HOPKINTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 29, 1998--
Offers World's First Fibre Channel Hub Connectivity
for Heterogeneous Servers
EMC Corporation today announced immediate availability of Fibre
Channel network hub connectivity for its industry-leading Symmetrix
Enterprise Storage systems. Today's announcement bolsters EMC's lead
in delivering concrete Enterprise Storage Network solutions, enhancing
the ability of organizations with heterogeneous computing environments
to take full advantage of the emerging Fibre Channel connectivity
standard. With this announcement, EMC helps customers virtually extend
the walls of their data center and consolidate information from more
servers across greater distances on an EMC Enterprise Storage Network.
The company announced hub support for Hewlett-Packard and Sun
UNIX servers, as well as multiplexer support for HP-UX servers. These
solutions build on EMC's lead as the world's only storage provider
able to consolidate, manage and protect information from heterogeneous
systems simultaneously across a Fibre Channel network.
"In many ways EMC, with its shared storage arrays, pioneered the
concept of Storage Area Networks (SANs) for the distributed network,"
said Michael Peterson, President of Strategic Research Corporation.
"EMC has achieved a high level of customer confidence in this area and
has become the standard of comparison. With the integration of Fibre
Channel hubs and multiplexers, EMC continues this tradition."
"Compelling cost efficiencies and information management benefits
are driving us to consolidate more and more data from across the
enterprise onto centralized EMC Enterprise Storage," commented Ted
Crawford, Director of Technical Development for Andover,
Massachusetts-based Navisite Internet Services. "Previous connectivity
options limited the number of connections and the distance between
distributed servers and storage systems. With Fibre Channel hub
support for our Sun servers, EMC is addressing these issues and once
again speaking through its actions in the creation of large-scale
enterprise storage networks."
Robert Dutkowsky, EMC Executive Vice President of Markets and
Channels, commented, "As new Fibre Channel network devices make their
way to market, the bottom line for customers remains constant -- not
all SANs are created equal. Customers need continuous and protected
access to information today, regardless of where it resides or on what
platform. EMC Enterprise Storage Networks offer the extremely strong
reliability of Symmetrix systems and services, the advanced
functionality of EMC Enterprise Storage software, combined with
enhanced connectivity of Fibre Channel networks."
EMC has implemented industry-standard Fibre Channel-Arbitrated
Loop, a high-speed serial data transfer interface used to connect
computer and storage systems. The availability of Fibre Channel hubs
enables customers to attach more servers to EMC Symmetrix Enterprise
Storage systems across greater distances. In addition, Fibre Channel
increases channel throughput by a factor of five (100MB/sec vs.
20MB/sec for FWD SCSI).
With the availability of point-to-point Fibre Channel-Arbitrated
Loop (FC-AL) connectivity to Hewlett-Packard HP-UX and Sun Solaris
servers announced last year, Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems
became the first to provide simultaneous connectivity to multiple
Fibre Channel UNIX-based servers.
In addition, Symmetrix remains the only single integrated storage
system to provide simultaneous support for multiple Fibre Channel and
other connectivity options. Last quarter, EMC's first full quarter
offering multi-platform Fibre Channel connectivity for Symmetrix
systems, more than 20% of all Symmetrix systems revenue included Fibre
Channel connectivity. To date, more than one-third of Symmetrix
systems shipped with Fibre Channel connections have included Fibre
Channel and either open systems Fast-Wide Differential SCSI, Ultra
SCSI or mainframe ESCON connections.
Fibre Channel hubs are network devices that allow Fibre Channel
Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) connectivity among multiple servers, storage
systems and other hubs on the storage network. Hubs provide a more
reliable connection topology, more connections and greater distances
than direct server-to-storage connectivity methods. Fibre Channel
multiplexers are network devices that provide connectivity and
protocol conversion between a single server and up to 4 ports on a
storage system. The multiplexer serves as the intermediary bridge
between Fibre Channel data traffic from the server and SCSI data
traffic from the storage system. These devices allow legacy servers
and storage to participate in a Fibre Channel based Enterprise Storage
Network.
Pricing and Availability
All products announced today are available immediately.
Hewlett-Packard hubs and multiplexers are available from HP -- support
includes Hewlett-Packard 9000 D-Class, K-Class and T600 servers. Sun
hubs are available from Sun -- support includes Sun Ultra Enterprise
UNIX servers, including the new Ultra Enterprise 10000. |
