StorageTek Delivers 9840 Fibre Channel Tape Drive, the Industry's First Native Fibre Channel Storage Solution

Business Wire, Feb 24, 2000

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 24, 2000

StorageTek(TM) (Storage Technology Corp.)(NYSE:STK) today announced the immediate availability of the StorageTek 9840 Fibre Channel (FC) Tape Drive at the Company's annual financial analysts' meeting. The 9840FC is the Fibre Channel version of its industry-leading 9840 tape drive. The 9840 continues to set rate-of-adoption records for high-end storage products with 20,000 SCSI and ESCON drives shipped to date. The 9840FC delivers the high performance, high capacity, reliability and fast access capabilities of the 9840 across traditional enterprise and SAN environments.

The combination of extreme scalability with high performance, high capacity and mainframe-class reliability, has resulted in tremendous demand for the 9840 in supercomputer to traditional mainframe environments, as well as a multitude of open systems UNIX and Windows NT customers. Furthermore, the speed of the 9840FC transforms tape from an auxiliary storage device into a mission-critical tool for holding digital text, video clips, X-rays, check images, e-business data and other important, frequently accessed information.

"The 9840FC allows customers to think differently about their storage needs and requirements," said Nelson Diaz, StorageTek vice president and general manager of client-server tape. "Now it is possible to do with five 9840s what used to be done with 10 to 20 SCSI attached midrange tape drives.

"With fewer drives and faster access, customers can reduce the number of distributed tape libraries they require, re-centralize their resources -- and get better performance," said Diaz. "That puts the total cost of ownership for this sophisticated technology at a price point comparable to older technologies -- a true breakthrough in storage technology."

The 9840FC's ability to integrate into an arbitrated loop or switch environment allows data centers to directly address today's connectivity and distance issues, and better utilize precious server resources. Native Fibre Channel extends the distance limit to 500 meters, as opposed to the 25 meters SCSI allows, simplifying cabling and, ultimately, device sharing. The 9840FC moves data at up to 20 megabytes per second with 2:1 compression, and can approach 40 megabytes per second at 4:1 compression with highly compressible data. Mid-point load improves search time and speed of first access to data, with as low as an eight second response time. Additionally, 9840 cartridges store up to 20 gigabytes native, so more data is being moved faster. The 9840FC's dual-ported design adds reliability with redundant paths, simplifying fail-over issues.

"StorageTek's 9840FC is designed to be integrated into a SAN environment," said Bob Amatruda, senior analyst, tape and removable storage at IDC. "No costly or complex bridges and converters are needed with the 9840's native Fibre Channel interface."

The 9840FC is the first drive to comply with the ANSI FC-Tape standard. The FC-Tape standard addresses interoperability and device behavior and is one of the first steps in building the infrastructure that will aid in the deployment of SANs.

"Los Alamos National Laboratory must quickly archive and retrieve files of up to many terabytes in size for scientific weapons simulations," stated Gary Grider, technical staff member, Storage Solutions Team, Computing & Information and Communications Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Meeting this need for extremely high streaming data transfer rates requires a large number of high-performance tape transports. The StorageTek Fibre Channel 9840 tape transport has achieved rates of up to 38 megabytes/sec in our environment. The Fibre Channel connectivity also provides the flexibility we require."

Pricing and Availability

The 9840FC is available immediately worldwide through StorageTek and StorageTek channels. Pricing starts at $34,400.

About StorageTek

StorageTek is one of the preeminent providers of network storage. The company's strategy is to help customers enable business growth by removing the inhibitors to managing information growth. StorageTek provides "Open, Intelligent and Integrated"(TM) solutions that combine storage products, storage management software and storage services to help customers collect, move, store, share and protect all types of digital content on platforms ranging from laptops to enterprise servers. The company, with headquarters in Louisville, Colo., reported revenue of $2.4 billion in 1999. Information on StorageTek is available on the World Wide Web at www.storagetek.com or phone 800.786.7835.

TRADEMARKS: StorageTek and "Open, Intelligent and Integrated" are trademarks of Storage Technology Corp. All other products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

9840 Fibre Channel Quotes

ADIC

"Advances in SAN technology, including the development of drives like the StorageTek 9840FC, are critical for the future of storage management across the enterprise," said Dave Uvelli, ADIC executive director of software marketing. "ADIC, through its membership in the Storage Networking Industry Association and its partnership with StorageTek and other industry leaders, is continuing to provide the next generation of SAN storage management software solutions by building on its industry-leading AMASS software architecture and supporting the innovative product developments of our vendor partners."