Amdahl has also added new storage devices to its range, both designed for System/390-compatible applications. The 6690 is a RAID-Ready storage processor which can provide up to 2Gb of cache and support 1Tb of storage capacity – and the company claims it delivers the highest throughput and internal data transfer rates in its market. It incorporates RAID logic and will support both RAID and linear storage devices. Amdahl is aiming the 6690 at environments requiring very high performance, capacity and data availability from 3390-type and 3380-type storage devices. There’s the option of enhanced global caching, which supports a large cache and manages performance as the input-output dynamics of the workload change. The company claims the 6690 can process more than 2,500 input-outputs per second while reducing response time up to 50% over conventional controllers. Along with the new product comes the launch of a new service and support enhancement for both the 6690 and the 6100 storage subsystems. EasyTracker is a personal computer-based storage availability tool which detects, records and calls home to report operational problems. Amdahl also announced that it will introduce a high-availability RAID storage device for use on the 6690 early next year. Meanwhile, the company has bumped up the performance of its 6395-9 disk for System/390 compatible storage environments and renamed it the 6395-9E. Amdahl says it has performance characteristics similar to the 6390 Model 3, while providing three times the capacity in the same footprint. Multiple 5.25 disk arrays provide capacities of up to 272Gb per string, which consists of two 6395-9E frames. The device can be configured with Amdahl’s Model 6690 and Model 6100 storage processors to offer a total subsystem capacity of more than 1Tb. New head technology that separates the read and write functions improves reliability and performance, says Amdahl. The devices have an average seek time of 15mS and average latency time of 6.9mS. The 6690 Storage Processor and EasyTracker will be available this month. For a minimum configuration of 256Mb of cache, 8Mb of nonvolatile storage, eight channel interfaces, and four device paths. The 6690 list price is $317,500. All 6100s are field upgradable to the 6690 for a one-time charge of $15,000 plus the list price of the cache and NVS required to bring the unit up to the minimum 6690 configuration. List price for the 6395-9E with a minimum capacity of 17Gb is $131,500, and will be generally available in the third quarter.
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