IBM Enhances Network Storage Manager Family

Upgrades to Seascape Storage Building Blocks Bring Immediate Price/Performance Advantages to Customers; Rapid Adoption of IBM Serial Disk Technology Demonstrates Strong Market Acceptance

SAN JOSE, Calif (April 21, 1998) – – IBM today announced new models for the IBM Network Storage Manager (a) that offer faster access to data and are easier to manage. These newest Seascape Storage Enterprise Architecture (b) solutions attach directly to the network and lower the cost of managing backup and recovery of critical enterprise data.
”As companies increase their reliance on e-business, business intelligence and data-intensive computing, they must have round-the-clock access to their data, and manage their data storage assets wisely,” said Bill Pinkerton, director of open systems worldwide marketing, IBM Storage Systems Division.
”The newest models of our Network Storage Manager are designed to reduce labor-intensive storage management and lower information management costs.”
IBM also reported that market acceptance of its IBM 7133 Serial Disk Systems has reached another milestone level. In under three years, IBM has shipped three petabytes(c) of its high-performance, reliable serial disk technology, anchoring it as one of the storage industry’s standard technologies.
The new IBM Network Storage Manager models deliver on the Seascape promise of providing solutions that protect customer investments in storage. Each building block contributes essential function to the whole and can be upgraded as newer technologies become available.
The Network Storage Manager is an integrated solution comprised of common storage building blocks that is much more cost-effective when integrated than when sold separately and assembled.
All the new models include the following Seascape building blocks: IBM’s scalable intelligent server complex; IBM’s leading 7133 Serial Disk System; ADSTAR(a) Distributed Storage Manager (ADSM) storage management software, the automated ”overseer” for online management, data backup and recovery functions; and a choice of industry-leading tape storage subsystems.
The entire Network Storage Manager is connected to the network with any of the common network connections such as FDDI, Token-Ring, Ethernet and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM).
Companies can choose from three new models of the Network Storage Manager to support the sizes of most operations. The entry-level model C-10, with an integrated Digital Linear Tape (DLT) library, is ideal for department and small company needs; the mid-sized model C-20 is for larger departments and medium-sized companies, and incorporates the newly enhanced faster access Magstar MP tape storage subsystem.
For companies with large enterprise storage requirements, the model C-30 has integrated the Magstar tape storage subsystem, and is available with a variety of tape drive and storage expansion options. The new models will be available April 24. Suggested pricing begins at about $120,000.
IBM also announced a new SSA storage-to-server attachment, the IBM 7190-200, that lets companies using the most popular open systems servers from Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, IBM and others connect their IBM 7133 Serial Disk Systems to existing UltraSCSI or SCSI-2 F/W adapters. UltraSCSI adapters are the second most prevalent connection technology used in the open systems marketplace.
The 7190-200 exploits the advantage of the UltraSCSI interface that has a data transfer rate between the storage and server complex of up to 40MB/second, twice the maximum data transfer rate of SCSI-2 F/W interface. The 7190-200 allows serial disk storage systems to be shared among Sun, HP and Digital servers. Fibre-optic extenders enable the 7133 serial disk systems to be geographically separated by up to 2.4 kilometers, an advantage for remote storage facilities.
For more information, visit IBM Storage Systems Division on the World Wide Web at http://www.ibm.com/storage.

Source: IBM

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