Mylex Announces DACFF RAID Controller; Delivers Fibre Channel Performance Up To 190 MB/sec; DACFF Designed for Clustering and Storage Area Network Environments
Business Editors and Computer Writers
COMDEX Fall 98
FREMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--November 10, 1998--Mylex
Corporation (Nasdaq:MYLX), the world's leading RAID controller vendor
in the non-captive network systems marketplace, today announced the
DACFF, a new high-performance Fibre Channel RAID controller. The
controller, which provides an end-to-end Fibre Channel interface
between the host computer and the disk drives, delivers almost four
times the I/O performance of traditional Ultra SCSI controllers.
"The DACFF RAID controller serves as an essential building block
for clustering and Storage Area Network (SAN) environments," said
David Hill, senior storage industry analyst at Aberdeen Group, based
in Boston, MA. "End-to-end Fibre Channel connectivity allows system
architects to create extremely scalable, high-performance storage
systems."
"Fibre Channel permits higher bandwidth over greater distances
than traditional SCSI, delivering data transfer rates over 100 MB/sec
across a 30 meter serial link," said Eric Herzog, vice president of
marketing at Mylex. "The DACFF integrates easily with leading Fibre
Channel switch and hub products, and provides simplified network
connectivity, cable routing and maintenance."
With dual active, automatic failover/failback host cluster
support via two copper FC-AL (Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop) channels,
the DACFF enables flexible configuration and redundant connections for
high-availability applications. In addition to supporting automatic
failover/failback, DACFF provides support for four other critically
important clustered storage capabilities, including active-active
operation, mirrored write caching, scalable I/O performance and
scaleable I/O capacity.
The DACFF rounds out Mylex's existing Fibre Channel controller
product line, which already includes the DACSF and the DACFL. The
DACSF is a Fibre Channel to Ultra SCSI controller and the DACFL is a
Fibre Channel to Ultra2 SCSI LVD controller. The entire Mylex Fibre
Channel line is extremely well suited for operation in clustered
environments and Storage Area Networks.
DACFF Provides Customers Unmatched Performance and Flexibility
The DACFF's Fibre Channel disk drive connectivity delivers drive
data transfer rates of over 100 MB/sec per Fibre Channel loop. This
relieves IT professionals from slower and shorter drive channels,
enabling greater storage flexibility and performance. The DACFF
delivers up to 190 MB/sec performance for sustained sequential RAID 5
reads and over 140 MB/sec performance in sustained sequential RAID 5
writes.
The DACFF's streamlined architecture provides a separate memory
for cache, cache look-up tables, and the CPU instruction store. The
separate memory implementations eliminate bus contention and maximize
throughput. The DACFF hardware supports dual active configurations for
optimal performance and fault-tolerance.
The DACFF implements a unique dual processor design which
separates data movement and control functions. Utilizing the latest
generation i960 processor coupled with Mylex's own Northbay
co-processing ASIC, the DACFF tightly integrates Mylex's high
performance firmware with the power of this unique dual processor
design to provide one of the fastest Fibre Channel controllers
available. Mylex's breakthrough architecture allows for one processor
to manage overall functions of the controller, while the second
processor manages Mylex's hardware XOR engine and on board memory.
The DACFF supports drive connectivity via four Fibre Channel
Loops. Each controller supports up to 500 drives, allowing over 25
terabytes of scaleable high performance capacity per controller. By
utilizing multiple DACFFs, customers can build large LAN-based OLTP
and OLAP systems, as well as bandwidth intensive applications such as
video\broadcasting.
DACFF Delivers Exceptional Manageability and Configureability
DACFF provides customers the same high level of manageability that
they have come to expect with all Mylex RAID products. The DACFF
offers a host of fault tolerant features, including automatic
detection of failed drives; automatic and transparent rebuild of
failed drives; on-line RAID capacity expansion; hot spare drive
support; hot swap drive support; RAID configuration stored on both
disk and in non-volatile RAM; SMART capable drive support and SAF-TE
and SES enclosure management.
Another important feature of DACFF is Mylex's GAM and WAM
(Global Array Manager and Web Array Manager), which enable the RAID
system to be configured, maintained and monitored remotely over the
Internet or corporate Intranet. GAM is the world's best-selling RAID
management software and supports Mylex's entire line of RAID
controller solutions. WAM is Mylex's Java-based enterprise management
software which will be previewed for the first time this month at
Comdex and will ship in the second quarter of 1999.
The DACFF supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5, 10, 30, 50 and JBOD,
offering maximum RAID level flexibility customizable to the user's
application. In addition, the DACFF has a 16 MB processor execution
memory and a separate data cache configurable up to 1 GB, allowing for
simultaneous execution of commands on both processors. Write-through
or write-back options for each logical array provide versatile
performance options. For maximum convenience, the DACFF is
field-upgradeable with flash EEPROM.
Pricing and Availability
The DACFF controller ships to OEM customers the second quarter of
1999. MSRP pricing has not yet been determined.
About Mylex
Founded in 1983, Mylex Corporation is an ISO 9001-certified
developer of high-performance hardware and software for moving,
storing, protecting and managing data in network and desktop
environments. Ranked as the #1 supplier of RAID controllers in the
non-captive network systems disk array market in the 1998 Dataquest
and IDC reports and no. 1 in the 1997, 1996 and 1995 DISK/TREND
reports, Mylex produces high-performance RAID controller subsystems,
SCSI adapters and complementary computer products for network servers,
mass storage systems, workstations and system motherboards. Mylex
products are sold globally through a network of OEMs, major
distributors, VARs and system integrators. Mylex Corporation is
headquartered at 34551 Ardenwood Blvd., Fremont, CA 94555, and can be
reached by phone at 510-796-6100 or toll free at 800-77-MYLEX, by fax
at 510-745-8016 or on the Internet at mylex.com.
Visit Mylex at COMDEX Las Vegas November 16-20, Suite N253.
--30--jar/sf*
CONTACT: Dovetail Public Relations
Mark Coker/Corey Oiesen, 408/395-3600
mark@dovetailpr.com/corey@dovetailpr.com
or
Mylex Corporation
Eric Herzog/Judith Lawrence-Gates
510/608-2469/ 510/608-2244
erich@mylex.com/judithl@mylex.com
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED TRADESHOW
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