StorageTek touts new array

By Deni Connor, Network World
August 15, 2005 12:04 AM ET

StorageTek next week is expected to announce a new storage system and enhancements to its mainframe virtual tape library.

At IBM's SHARE user conference in Boston, StorageTek will unveil the Flex-Line V-Series Shared Virtual Array (FLX V2X4f) and expanded capability for its mainframe-based Virtual Storage Manager (VSM).

The FLX V2X4f, which will replace the FLX V2Xf, offers Fibre Connection (FICON) capability for attachment to IBM mainframe servers that run Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) or zOS operating environments and systems such as Solaris, HP-UX, Windows NT, Windows 2000, AIX, NetWare and Linux host computers.

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StorageTek next week is expected to announce a new storage system and enhancements to its mainframe virtual tape library.

At IBM's SHARE user conference in Boston, StorageTek will unveil the Flex-Line V-Series Shared Virtual Array (FLX V2X4f) and expanded capability for its mainframe-based Virtual Storage Manager (VSM).

The FLX V2X4f, which will replace the FLX V2Xf, offers Fibre Connection (FICON) capability for attachment to IBM mainframe servers that run Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) or zOS operating environments and systems such as Solaris, HP-UX, Windows NT, Windows 2000, AIX, NetWare and Linux host computers.

Next year, the company plans to merge the Enterprise Systems Connection and FICON capability of its older FlexLine V2X2 with the FLX V2X4f and allow users to mix drives of differing capacities, take more snapshots of data and deploy consistency groups for data and disaster recovery.

The new V2X4f supports 23T bytes and consists of 73G- or 146G-byte drives. It has as much as 96G bytes of cache and supports large and flex volumes used in mainframe direct-access storage devices.

StorageTek's VSM is a virtual tape library for mainframe environments. Instead of writing to a physical drive, the mainframe reads and writes to virtual drives that the VSM creates and maintains. User-defined policies automate much of the manual processes involved in saving data to disk.

The new version is 30% faster than previous models and doubles the capacity, StorageTek says. The current VSM4 is the largest of StorageTek's virtual tape libraries - it supports as much as 14.9T bytes and 256 virtual tape drives. The VSM also will support multiple tape formats and automatic remastering. Later this year, StorageTek is expected to announce another version of the VSM that will support more capacity.

StorageTek, which is being acquired by Sun, claims a 62% market share in mainframe tape. IBM is No. 2 in the market. The company continues to work on an open systems version called VSM Open, although the complexity of the design has plagued development. The design of the present VSM is tied directly to the operating system, which manages every process. In the open system, back-up software controls media management and policy setting, adding to its complexity. VSM Open was initially slated to ship in the first half of this year.

The company also plans to develop a continuous data-protection appliance. Code-named CDP, it will back up both file- and block-level data and let users recover lost files. The CDP appliance, based on Intel x86 servers, will attach to Serial Advanced Technology Attachment storage. It is expected to enter beta test this fall. It is not known how Sun's acquisition of StorageTek will affect the development of these products. Neither Sun nor StorageTek would comment. The deal is expected to close this fall.

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