LSI Logic Storage Systems Certifies 2 Gb Ready JNI PCI, SBUS HBAs For MetaStor E4600 In Solaris Environments

Business Wire, Dec 10, 2001

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 10, 2001

Certification Opens Door for Rapid Certifications of Future JNI

Products

JNI(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:JNIC), the leading provider of Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) for the Solaris environment, today announced that LSI Logic Storage Systems Inc. certified JNI's 2 Gb Ready(TM) FibreStar(R) PCI and SBus Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) with the MetaStor(R) E4600 storage system.

Two families of JNI HBAs have been qualified for the MetaStor system: The 2 Gb Ready FCE-6460 PCI and 2 Gb Ready FCE-1473 SBus HBAs. JNI's 2 Gb Ready HBAs are certified to connect Sun Microsystems servers running Solaris 2.6, Solaris 7 or Solaris 8 to all MetaStor storage systems at 1 Gb or 2 Gb speeds, including the recently announced E4600 2 Gb storage system.

"By certifying JNI's 2 Gb Ready HBAs, we insure that our customers can connect high speed MetaStor E-Series systems to JNI's HBAs," said Flavio Santoni, vice president of sales and marketing, LSI Logic Storage Systems Inc. "JNI's 2 Gb HBAs offer high performance at the larger block sizes that are vital to many of our target markets."

The FCE-6460 and FCE-1473 are part of JNI's new family of Emerald IV-based host bus adapters. Emerald IV is JNI's second-generation 2 Gb ASIC controller. JNI was the first company to introduce a 2 Gb host bus adapter in May 1999.

"The MetaStor E4600 offers excellent price-performance and robust software support, as well as industry-leading performance for Solaris environments using our 2 Gb Ready FibreStar HBAs," said Neal Waddington, president and CEO of JNI Corporation. "By incorporating the MetaStor E4600 into a 2 Gb-enabled Fibre Channel SAN, customers will be able to double throughput at an incremental cost of deployment."

The newly qualified JNI HBAs are the latest in a long-line of JNI HBAs to be qualified by LSI Logic Storage Systems. Earlier this year JNI announced LSI had certified JNI's existing HBAs on all MetaStor E-Series storage systems. This includes JNI's Emerald(TM)-based FCE-1063 single-port and FCE2-1063 dual-port SBus HBAs; and the JNI FCI-1063-N PCI HBA. These Emerald-based HBAs, which feature JNI's proprietary Emerald ASIC controllers, have been listed as "Certified Compatible" by LSI's testing lab.

"Our experience with JNI's quality in certifications and their use of the same driver for other HBAs, such as CompactPCI and other future bus architectures, gives us confidence in rapid future qualifications of new JNI HBAs," said Steve Gardner, manager of product marketing at LSI Logic Storage Systems.

MetaStor E4600 Storage System

The MetaStor E4600 storage system supports up to four concurrent Fibre Channel host connections at a rate of two gigabits per second each. Because of its higher transfer rate and an increase in input/output (I/O) operations per second, customers can attach more and faster servers from many vendors to a single E4600 with larger quantities of disk storage, including new, 180 gigabyte disk drives.

In database-intensive environments, the MetaStor E4600 can deliver up to 110,000 I/Os per second. The MetaStor E4600 can also deliver 390 megabytes per second of sustained throughput for applications requiring very high bandwidth such as seismic processing, streaming media and video, and computer-based research and modeling.

FCE-6460/FCE-1473 Overview

JNI's FCE-6460 and FCE-1473 2 Gb HBA offers the same high performance and enterprise reliability of the industry's first 2 Gb Fibre Channel HBA, which debuted in May 1999. At 2 Gb speed, the FibreStar HBAs offer peak throughput performance of up to 400 megabytes-per-second (MB) in full-duplex mode, 200 MB in half-duplex. On demand 1 or 2 Gb auto rate negotiation enables a smooth and automatic migration path to 2 Gb-enabled storage networks by operating in 1 Gb, 2 Gb or mixed 1 Gb and 2 Gb Fibre Channel environments. Widespread deployment of 2 Gb Fibre Channel infrastructure is expected to take place in 2002.

2 Gb Performance at 1 Gb Price

JNI's 2 Gb Ready FibreStar HBAs are priced competitively with enterprise-level 1 Gb HBAs, but offer on demand 2 Gb performance to assure today's HBAs are positioned for seamless integration with tomorrow's 2 Gb Fibre Channel SANs.

FCE-6460/FCE-1473 Details

The new 2 Gb Ready FibreStar FCE-6460 and FCE-1473 supports the following features:

-- Full, Automatic Topology Detection: The new HBAs support all three Fibre
Channel topologies -- switched fabric, arbitrated loop and point-to-point --
and detect the topology automatically, eliminating manual configuration,
re-booting the system or reconfiguring the HBA setup.

-- JNI Emerald IV ASIC Controller: The heart of JNI's 2 Gb Ready FibreStar HBA
is the new Emerald IV ASIC controller (JNIC-1460). It features 66 MHz, 64-bit
performance with an integrated RISC-based I/O engine and large instruction RAM
that significantly reduces host CPU utilization.

-- EZ Fibre(TM) Support: The 2 Gb Ready FibreStar HBAs ship with Java-based EZ
Fibre configuration utility, which simplifies storage adapter installation and
troubleshooting, and offers such features as point-and-click LUN-level zoning.

-- Hardware-Assisted Context Switching: Context switching maximizes SAN data
throughput, increasing overall performance of the SAN.

-- SNIA API Support: Like all Emerald IV-based HBAs from JNI, the FCC-6460
complies with all current SNIA API standards used by storage management
software programs for inband management of the storage network.