Fujitsu ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 Meet Growing Enterprise Need for Information Protection and Confidentiality

Market Wire, September, 2006

Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation today announced enterprise-class disk storage solutions designed to meet the growing enterprise need for information protection and confidentiality. ETERNUS®8000 and ETERNUS®4000 offer advanced data security and integrity features, including disk data encryption for the maximum protection of sensitive information. Both systems offer MAID (Massive Arrays of Inactive Disks) technology for reduced power consumption and extended life.

In addition, ETERNUS8000 delivers the world's largest storage capacity, providing 1.38 petabytes of internal storage. ETERNUS8000 accommodates up to eight controller modules, each equipped with a 3.6GHz dual-core processor that generates processing performance approximately 2.5 times faster than previous ETERNUS6000 models.

"New regulations concerning data privacy, along with recent highly publicized data security breaches, have turned the spotlight on the need to protect all stored data within the enterprise, no matter when it was stored or where it is located," said Roger W. Cox, research vice president at Gartner. "We expect to see data encryption and protection as standard storage system features, and those vendors bringing them to market first may well gain a competitive edge."

ETERNUS4000 is 1.5 times faster than previous ETERNUS3000 models. With ETERNUS4000, organizations can evolve their storage infrastructure from a data repository to a secure, robust platform for data asset management and protection that meets the growing corporate challenges of security, confidentiality, and regulatory compliance.

The Virginia State Police uses ETERNUS to address new regulations that require the department to retain large graphics files with sensitive information for up to 3 years. "ETERNUS is able to deliver more storage capacity and better performance when more is being demanded from the Department's storage environment," said Bob Crawford, systems engineering manager with the Virginia State Police Information Technology and Planning Division. "Additionally, the Virginia State Police Solaris engineering group has noticed that since ETERNUS was deployed, our data center performance has increased by almost 50 percent, with transactions receiving an average response time of .04 of a second."

The new ETERNUS storage systems fit easily into existing enterprise environments and deliver maximum value, offering excellent performance for its price range. Built with the same technologies -- including redundant controllers -- for high availability as the largest enterprise storage systems, ETERNUS enables high-speed back-up even during business operations. The system also comes with ETERNUS SF, Fujitsu storage management software that dramatically simplifies storage system management and maintenance, and supports initiatives related to business continuity, data integrity, and disaster recovery.

"IT departments can no longer separate data storage from corporate information initiatives related to regulatory compliance and privacy," said Richard McCormack, senior vice president, marketing at Fujitsu. "Fujitsu remains at the forefront of delivering the systems IT needs to support these business initiatives while also simplifying overall IT management. The introduction of ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 represents a key delivery on the promise of the Fujitsu TRIOLE® strategy to create highly reliable, highly adaptable solutions that meet customers' specific needs."

ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 Core Features

Built-in Disk Data Encryption Minimizes Risk

ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 can automatically store data using 128bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), minimizing the risk to a business of illegal or inappropriate data access when a disk is removed from an ETERNUS storage system.

MAID for a "Green" Infrastructure

ETERNUS8000 and ETERNUS4000 feature an Eco-mode that reduces power consumption and extends the life of disk drives. Using MAID (Massive Arrays of Inactive Disks) technology, Eco-mode stops drive spindle rotation when disks are not being accessed. Fujitsu includes information lifecycle management (ILM)-ready tiered storage, including MAID, at no extra cost.

Replication over Distance for Greater Efficiency and Disaster Recovery

Remote Advanced Copy functionality allows data to be replicated between multiple ETERNUS storage systems during business operation without increasing the load on servers. Both synchronous and asynchronous replication methods are supported, so replicated volumes can be located on a geographically separated ETERNUS storage system without sacrificing access performance on the production servers in the primary center.

iSCSI Connectivity for Lower-Cost Data Transfer

The addition of iSCSI host interfaces to ETERNUS enables lower-cost, high-performance LAN-WAN-LAN connections. ETERNUS provides IPsec (Security Architecture for Internet Protocol) on iSCSI to encrypt data transmitted across the LAN/WAN network. This feature enables organizations to use lower-cost IP circuits to build cost-effective disaster recovery systems with data-protection mechanisms.