Compaq Computer Corp, which announced its impending entry into the fibre channel storage market last November (CI No 3,288), has now introduced its Enterprise Storage Network, a fibre-channel- based network storage architecture for disk, tape and storage management. Compaq says ESN will support both its existing fibre channel products, which have been shipping since the first quarter of this year, and future products, such as a tape backup system it plans to introduce later this year. The network separates client access to data from the storage management, so that backups don’t run over the same corporate network that clients use to access their data. ESN actively works to keep the two activities separate, thus speeding up the performance of both, according to Compaq. The so-called Enterprise Backup Solution, set to be launched in mid-1998, will use existing SCSI- based automated tape libraries and combines them with Fibre Channel technology. It will support multiple servers, each running Computer Associates Inc’s ARCserve or Seagate Software Inc’s Backup Exec with an Enterprise Storage Network option, all sharing one or more DLT tape libraries. Storage traffic runs over the 100MB/sec fibre channel storage network. Compaq is working with Hewlett-Packard Co on fibre channel storage products.
