IBM Corp – or its AdStar unit – yesterday moved to revitalise the moribund storage market, launching the 3390-9 disk drive offering triple the capacity of the 3390-3 at about 34% higher cost, bringing forward the new cache-laden version of the 3990 controller and calling it the 3990-6 – but not bringing forward the delivery date so that it still ships in first quarter 1994 and enhancing its optical disk library products to make it attractive for users to banish tape drives from the data centre altogether and banish them to a remote location. A new mainframe channel emulator for the RS/6000 means that the Unix box can replace the mainframe as the controller for IBM’s 3495 robotic tape library and for 3480 and 3490 tape drives at the remote location. The 3990-3 and 6 will support disk arrays planned for the future, IBM says – it promises fault tolerant disk arrays that implement RAID architecture and 3390 track format using the 3.5 disks. The 3390 Model 9 is available on June 25, as is RS/6000 support for tape drives – support for the library follows in September. The new 3990 Model 6 controller provides response time improvements of up to 50% and throughput improvements of up to 100% compared to the 3990 Model 3. With Escon, it can support up to 128 logical connections, and can be installed up to 12 miles from the mainframe. Cache memory will eventually go to 1Gb, with a promise to go to 4Gb in due course, and 16Mb of non-volatile storage against the standard 4Mb for applications with large volumes of write data – a feature also offered as a Request Price Quotation item for the 3990-3. The 3990-6 has faster microprocessors and improved Licensed Internal Code. Arguing for its new optical subsystems, the 3995 Model 153/113 Optical Library Dataserver and 153, and the 3995 Models 023, 123, and 123/113 Optical Library Dataservers for local network attachment, IBM says that the vast majority of business information is still stored on paper and microfiche, with large amounts of critical data stored off-line on tape. Based on business needs for faster access to information, such data can be stored more effectively on the 3390 Model 9 or any one of 15 3995 Optical Library Dataserver models, which offer dramatic reductions in the cost of storing data on-line, IBM says. A full 3390 Model 9 string consisting of one A-unit and two B-units contains the same 16 head-disk assemblies and 32 volumes as a full 3390 Model 3 string, but has total capacity of 272Gb against 90Gb. The 3390-9 is hardly fast – it offers response times in the 10mS to 70mS range and costs $349,000 to $469,800. The 3990 Model 6 with up to 256Mb of cache is available on Christmas Eve, but those that want 512Mb or 1Gb must wait until first quarter 1994. It costs $166,000, and 32Mb cache is $24,000, 1Gb cache is $508,000. The 3995 Optical Library Dataserver Model 153 looks like 3390 Model 2 to the system and provides 178Gb of storage, almost double that of the Model 151. Combined with a Model 113, users can achieve nearly the capacity of six strings of 3390 Model 2s. The 40Gb Model 023, 188Gb Model 123 and 356Gb Models 123/113 provide file server capabilities on Token-Ring or Ethernet nets on the AS/400, PS/2, and RS/6000. AdStar is also promising that if any current storage device installed on or aft er May 20, fails to satisfy because of hardware fail ures, IBM will replace it with the same model at the same location when reques ted in writing; the warran ty balance is carried over.
