DPT Announces Dynamic RAID Expansion Beta Release at Comdex/Fall '96 Booth L2762-LVCC.MAITLAND, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 25, 1996--Distributed Processing Technology (DPT), a leading supplier of high performance SCSI SCSI in full Small Computer System Interface Once common standard for connecting peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, etc.) to small and medium-sized computers. SCSI has given way to faster standards, such as Firewire and USB. and Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) solutions, today announced the November beta release See beta version. of it's new Dynamic Array Expansion ability, available in production 1Q97. This new feature allows users of RAID-0 and 5 arrays on DPT SmartCache IV and SmartRAID IV hardware to add one more drives to their system, increasing the size of the array as system requirements To be used efficiently, all computer software needs certain hardware components or other software resources to be present on a computer system. These pre-requisites are known as (computer) system requirements and are often used as a guideline as opposed to an absolute rule. and number of users increase. Previously, to increase the size of an array, users backed up data, brought the system down and built a larger array from scratch. After the array was built, the OS would be reinstalled and the data restored from backup. To complete this daunting daunt tr.v. daunt·ed, daunt·ing, daunts To abate the courage of; discourage. See Synonyms at dismay. [Middle English daunten, from Old French danter, from Latin process, a system could be offline an entire day. Now, with DPT's Dynamic Array Expansion, the new drive(s) will be added to the array while the system is active and users are logged in and accessing data. Then, depending on the OS, the system may have to be rebooted for the OS to recognize the additional disk space, but then that's it! Another key advantage to Dynamic Array Expansion is that the DPT controller will present the same number of Logical Storage Units to the OS after the expansion. Some competitive products currently on the market provide the additional space as an additional LSU LSU Louisiana State University LSU Large Subunit LSU La Salle University (Philadelphia, PA) LSU La Sierra University LSU Link State Update (OSPF) LSU Learning Support Unit , defeating the original purpose of RAID-0 and 5 to spread OS accesses across several drives randomly. With two LSUs, the MIS group must attempt to maintain an even load across the LSUs to maximize performance. With constantly changing access patterns, the this effort is futile! and And using OS striping Interleaving or multiplexing data to increase speed. See disk striping. striping - data striping to combine the LSUs into a single LSU also only causes head thrashing thrashing: see threshing. Excessive paging in a virtual memory computer. If programs are not written to run in a virtual memory environment, the operating system may spend excessive amounts of time swapping program pages in and out of the disk. in any sequential read or write environment. Therefore, the only way to maintain performance and usability is to increase the size of the original LSU with Dynamic Array Expansion. Initially, DPT's OS support for Dynamic RAID will be available under Microsoft NT, with Unix support available later in 1Q97. -0- Editors Note: For slides or spec sheets A detail listing of the components of a system. of DPT products, contact Marketing at 407/830-5522, extension 215. Reproducible images are also available via NEWSdesk International: http://www.newsdesk.com. DPT, SmartCache and SmartRAID are registered trademarks of Distributed Processing The first term used to describe the distribution of multiple computers throughout an organization in contrast to a centralized system. It started with the first minicomputers. Today, distributed processing is called "distributed computing." See also client/server. Technology. All other trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners. Pricing and availability are subject to change without notification. In the World Wide Web address noted in this news release, there is a double slash between http: and www.newsdesk.com. In the Internet/email address noted, there is an "at" symbol between cardosi and dpt.com. These symbols may not appear properly in some systems. CONTACT: Distributed Processing Technology Johnny Cardosi, V.P. Sales & Distribution 407/830-5522, Ext. 420 Internet: cardosi@dpt.com |
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