inch drives) is $3,499.

Spinning deals in the storage market
Exabyte Corporation (NASDAQ: EXBT) will merge with privately-held Ecrix Corporation, a manufacturer of tape drives. Exabyte will exchange its own stock for Ecrix equity and "certain Ecrix investors and persons related to them" will purchase Series H preferred stock in Exabyte. The merger has been approved by both boards and is expected to close by the end of 2001. The merged company will operate under the Exabyte name.

Seagate announced that it has shipped over 1.5 million U-series hard drives, which feature 80 GB on two platters. "Seagate has more than doubled its market share in the 5,400-rpm hard drive market since the first quarter of 1999," noted Dave Reinsel, research manager at IDC.

DataDirect Networks announced SAN DataDirector compatibility with Cisco's 5420 iSCSI Fibre Channel to Ethernet router. The Linux-based SAN DataDirector ranges in storage size from hundreds of gigabytes to 138 usable terabytes.

—End