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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J Fieb who wrote (897)	11/25/1998 9:34:00 AM
From: J Fieb	Respond to of 4808

FC in NewMedia magazine........ newmedia.com Remember: Fibre Channel Safety First! i•Serv MountainGate CentraVision File System Transoft Networks' FibreNet DataShare Fibre Channel network storage is offering greater appeal to digital media artists with new file systems that allow for safe concurrent data-sharing. With Fibre Channel's 100MBps performance-and 200MBps and 400MBps speeds on the way, real-time collaboration is now possible among digital media teams of audio and video professionals. Leading the way among new Fibre Channel solutions is MountainGate's CentraVision File System (CVFS), which speeds collaboration by allowing direct access to files from central storage. The system allows different workstations to edit the content at the same time, and there's no need for a file server or file copying. MountainGate also sells complete networking systems that work with CVFS. Another leader in Fibre Channel network version-control is Transoft Networks, which announced its FibreNet DataShare system in September. Structured around the Microsoft file system, FibreNet DataShare creates a clustered file system that operates and appears like a traditional network. Host systems share data and mount common files systems, and shared partitions appear as local drives. Safe data sharing extends to users of Mac OS, UNIX and Windows NT systems. DataShare also permits multiple protocols, such as TCP/IP and SCSI-FCP, to operate on the same network. However, warns Dataquest analyst Tom Lahive, safe file sharing over Fibre Channel has yet to be proven. There are so many media production packages that need to be supported, some are bound to have integration problems. "It's still in development," says Lahive. According to Transoft, their software is closer to the network level, making incompatibility less likely; their software will have to ship first to prove or disprove this claim. MountainGate is in the process of testing their product with major software packages to ensure compatibility. So far, only Alias Wavefront's Zap!iT running on SGI workstations is on MountainGate's approved list. MountainGate's CentraVision system is shipping as of October 1998 solely for Silicon Graphics machines running UNIX. A Windows NT version will enter beta in November, and the commercial release will be available by mid-December. MountainGate plans to ship a Mac OS version soon after. Pricing starts at $2,500 for two users, including a storage tower and a hub, with other prices depending on the number of users and customers' hardware needs. Transoft Networks' FibreNet DataShare is scheduled to be released for the Mac OS and Windows NT 4.0 in the first quarter of 1999. Versions for Sun Solaris and other UNIX systems will follow in the second quarter of 1999. Pricing is currently unavailable. --Michael Barton