Sun Microsystems Inc is building next-generation high-end disk subsystems around Unisys Corp drives in an OEM deal expected to be worth $10m to Unisys in the first year. Sun has developed a new self-mating connector that plugs into the backplane, which it says will deliver hot plug and redundant power and cooling features not currently available in conventional drive assemblies. Presently all hot-plug SCSI implementations for adding devices require a canister to be built onto the drive to separate it from the bus, adding cabling and parts and reducing reliability. Sun says its existing SparcStorage Array RAID subsystems don’t include hot-plug or redundant power and cooling features; it will fit its microSparc I-based SparcStorage RAID 210 controller plus the new connector onto Unisys drives in a rack-mount package. It will license the connector design to all comers. Drives and connector are due at the end of this quarter or beginning of next. Sun claims Unisys has the best disk technology.
