Hitachi Data Systems takes its marketing strategy north, Transition Networks cuts prices to move excess inventory, vendors break through storage barriers, and more in this weeks update on data storage news.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [May 17, 2002]

Hitachi Data Systems re-christened its HiCommand device management product the HiCommand Management Framework last week. The Framework (shown below) is modular and standards based. The company is encouraging developers to make their own plug and play enhancements. Hitachi is already selling a framework that offers different modules, as well as varying applications from independent software vendors like InterSAN, TrueSAN, and BMC Software. The company says it will be introducing additional modules throughout the year and on into early 2003.

The HiCommand Management Framework is one part of the company's so-called "TrueNorth" strategy. Hitachi's Dave Roberson, president and chief operating officer, describes this new game plan as a combination of intelligent storage systems, comprehensive management software based on open standards, and a collaborative business model.

"With TrueNorth we are continuing our collaborative approach to the storage market, forming alliances with the best providers of solutions for our customers and driving industry standards that will ease the challenges customers face in managing multi-vendor environments," Roberson said. "The TrueNorth vision is that of a tight synergy among HiCommand standards-based storage management framework; Hitachi Freedom Storage, powerful, intelligent storage systems, and our open and collaborative approach to our strategic alliances."

The idea is that customers will benefit from choosing plug-and-play applications that best fit their needs from Hitachi or its strategic partners to leverage the power of Hitachi's storage systems. This open system is supposed to lead to a reduced cost of ownership.

Hitachi also introduced its newest storage device last week at NetWorld+Interop in Las Vegas. Known for making some of the biggest, most expensive, fully featured products on the market, Hitachi's top of the line Lightning 9980V does not disappoint.

The Hitachi Freedom Storage 9900V series can incorporate 74.7 TB of raw storage, with a data cache of up to 64 GB, pushing data over 32 Fibre Channel, FICON, or ESCON pipes, with a 15.9 GBps internal transfer rate. The control frame for this mammoth machine supports up to 1024 disks, including 16 hot spares. It weighs more than 1,200 pounds and is just over 6 feet high. The Hitachi Freedom Storage 9900V controls one to six array frames, each nearly as large as the control frame itself weighing in excess of 1600 pounds.

Transitions and new releases
Transition Networks has a deal on excess inventory while supplies last. The company also says that its new dual Fast Ethernet cards will be available in June. Pricing for Transition Network's Fast Ethernet lineup is as follows:

The cards are part of The PointSystem, a slide-in modular card with two fiber interfaces in the front connecting to two RJ21 connectors in the rear.

Transition Networks also offers a simple media converter with one Fiber port and one Ethernet port dubbed Just Convert-IT (below). Unfortunately, pricing is not available at this time.

StorageTek's next tape library, the L5500, will be out in June. The Linear Tape Open (LTO) drive starts at $163,500 for 1,500 slots and scales to 132,000 slots.

Seagate's latest Cheetah disk drives include the Cheetah 15K.3, running at a startling 15,000 RPM. The drive ships in 18, 36, and 73 gigabyte configurations, priced at $289, $519, and $939 respectively.

StorServer released an all-in-one desktop storage appliance, the S Series 10000. The product lineup starts at $19,900 with a device that uses AIT-1 compression, storing 90 GB to 270 GB on tape. The number of tape slots can be doubled and the compression can be upgraded to AIT-2 or AIT-3.

From the Lab Lands
At the VERITAS iLab in Mountain View, Calif., a team of vendors built a SAN featuring products from Brocade, Emulex Corporation, StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, and VERITAS Software on which they backed up a 2 TB Oracle9i Database in under one hour, a new industry record.

If you're looking to the future of tapes, look no farther than IBM, which announced this week it had recorded an entire terabyte of data on a single digital tape cartridge. This is equivalent to storing 16 days worth of continuously running DVD movies. It's the 50th Anniversary of IBM's tape business that debuted in May, 1952. It's first product was a magnetic tape that used a movie reel over 12 inches in diameter to record all of 1.4 megabytes of data. This is equivalent to what is readily stored on a single floppy disk today. Happy anniversary, big blue!

Not to miss out on the storage milestones, Sony announced that it too had also produced a research breakthrough. Sony's technological storage breakthrough is based on a proprietary system that enabled the company to write 11.5 GB of data onto a single square inch of digital tape. The company believes the process should enable it to develop 2 TB 8mm tapes in the future.

Big bucks
InterSAN announced this week it had picked up $17.8 million in third round funding which will be used for sales and customer support.

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