Raythoen Co’s Denver, Colorado-based Emass Inc – acquired when it bought E-Systems Inc – has announced plans to market Sony Electronics Inc’s new DTF half-inch tape drive. The DTF drive combines a maximum capacity of 42Gb of uncompressed data per half-inch cassette with a sustained transfer rate of 12Mbps over SCSI-2 Fast & Wide channels. The DTF tape drive is designed for use in data-intensive applications such as long-term archiving of historic films, video programmes and still images. Emass and Sony are working on plans to integrate the DTF drive with Emass’s comprehensive data management software suite for archival and Hierarchical Storage Management applications, as well as with the complete family of Emass Automated Media Libraries. Emass also announced that it has added Escon support to its 8590 High Capacity Tape Cartridge Drive, giving it the performance level of the fastest mainframe channels, according to the company, which says the 8590 is the first high-performance, high-capacity storage device to accommodate both Escon and SCSI. The 8590 is an IBM Corp 3490-compatible half-inch, 128-track tape drive that integrates with the complete line of Emass Automated Media Libraries and Data Management software systems. It has been designed to support a broad range of new data-intensive mass storage applications including back-up, Hierarchical Storage Management, electronic document management, medical records imaging, cheque imaging, video-on-demand and many others. Emass has also introducted Distributed Automated Media Library Server software for enterprise environments. The software provides client-server users with shared access to the family of Emass Automated Media Libraries which are capable of handling mixed media – half-inch, D2, DLT, VHS, 4mm and 8mm magnetic tape, as well as 5.25 optical disks.
Mix of media
The company claims that integration of the distributed system with its automated libraries is the only system that enables client-server users to select the most appropriate mix of media (tape and optical) and drives to meet the unique performance and storage capacity requirements in any distributed environment. The company also says that Distributed Library Server easily integrates with widely used back-up, tape management and/or Hierarchical Storage applications such as IBM Corp’s ADSM 6000, Hewlett-Packard’s Omniback II, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG’s Networker and many others. Additionally, it can be implemented to share library resources with other MVS or Unix hosts. Emass Distributed AML Server software is claimed to enable communications to an unlimited number of heterogeneous networked clients while providing cost-effective data sharing and data security. Separately, Emass says that it has picked Computer Network Technology Corp as its strategic provider of channel extension products and services. Computer Network Technology provides communications products that enable the shared use of Emass automated data storage systems in mixed host environments as well as in channel extension systems for remote vaulting environments.
