More On the RAID Front

We weren't able to test the following products, but they are worth mentioning:

Ciprico's 6900 Series of disk arrays are the first such products to use the UltraSCSI interface, which can transfer data at a maximum rate of 40 MBps. The 6900 Series was designed with film, video, and medical imaging applications in mind. The 6900 Series will be available in June. A nine-drive, 16-GB disk array costs $39,575.

To better compete with lower-priced, single-controller RAID subsystems, Clariion began shipping its C150 single-controller product in July. The C150 costs $10,995, which includes three 2-GB drives, 8 MB of cache memory, redundant power supplies and fans, and an interface kit for Sun, DEC Alpha, IBM, or Intel-based PC servers.

Hewlett-Packard is developing a n adaptive RAID product called AutoRAID. The exact form AutoRAID will take is still under investigation. AutoRAID will dynamically adapt its algorithms to best suit the host system's data-use patterns. For example, newly written data that will probably have the most activity is stored using RAID 1 for better performance; as this data ages, it automatically migrates using RAID 5 for cost-effectiveness.

The Optima HST RAID Solution from Optima Technology is a RAID subsystem for NetWare and Unix applications. The Optima HST supports RAID 0, 1, and 5, up to 32 MB of cache, redundant hot-swappable drives and power supplies, a hot spare drive, and a SCSI-2 Fast/Wide host interface. It is available in configurations ranging from 6 to 115 GB. Prices start at $9995 for the 6-GB Optima HST 6000.

Xyratex, a former division of IBM located in the U.K., will begin shipping its R9000 subsystem in September. The Xyratex R9000 is a RAID subsystem for PC-compatible platfor ms running under a DOS, Windows, or NetWare environment. The enclosure has two integrated power supplies and fan units and supports up to seven drives. To expand it, you can add another tower for a total of 14 drives (56 GB). The R9000 supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, and 5, and up to 64 MB of write cache. The R9000 is priced at 17,080.

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Where to Find

Ciprico, Inc.
Plymouth, MN
(800) 727-4669
(612) 551-4000
fax: (612) 551-4002

Clariion
Westboro, MA
(508) 898-7600
fax: (508) 898-7501

Hewlett-Packard Co.
Santa Clara, CA
(800) 752-0900
fax: (800) 333-1917

Optima Technology Corp.
Irvine, CA
(714) 476-0515
fax: (714) 476-0613

Xyratex
Havant
Hampshire, U.K.
+44 1705 498851
fax: +44 1705 498853