The use of fibre channel disk storage looks set to take off with the entrance of number one PC supplier Compaq Computer Corp into the market in the first quarter of next year (CI No 3,286). Compaq will sell a range of arrays; connector boards enabling two networks of storage devices to be attached to a server’s PCI or EISA slot; and a Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop hub which allows multiple devices to be attached to a 100Mbps Fibre Channel storage network. Compaq’s going to sell its Fibre Channel solutions priced at around $0.30 per megabyte of storage compared with the $0.50 Sun Microsystems Inc’s new Photon Fibre Channel storage costs. Compaq’s connector board uses a chipset sourced from its Fibre Channel partner Hewlett-Packard Co; Compaq’s licensed the board design back to HP. Other Fibre Channel vendors keen to ride on the coat-tails of Compaq’s announcement included DEC, which announced a new Fibre Channel controller board supporting up to 72 devices it will offer to OEMs. It’s also offering a PCI-to-Fibre Channel adapter to support Fibre Channel hubs and switches. A new StorageWorks control program can monitor and configure up to 4,000 Fibre Channel systems in addition to SCSI-based arrays. DEC’s due to begin selling complete Fibre Channel storage solutions for use with its NT and Unix systems early next year and says it will provide solutions for OpenVMS users later in the year. Meantime, Data General Corp says its Fibre Channel Clariion FC5000 disk subsystem can now be used in conjunction with Windows NT servers.
