Sun Microsystems is launching new mid-range disk arrays.

Underlining the ever-growing importance of the mid-range market for array makers, Sun’s announcement of new disk arrays coincided with the launch of refreshed mid-range storage hardware from IBM and Hewlett Packard.

Sun’s slow-selling StorEdge 3900 and 6900 were launched last year as interim answers to the problems that had led to the underwhelming sales of the previous T3 outside of Sun’s captive Solaris server market. But those two machines did not completely eliminate the low limits on the number of ports or LUN supported by the T3s, and as a result the 3900 was recommended by Sun for use in file-level applications only, and not for OLTP database applications.

The new StorEdge 6000, which will ship as the 6120 series and 6320 series, does not suffer any of those port and LUN count problems, according to Sun. The 6120 supports 64 LUNs, and the 6320 supports 704 LUNs. The number of hosts supported by both boxes is only limited by performance and availability considerations, Sun promised. The 6120 will scale from 252GB to over 12TB, with list prices that start at $23,995. The 6320 scales from 500GB to 45TB.

Entirely by coincidence Sun’s launch was on the same day that the Storage Performance Council released results of a benchmark test of the StorEdge 6320, completed to the SPC-1 specification. That test is designed to measure OLTP application performance. The 6320 came in with a performance of 25,340 benchmark IOPS – much higher than that scored by the only other mid-range box that has been tested to SPC-1, which was made by LSI Logic.

Sun is clearly working hard to correct its past mistakes and the poor sales of its previous mid-range hardware, the StorEdge T3, and StorEdge 3900 and 6900. One of the problems of that earlier hardware was its limited or late support for server operating systems other than Sun’s own Solaris OS. As soon as the new StorEdge 6000 boxes begin shipping this month, they will support Windows, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX as well as Solaris. From day one, as Sun emphasized.

Source: Computerwire/Datamonitor

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