To: Neil S who wrote (708 ) 8/10/1998 3:23:00 PM From: trendmastr Respond to of 4808
HP Makes Major Advances in Fibre Channel Solutions for Storage Area Networks PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 10, 1998-- New Capabilities Allow Customers to Share Information Across Distributed Servers, Protect Business Operations Through Well-managed Fibre Channel Environments Hewlett-Packard Company today announced two capabilities to make it easier for companies to share information among multiple servers at distributed sites: -0- *T -- support for distances up to 10 kilometers between its Fibre-Channel-Arbitrated-Loop (FC-AL) long-wave hubs, providing the necessary deployment flexibility for companies that require superior disaster-recovery and high-availability solutions; and -- Fibre Channel Manager software, a Web-based tool that enhances system administration and improves overall system availability. *T -0- This announcement reinforces HP's leadership in the Fibre Channel market and heralds the next generation of Fibre Channel products. "HP is committed to leading the industry in providing high-availability storage," said Marilyn Edling, general manager of HP's Enterprise Storage Solutions Division. "For successful implementation of Fibre Channel and storage area networking, customers require a supplier that understands how to integrate these capabilities into the operations center. HP customers now have tools they can put in place today to bring storage-network benefits such as improved fault tolerance and greater information availability to the real world. Only HP is delivering products today that deliver on this promise." THE MANAGED HUB Fibre Channel Manager software allows remote software-based management of Fibre Channel hubs, giving IT managers simplified management of the storage area network (SAN) and freeing up their time to focus on other tasks. Fibre Channel Manager's capabilities include proactive environmental monitoring of the Fibre Channel hub's infrastructure elements, including the fan, power supply and temperature gauge, detecting which hub ports are in use and bypassing or enabling hub ports from the management workstation. With Fibre Channel Manager, users can add and remove storage-networking elements at planned times without disrupting the network. In addition, failed or failing devices can be bypassed, increasing availability of the overall system. This product also integrates with HP's award-winning enterprise-management platform -- HP OpenView Network Node Manager. SUCCESSFULLY REACHING 10 KILOMETERS Customers now can extend their FC-AL Hub capabilities more than 10 kilometers, allowing them to move storage devices to alternate sites without losing any of the benefits associated with Fibre Channel. These benefits include high-speed, high-capacity connectivity that eliminates the data-transfer-rate and distance limitations of conventional SCSI server-to-storage communication. True campus and metropolitan-area disaster recovery is now possible with full gigabit Fibre Channel capabilities. HP is the first system vendor to provide 10-kilometer support between FC-AL hubs. Each hub has 10 ports and can be used to build mirrored, fault-resilient, campus server and storage clusters that can be separated by 10 kilometers. PRICING AND AVAILABILITY A free version of HP Fibre Channel Manager can be downloaded free of charge from software.hp.com by clicking on the Fibre Channel Manager link. This site includes all files necessary to install a Web server and run Fiber Channel Manager. Information about the 10-kilometer networking capability can be obtained from local HP sales representatives. ABOUT HP Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 125,300 employees and had revenue of $42.9 billion in its 1997 fiscal year. Information about HP and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at hp.com . --30--rab/sf rn/sf CONTACT: Cunningham Communication for HP Tracy Clifton, 408/343-5673 tclifton@cup.hp.com