Hitachi Data Systems Inc claims to offer the fastest, largest ever multi-platform storage subsystem with the launch of the latest version of its 7700 series, the three terabyte, 32-channel Freedom 7700E. The company says the new system is more than twice as fast as any existing storage system currently available, executing up to 30,000 input/output operations per second. The 7700 series has been shipping since September 1995, and according to Robert Bignell, director of storage sales operations for Europe, has proven itself as robust and reliable, giving true 24 by 7 availability. What customers wanted, he said, was even greater storage capacity and speed, to enable them to run mainframe storage, data protection and open storage concurrently. The company also announced new software offerings, including high-speed, file-level backup of open systems data, Harbor File-Level Backup/Restore, Hitachi Remote Copy for open systems and high-availability software for HP-UX, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX and Windows NT. The 7700E offers Fiber Channel; and Ultra SCSI connections in addition to the existing Parallel, ESCON and SCSI-2 connections. While the 7700E is targeted particularly at centralized RAID data storage, companies using distributed open systems storage on the smaller 5700E system can use Hitachi control software to manage the distributed data centrally, thereby significantly reducing the costs of managing data. Although yesterday was the official launch date for the Freedom 7700E, Hitachi says it actually began shipping the product in March and has already sold some 20Tb, so as to validate the product prior to the launch.
