As part of its $400-million commitment to the SAN market IBM announced several new products. According to IBM the new models of its “Shark” Enterprise Storage Server with the IBM 64-bit RISC processor, 16 gigabytes of cache, and additional PCI buses, will result in up to 100 per cent increase in throughput. With the IBM building-block architecture, existing Shark customers can upgrade to the new processor to gain performance advantages. The enhanced Shark software will support advanced copy services and native fibre channel connectivity as those features become available. They can be added in a non-disruptive mode to the new Shark models. IBM’s Magstar tape products can now connect in a SAN using the IBM SAN Data Gateway, allowing them to support the sharing of tape drives within a SAN. IBM also introduced a SAN solution using a cluster of two Netfinity servers with fibre channel connections and Legato mirroring extension software. The cluster can be separated by as much as 10 kilometres. IBM’s SAN Fibre Channel Managed Hub creates high-speed interconnections for such applications as high-availability clustering, storage consolidation, and LAN-free backup. For more visit http://www.IBM.com/SAN.
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