IBM Corp duly announced its Tape Library Dataserver yesterday as part of a string of storage announcements that involve a comprehensive revamping of its Data Facility Storage Management Subsystem software with the launch of DFSMS/MVS 1.1, which pulls together into a single product DFSMS Data Facilities, DFSMS Data Set Services, DFSMS Hierachical Storage Manager and a new DFSMS Removable Media Manager to look after tape cartridges – be it in 3490 autoloaders or in the Tape Library. It does not ship until March 1993 and it has not yet been priced. IBM is recasting its storage management as a client-server system, and also added a new Data Facility Distributed Storage Manager for using hosts under MVS and eventually VM, to be used as storage managers for machines running under MS-DOS, Windows, OS/2, AIX/6000, SunOS, Macintosh System and NetWare, which is coming very close to the concept the company was talking about a decade ago, that of having dedicated processors within the MVS mainframe complex managing the storage. The 3496 Tape Library Dataserver is a daunting 44 feet to 92 feet long depending on the model – L20, L30, L40 and L50 – and consists of an enclosed structure along which the robot runs, to which up to 64 tape transports can be attached along one side. It takes from 5,660 to 18,910 cartridges can be installed – and operate unattended – up to 14 miles from the processor using Escon channels. It ships in January next year and costs $395,000 for the 15Tb L20 – 5,660 to 6,440 cartridges, rising to $851,000 for the L50, 33Tb to 45Tb. The 3990 disk controller has been enhanced with several new functions, including Concurrent Copy, which enables on-line access to continue while a point-in-time copy of the data is created, reducing downtime to minutes or fractions of a minute. Sequential Data Striping works in an Escon environment, and enables data sets to be split and transferred concurrently in stripes to and from many drives. Enhanced Dynamic Cache Management provides automatic dynamic tuning in response to changes in 3990 cache usage. And Enhanced Fast Dual Copy uses Fast Write to write to both primary and back-up volumes – and for once the new microcode is coming free – in June. The Escon distance for 3990 2 and 3 is increased to nine miles from five miles. The company also announced three cached models – with up to 64Mb – of the 9343 disk controller for the mid-range 9340 disk drive, costing $57,200 to $92,400. And the company introduced its first on-line optical disk subsystem, the 3995 Optical Library Dataserver Model 151, which can store up to 181.6Gb on erasable optical platters, with a Model 111 expansion unit. It costs $168,000. The 9343 and 3995 Model 151 will be out in the fourth quarter.
