BEAVERTON, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 8, 1997--
With Brocade, Sequent is First to Deliver Fibre Channel Fabric in
Mission-Critical Enterprise Environments with No Single
Point-of-failure, No Performance Degradation; Adds Industry's
First Clustered File System for UNIX
Gaining ground on the mainframe, Sequent Computer Systems Inc. today announced
major advances in high availability on multiple fronts with its scalable, data center-class
NUMA-Q(TM) 2000.
In addition to becoming the first vendor to ship systems integrated with Brocade
Communications Systems Inc.'s full-speed SilkWorm(TM) Fibre Channel switch,
Sequent has extended its high-availability arsenal with industry-leading multi-pathing,
clustering and data protection capabilities.
"We are in the mainframe alternative business and this announcement is part of a major,
ongoing effort to deliver the most manageable, highest-availability open systems," said
Kevin Joyce, director of product marketing at Sequent.
"By aggressively moving beyond Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop to a much more
robust, switched fabric topology, we are illustrating a commitment to the data center
market. Our competitors coming from the midrange just don't have that focus."
Sequent Delivers Industry's First Multi-Path Fibre Channel Fabric
Resulting from a three-year development effort, Sequent is the first UNIX vendor to
deliver MVS-style multi-path I/O capabilities through a Fibre Channel fabric in
conjunction with the company's robust DYNIX/ptx operating system. Multi-pathing
provides multiple active paths to each storage device, balances I/O loading and
removes Fibre Channel paths as single points of failure.
Sequent's NUMA-Q 2000 systems are now shipping with Brocade's full-speed
SilkWorm Fibre Channel switch. Full-speed Fibre Channel provides a data rate of one
gigabit per second per port, which is equivalent to 100MB/sec. The Silkworm switch
provides NUMA-Q (Non-Uniform Memory Access) customers with new levels of
storage capacity, throughput, scalability and availability.
The combination of cascaded SilkWorm switches and Sequent's multi-pathing will for
the first time enable companies to
connect an unlimited number of storage devices with no single points-of-failure in a
system or cluster. In addition, Sequent's
four-processor NUMA-Q building blocks, or quads, have been developed for
multi-pathing to take full advantage of the Fibre
Channel switch's capabilities.
A single SilkWorm switch delivers 800 megabytes per second of I/O to the system --
eight times the speed of a traditional Fibre Channel hub that is part of an Arbitrated
Loop (FC/AL) system.
Utilizing multiple connections to the same DASS (Direct Access Storage Subsystem),
the switch provides mainframe-style I/O connectivity which substantially improves
access speeds, bandwidth and system availability. In addition, hundreds of terabytes of
storage can be attached to a single or clustered server, giving users access to
unprecedented amounts of data.
"The SilkWorm switch represents the final piece of Sequent's Fibre Channel integration
strategy, enabling Sequent to build the world's most scalable disk subsystems," said
Brenda Christensen, vice president of marketing for Brocade.
"We are seeing many OEMs and systems integrators following suit with
implementations of a Fibre Channel switched fabric. Sequent is to be commended for
being first out of the gate to offer this comprehensive solution to its customers that
demand performance and high availability."
Sequent Extends UNIX Clustering and Cluster Volume Management
Clustered NUMA-Q 2000 machines run individual copies of the DYNIX/ptx
operating system on a per-node basis. This ensures that businesses can continue to
function with little or no downtime in the event of a catastrophic hardware or software
failure that impacts the site. In September, Sequent surpassed the competition by
becoming the first company to ship switched Fibre Channel clustering connections
between NUMA-Q servers, or nodes, in a campus-wide environment.
Sequent now builds on its industry-leading, flexible software clustering capabilities by
delivering Clustered File System (CFS)
to leverage the Fibre Channel interconnect for better performance and greater system
reliability.
Sequent's sophisticated CFS is a highly available, high performance, distributed file
system, enabling NUMA-Q 2000 cluster nodes to access files directly across the
high-speed Fibre Channel interconnect, rather than relying on much slower network
connections.
Other UNIX vendors today still require Network File Systems (NFS) to share files
between nodes in a cluster. CFS ensures more secure, faster file access and improved
cluster performance and synchronization to virtually eliminate failover delays.
Furthermore, Sequent's "active-active" clusters let all nodes share in the processing at
any give time. This rules-based failover package gives data center managers maximum
flexibility in determining whether and how an application fails over.
Sequent's modular approach to its clustering software enables customers to extend
their clustering and interconnect technologies as new products and standards are
introduced, such as the Virtual Interface Architecture specification.
Rounding out Sequent's high-availability capabilities, the Sequent Volume Manager
(SVM) shipping with Sequent's robust DYNIX/ptx operating system provides
customers with enhanced disk management and increased system availability over
traditional mirroring products. Essential for data protection, SVM enables data
mirroring or striping across disks and offers centralized storage management by letting
users group disks and dynamically move data volumes without requiring a system
shut-down.
About Sequent Computer Systems Inc.
Sequent Computer Systems Inc. is uniquely capable of delivering robust and scalable
Data Center Ready open systems solutions that are guaranteed to perform. Sequent
minimizes customers' risk, enabling implementation of complex business applications
that support critical needs, based on the breakthrough Sequent NUMA-Q
architecture, a comprehensive portfolio of proven migration services and offerings and
an established set of partnerships with the industry's best-in-class. For further
information, phone Sequent at 503/626-5700 or 800/257-9044, or visit our World
Wide Web site sequent.com
Note to Editors: Sequent and DYNIX/ptx are a registered trademarks and NUMA-Q
is a trademark of Sequent Computer Systems Inc. SilkWorm is a trademark of
Brocade Communications Systems Inc. All brand and product names appearing in this
release are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective holders.
CONTACT: Sequent Computer Systems Inc.
Mike Fay, 212/317-5710
mikefay@sequent.com
or
Applied Communications Corp.
Don Gentile, 650/375-8881 ext. 232
dgentile@appliedcom.com |
