HDS Announces First Non-Stop Raid 5 Storage System; 7700 Array Subsystem, Designed to Never be Taken Offline, Sets New 'Gold Standard' for System 390 Continuous Data Availability.SANTA CLARA Santa Clara, city, Cuba Santa Clara (sän`tä klä`rä), city (1994 est. pop. 217,000), capital of Villa Clara prov., central Cuba. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 7, 1995--Hitachi Data Systems (HDS (Hitachi Data Systems, Santa Clara, CA, www.hds.com) A leading provider of high-end storage hardware, software and services. Part of the Information Systems & Telecommunications Division of Hitachi Ltd. ) Tuesday made a major move in the fast-growing, multi-billion dollar market for enterprise-wide storage systems by announcing a high-performance, fully fault tolerant The ability to continue non-stop when a hardware failure occurs. A fault-tolerant system is designed from the ground up for reliability by building multiples of all critical components, such as CPUs, memories, disks and power supplies into the same computer. RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (storage, architecture) Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks - (RAID. Originally "Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks") A project at the computer science department of the University of California at Berkeley, under the direction of Professor Katz, in conjunction with Professor ) subsystem designed never to be taken off-line. Launched simultaneously worldwide, the HDS 7700 Array Subsystem will meet the most stringent continuous processing requirements of major computer users by building redundancy into every system component, from the use of RAID 5 disk technology, down to the power supply, and allowing online microcode A set of elementary instructions in a complex instruction set computer (CISC). The microcode resides in a separate high-speed memory and functions as a translation layer between the machine instructions and the circuit level of the computer. updates. Unparalleled Performance with Continuous Availability The 7700 offers a combination of features not found collectively in any other competitor products, including a unique 3.5-inch disk drive many times more reliable than the highest-rated OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and drives currently available; scalable architecture that supports from 22.7 to 723.7 gigabytes (GB) of data; duplexed system Two systems that are functionally identical. They both may perform the same functions, or one may be standby, ready to take over if the other fails. buses that provide a total throughput of 400 megabytes (MB) per second; non-volatile cache expandable from 256 MB to 8 GB; automatic drive sparing; and hot plugging of all active components. (See Feature Summary) "The 7700 sets a new 'gold standard' for storage subsystems," said Gary Holtwick, Vice President of Storage Systems Marketing. "Once installed, it can be expanded and maintained without ever relinquishing access to data. Customers can now demand -- and get -- continuous, high-speed access to data, extraordinarily high throughput, and multiple connectivity options, with scalable performance and capacity options, available in a non-stop operating environment." Industry and financial analysts have reacted favorably to the 7700. Comments have ranged from "This is hot," to "The 7700 will definitely give your competitors some uneasy nights." Other key features of the HDS 7700 include 100% write-hits; Intelligent Learning algorithms for improved subsystem utilization; parallel or Extended Serial Adapter (ExSA) host interfaces with data transfer rates up to 17 MB/sec; and an enhanced addressing capability supporting up to 256 logical paths in an ExSA (ESCON (Enterprise Systems CONnection) An IBM S/390 fiber-optic channel that transfers 17 Mbytes/sec over distances up to 60 km depending on connection type. ESCON allows peripheral devices to be located across large campuses and metropolitan areas. ) environment. Based on HDS' unique Scalable Architecture, the 7700 is the first product in the Scalable Storage Server series and complements the other products in the HDS Pathfinder Family of storage products, including the 7400 Tape Product Family, the 7900 Semiconductor Disk, and the 7600 Disk Storage Subsystem. Statement of Direction HDS will incorporate larger-capacity disk drives, in both Model 3 and Model 9 volume format, as they become available. In addition, the company indicated that the 7700 will provide a SCSI interface to attach to the open systems environment. Compatibility The 7700 supports MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage) Introduced in 1974, the primary operating system used with IBM mainframes (the others are VM and DOS/VSE). MVS is a batch processing-oriented operating system that manages large amounts of memory and disk space. , VM, and VSE See DOS/VSE. VSE - Virtual Storage Extended operating environments and is functionally compatible with industry-standard storage management software. It will support extended functions, including Concurrent Copy, Sequential Data Striping, Record-Level Cashing, and Remote Dual Copy (both Extended Remote Copy Extended Remote Copy or XRC is an IBM zSeries and System z9 mainframe computer technology for data replication. It combines supported hardware and z/OS software to provide asynchronous replication over long distances. and Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy). The 7700 will also support 3380K emulation. This functional compatibility enables customers to retain the full value of their existing investment in hardware, software, and training. Service and Support In addition to the HDS-proprietary Hi-Track expert system for online remote maintenance, HDS offers Technical Assistance Program/Service for Disk Analysis (TAP/SDA) to help customers understand and select the best storage strategy for their environment. Pricing for TAP/SDA starts at 8,000 USD USD In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the U.S. Dollar. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. . Pricing and Availability List prices for the 7700 range from approximately 1.6 million USD for 181.6 GB of storage capacity with 512 MB of cache memory, to approximately 6 million USD for 723.7 GB and 2 GB of cache. General availability of the initial configurations will be in 3Q95. Feature Summary Following is a summary of the features of the 7700 that provide S/390 users with continuous data availability: Extremely reliable disk drives -- 3.5 inch, dual ported, fast and wide SCSI-2 disk drives are specially manufactured to deliver a mean-time-between-failure (MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) The average time a component works without failure. It is the number of failures divided by the hours under observation. MTBF - Mean Time Between Failures ) rate many times greater than the most reliable OEM drives available. RAID-5 Array Groups -- Each group, consisting of seven disk drives, provides access to 22.7 GB of data. The 7700 Scalable Architecture supports up to 32 Array Groups for a maximum capacity of 723.7 GB. Duplexed system buses -- Two separate system buses provide a total throughput of 400 megabytes per second (unit) megabytes per second - (MBps, MB/s) Millions of bytes per second. A unit of data rate. 1 MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes per second (not 1,048,576). (MB/s). Non-volatile cache -- All cache, expandable from 256 MB to 8 GB, is non-volatile and write data is duplexed. Array Control Processors (ACPs) -- Each pair of ACPs controls up to eight Array Groups (181.6 GB), using multiple fast and wide SCSI-2 interfaces. RISK-based Client-Host Interface Processors (CHIPs) -- Connect the 7700 Array Subsystem to the host processor through serial and/or parallel interfaces. Hi-Track predictive maintenance -- This expert system senses potential problems and alerts specialists in an HDS support center in advance of component failures. Maintenance activities, including microcode updates, and diagnostic evaluations, can be initiated from the support center, without disrupting customer operations, to prevent problems or address subsystem failures. Automatic drive sparing -- Hot spare drives are available in the rare event that one of the drives needs replacing. The subsystem automatically invokes sparing at the drive level. Hot plugging -- The 7700 also supports hot plugging of subsystem components. With this capability, hardware components can be replaced without shutting down the subsystem. Hitachi Data Systems See HDS. is owned by Hitachi, Ltd. and Electronic Data Systems (EDS (Electronic Data Systems, Plano, TX, www.eds.com) Founded in 1962 by H. Ross Perot (independent candidate for the President of the U.S. in 1992), EDS is the largest outsourcing and data processing services organization in the country. ), and has its headquarters in Santa Clara. The company markets, worldwide, a broad range of mainframe systems, peripheral products, open systems hardware and software, and services. -0- Note to Editors: HDS Pathfinder Family, 7400 Tape Product Family, 7900 Semiconductor Disk, 7600 Disk Storage Subsystem, Extended Serial Adapter, and ExSA are trademarks, and Technical Assistance Program/Service for Disk Analysis, and TAP/SDA are service marks of Hitachi Data Systems Corp. Hi-Track Storage is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a service mark of Hitachi Data Systems Corp. ESCON is a trademark of International Business Machines Corp. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify, products or services of their respective owners. CONTACT: Hitachi Data Systems, Santa Clara Mark Lewis, 408/970-4356 |
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