Hewlett-Packard Co can’t wait for Data General Corp to get its Fiber Channel (FC) Clariion RAID systems out of the door so it says it has added its own FC technologies to the SCSI-based Clariion arrays it already sells OEM as the mid-sized storage solution for its servers. HP will peddle an HA Disk Array Model 30 ‘Galaxy’ configuration with FC in addition to the Models 10 and 20 it already sells. The Clariion-based subsystems can accommodate up to 264Gb data and cost around $0.50 per megabyte. At the high-end, HP’s $2bn, six month old ESSD Enterprise Storage Subsystem Division is now offering EMC Corp’s latest Series 3000 SCSI and FC subsystems which work out at around $0.90 per megabyte. The EMC deal is expected to be worth $160m in its first year. It’s also going to offer an FC host adapter hub from August, plus an FC-to-SCSI multiplexer enabling users to utilize existing driver technology and share backup and recovery devices between servers. HP thinks a fiber channel hub which shares the available bandwidth between I/O streams is more than adequate for users moving tens of terabytes of data. Only when traffic volumes get into the hundreds of terabytes range will users require a switch which provides the total available bandwidth to each channel. The hub will connect storage to systems up to 500 meters apart initially, 2 kilometers by year-end and 10 kilometers in future. In June HP will introduce a new Model 12H SCSI Disk Array with AutoRAID supporting up to 650Gb including the new half- height form factor 9Gb drives. Prices range from $0.33 to $0.50 per megabyte. The division offers a 20Gb-to-600Gb magneto-optical library and a bunch of off-line tape drives options. It references, but does not sell, the latest Storage Technology Corp TimberWolf tape library. ESSD estimates that between a third and a half (or sometimes more) of the total cost of a system sale is the storage component. It has 600 staff – 250 in research and development. For all of Sun Microsystems Inc’s bragging, HP doesn’t expect that its third party ‘Photon’ storage business to come to much. HP says it will sell storage on non-HP solutions where it’s a convenience to customers but doesn’t plan to build a business around third party sales.
