IBM Delivers On SAN Initiative With New Solutions and Industry's Largest SAN Testing Center - storage area network management software for Netfinity servers - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Dec 20, 1999

IBM Wednesday extended its Storage Area Network (SAN) initiative with five new SAN solutions based on its Netfinity(a) server line and the opening of the industry's most extensive facility for testing SAN solutions.

The solutions enable resellers, distributors and large enterprise customers to implement robust SANs that securely store and manage data in industry-standard, heterogeneous environments. IBM also announced SAN management applications from five leading software companies that have been tested for interoperability with Netfinity servers. In addition, IBM announced new functions for its Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Manager software.

"Companies are looking to open SAN solutions to keep up with the explosive storage demands of e-business," said Walter Raizner, vice president for marketing and strategy, IBM Technology Group. "IBM is unique in its ability to bring together a combination of storage, services, servers and software to take advantage of this important trend."

IBM's SAN initiative allows companies to share and manage their technology resources -- application servers, storage subsystems, networking hardware and software -- to provide transparent access to information anywhere, any time, independent of vendor computing systems and software applications. By separating information management from information processing, IBM's SAN solutions provide flexibility between server and storage elements.

The five new SAN solutions address specific enterprise storage requirements including:

Netfinity Disk and Tape Pooling allows multiple servers in diverse locations to utilize a common pool of SAN-attached disk and tape storage devices in a non-clustered environment. This configuration reduces backup time, helps improve disaster protection, allows centralized management and a phased approach to implementing a SAN.

IBM Availability Extensions for Microsoft Cluster Service allows eight clustered servers to share disk storage in a redundant, highly available and scaleable solution. As the industry's only availability extensions for MSCS, this configuration provides more balanced performance of the disk subsystem, significant manageability, problem determination and resolution. High availability, scaleable tape backup matching solutions are also available.

Netfinity Advanced Cluster Enabler for Oracle Parallel Server provides expansive scalability, redundancy and fibre channel protection while leveraging Oracle's database clustering solutions on Windows NT(b). Also available are high availability, scaleable tape backup matching solutions.

Netfinity Server and Storage Consolidation allows multiple servers in diverse locations to share storage resources in a non-clustered environment. Leveraging IBM's Enterprise Storage Server or "Shark", this SAN solution offers 11.2: (1)) terabytes of data, meeting the storage needs of most small and medium-sized businesses. System performance is optimized through a variety of host attachment choices such as fibre channel, ESCON, UltraSCSI and FICON.

Distance Cluster with Remote Mirroring enables the separation of the two server nodes in a Microsoft MSCS two-node cluster allowing local data to be mirrored to the server in a remote location up to 10 Km away. If there is a local site failure, the remote node can resume the operation without impacting data. As the industry's only Microsoft-certified remote mirroring solution, this SAN is a fast and reliable disaster readiness solution based on SSA technology.

"As IBM continues to develop and support new enterprise storage configurations, we reinforce our position as the industry's premier total SAN solutions provider," added Jim Gargan, director, Product Marketing, IBM Netfinity Brand. "IBM is delivering on its X-Architecture initiative by extending enterprise SAN solutions based on Netfinity servers and storage options to provide customers the best solutions for storing and managing critical e-business data."

SAN Interoperability Lab

IBM can help businesses implement a successful SAN solution by customizing and testing these and other storage configurations at the new IBM SAN Interoperability Lab. Located at IBM Global Services' National Testing Center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, it offers customers the ability to evaluate and prototype SAN solutions for reliability, scalability and security. The 80,000 sq. ft. facility also offers customers SAN performance management testing, stress testing and SAN proof of concept testing.

Extensive testing suites help customer IT teams to bunker down for weeks to simulate and test SAN configurations connected to hundreds of PCs and servers simultaneously around the clock. In addition, the SAN Lab is linked to 17 IBM regional test centers throughout North America, allowing customers to combine and coordinate resources to conduct remote tests. The center also can run e-business applications utilizing SAN Tape and Disk pooling solutions.

With the center's technical assets and capability of replicating true production environments -- such as generating real-time traffic conditions from real client loads using a client's own business applications -- the IBM SAN Interoperability Lab at Gaithersburg is unparalleled in the industry: