Compaq ‘s New Enterprise Storage Products

Compaq Computer Corporation this week announced a wide range of new enterprise storage products that the company said are designed to increase the versatility and power of existing Compaq storage area network (SAN) and network attached storage (NAS) offerings.

According to Compaq, StorageWorks by Compaq MSL5052S provides an answer to backup and restore requirements in the departmental segment. It offers enterprise level features (hot plug drives, dual redundant power supply, seamless scalability, cPCI I/O slots), and , according to the company, the segment’s highest storage density in a compact 10U form factor. It is desinged to simplifies backup and restore management activities, providing unique data protection value.

Compaq said StorageWorks by Compaq Rackmount Tape Options is the company’s answer to the growing demands on storage and increasing rack-densities, which have created the need for many customers to migrate their data protection solution outside of the server. The company said Rackmount Tape Options provide low-cost, rack-dense solutions for moving Compaq DAT, AIT, DLT, and SDLT tape drives into small rackmount spaces.

StorageWorks by Compaq SAN Switch 2/16 is the company’s next generation of Fibre Channel SAN fabric switches featuring increased transfer speed and the optional ability to trunk or aggregate the throughput of up to four inter- switch ports. Compaq said the higher speed coupled with optional trunking feature allows users to install these switches in pairs as high speed backbone devices for joining SAN islands with minimal performance degradation. The SAN Switch 2/16 combines 1Gbit/s and 2Gbit/s Fibre Channel throughput with new features that greatly enhance switch operation.

Compaq said StorageWorks by Compaq Enterprise Virtual Array Expansion Cabinets allows Enterprise Virtual Array customers to expand the disk capacity behind their Enterprise controllers. This enhancement consists of two “side car” cabinets that Compaq said are easily cabled to the Enterprise Virtual Array.

StorageWorks by Compaq AIT 100GB Tape Drive provides enterprise environments with a data archival and data protection solution that the company said delivers outstanding capacity, performance, reliability and density. The AIT 100GB has a sustained native data transfer rate of 12MB/s.

Other storage products include StorageWorks by Compaq SDLT 110/220GB Maintenance storage tools, Availability Management Service for SANs and Availability Monitoring Service for SANs, StorageWorks by Compaq Array Controller Software (v8.6-4), StorageWorks by Compaq Array Controller Software (v8.6-1 Solutions Kits), StorageWorks by Compaq FC2257c Fibre Channel HBA (for Solaris), StorageWorks by Compaq SAN, SANworks by Compaq Virtual Controller Software, and the Compaq Alpha Rail Kit, which the company said provides a low-cost solution for mounting either the StorageWorks DLT Tape Array III or StorageWorks MSL5026 in a Marquee-based AlphaServer rack.