McData To Boost Its Storage Offering___
McData Corp. next week will introduce a product aimed at
improving the movement of data over Fibre Channel storage
systems. The product, called the ED-5000 enterprise Fibre
Channel director, is just one-third the price of the only
other Fibre Channel director on the market.
While a comparable director from Computer Network Technology
has been selling for $300,000, the ED-5000 will be priced at
$50,000 to $100,000. The product also represents the first
time McData--which has traditionally sold to vendors and
other systems integrators--is targeting the end-user market.
The ED-5000, which ships this month, has error-detection and
recovery to keep corrupt data from getting through, hardware
component redundancy to ensure reliability, and 32 ports.
These ports push data through at an aggregate rate of 3,200
Mbytes per second--much more than typical Fibre Channel
speeds of 100 Mbytes per second, a level that often isn't
achieved because of the arbitrated nature of the
interconnect framework.
Michael Peterson, an analyst with Strategic Research Corp.,
says relying on hubs and switches for data movement can't
compare with using a higher-priced director such as the ED-
5000; the first two devices just keep sending data along,
even if it's corrupt, for example. Peterson describes Fibre
Channel directors as the most sophisticated tool for moving
data. --Martin J. Garvey
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