SGI introduced a new set of storage products this week that will help customers improve the management and workflow of data.
Announced at the Storage Decisions 2003 conference in Chicago, SGI’s InfiniteStorage consists of hardware and software products that let users share, scale and manage data. The company introduced new versions of its CXFS shared file system and Data Migration Facility, as well as new network-attached (NAS) and storage-area network (SAN) attached Fibre Channel arrays.
The CXFS shared file system supports SGI’s IRIX, Solaris and Windows, and lets users share data across a SAN between systems without replicating files from one device to another. CXFS now also supports Linux and AIX. CXFS already supports Windows, SGI IRIX and Solaris. CXFS supports file sizes of 9 million terabytes and file systems of 18 million terabytes.
The Data Migration Facility (DMF) software allows data to be moved between disk, near-line disk and tape during its lifetime. DMF now runs Linux, as well as IRIX. The software allows management of a variety of server operating systems connected to storage.
The new storage hardware – the InfiniteStorage NAS 2000, SAN 2000 and SAN 3000 – can provide as much as 165 terabytes of data capacity. The NAS 2000 scales from one to 112 terabytes of data; the SAN 2000 has a maximum capacity of 165 terabytes; and, the SAN 3000 has 150 terabytes of data capacity. All three arrays use 2Gbps Fibre Channel drives.
The SAN 2000 attaches to the network via numerous Gigabit Ethernet connections and can serve either as a NAS device for SGI XFS, Unix Network File System or Microsoft Common Information File System data or as a gateway to SGI’s SAN 1000, 2000 or 3000 arrays. It works with Unix, Windows and Apple host computers.
The company will also integrate start-up AppIQ’s storage resource management software into its SAN Server management software.
The hardware and software are available now. The InfiniteStorage NAS 2000 starts at US$91,550; the SAN 2000 starts at US$112,000 for 1 terabyte and scales to 165 terabytes for US$3.96 million; the SAN 3000 starts at US$180,000 and scales to 150 terabytes for US$3.96 million.
