This IBM development may be weighing on ADIC, also.
New IBM system, developed here, has huge capacity
By Tiffany Kjos
ARIZONA DAILY STAR, Feb.21, 2001
IBM today will announce a new technology, developed in Tucson, that the company says makes data storage faster and easier than existing systems.
The 3584 UltraScalable Tape Library can hold up to 248 terabytes. A terabyte is 1 trillion bytes of information. Bob Maness, marketing director for IBM's Storage Systems Group in Tucson, said 240 terabytes is the equivalent to the storage needed to hold 2 million copies of the movie "Meet the Parents."
The system was developed by engineers at IBM's Tucson plant at 9000 S. Rita Road, where more than 1,200 people are employed. The company has 320,000 employees worldwide, including 1,100 salespeople hired in the last year, said company spokesman Clint Roswell.
The cost for the full system, manufactured in San Jose, Calif., and Guadalajara, Mexico, is $75,000. It will be available to the general public May 25, and sooner for some IBM customers, Roswell said.
The tape storage system works with IBM e-Servers, and Intel and Sun platforms. It consists of six sets of drives, with a total of 72 tape drives that are linked by fiber optics in order to connect over longer distances and enable faster transactions.
Before, Maness said, "We could connect up the automation library from drive to computer up to 25 meters, and what we're expanding that to is 500 meters" or nearly a third of a mile.
The library can move five terabytes of information an hour, and up to 72 computers can request information simultaneously, Maness said.
It is called UltraScalable because consumers can purchase one 3-by-3-by-6-foot unit and add more units as more storage is needed, Maness said.
"They can start from about 87 terabytes and expand to 248 as their needs grow."
The information is stored on 1-by-4-by-4-inch tape cartridges that hold more than 100 billion bytes. A compact disc, by comparison, will hold about 650 million bytes. Robots process, mount and remount the cartridges, which can be removed and transported.
"The real important aspect of the technology is the ability to take this information, store it in a library and manage it for yourself, and if you want to take it and put it in another library around the world you can do that," Maness said.
The development is important because IBM is the first to bring it to the market, said William Hurley, program manager with The Yankee Group, a Boston research and consulting firm.
"It does portend the future of network storage," Hurley said. "It's also significant because it does give IBM some new flexibility in its product portfolio in its ability to serve up information and data inside an IBM Storage Area Network." |
