In brief: SMC continues gigabit push

Plus: Maxxan announces Fibre Channel switch; Raritan claims it has the answer to remote management headaches

SMC Networks last week continued its Gigabit product push for small and midsize networks with its EZ Switch 10/100/1000M bit/sec boxes. Versions of the switch come with five or eight ports of triple-speed Ethernet connections. The five-port EZ Switch costs $130, and the eight-port costs $180. SMC also announced a $30 Gigabit-over-copper network interface card, the EZ Card 1000. The NIC supports 32-bit PCI server and PC hardware, and will be available next month.

Maxxan this week will announce its intelligent multi-protocol Fibre Channel switch. The MXV320 has as many as 320 ports that can be configured for Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet or Fibre Channel over IP connectivity. The iSCSI protocol will be supported in the future, the company says. Line cards, which run applications such as FalconStor’s IPStor virtualization, snapshot backup and replication software or Veritas Software NetBackup, can be added. The company also is shipping the SA100f, an appliance that could be placed in a remote office for replicating data to the data center, backup and recovery, and virtualization. The MXV320 with 64 Fibre Channel ports and two application line cards is $167,900. The SA100f with replication capability is $37,500.

Raritan Computer says it has the answer for companies tired of sending IT staff to remote locations to manage hardware. A new product, called Dominion KSX, integrates KVM, serial and power control with IP access technologies to let customers manage equipment such as servers, switches, routers, PBXs and power strips via a Web browser. Users log on to the Web-based console using single sign-on to get a real-time graphical view of all the IT equipment connected to the KSX, and then can troubleshoot, configure and maintain the hardware. The single-box appliance starts at $3,400 for the KSX440, which has four KVM ports, four serial ports and one power control port.