IBM Corp add-on storage specialist Cambex Corp, Waltham, Massachusetts, is getting into the disk array business – for mainframes if its foray into arrays for the RS/6000 turns out all right. The company has launched the Array/6000 as the latest member of its Certainty line, pitching it at RS/6000s operating in clustered multiprocessor environments. It offers selectable levels of RAID fault-tolerance – 0, 1, 3 or 5 – for users of IBM’s High Availability Cluster Multi-Processing mode. Using 1.6Gb 3.5 drives, a single Array/6000 subsystem can be expanded from 8Gb to 96Gb of storage, in six square feet of floor space, using a deskside or rack configuration. Additional racks of similar size can boost capacity to 1Tb. The controllers enable users to initiate multiple concurrent combinations of RAID data protection appropriate for each application. All disks, power supplies, fans and array controllers are redundant and hot pluggable while running, and it is designed to eliminate all single points of failure so that dual power cords are provided to connect to dual power sources. Cambes worked with CLaM Associates Inc, which helped IBM develop the clustering software, on the design of the thing, and it includes an Array Configurator Software utility that supports performance tuning and manages disk mapping. The software, supported through the AIX SMIT interface, provides storage administration, disk array management, on-line subsystem expansion, and data protection control.Software drivers to optimise the SCSI-II interface supports up to 20Mbyte-per-second data transfer rates. The subsystem also concentrates many drives onto a single SCSI address. It supports up to 15 drives per controller pair, thus appearing to the host computers as several very large SCSI-2 devices. The company claims it costs a third to a half less than non-fault-tolerant storage systems used in mainframe environments. An 8Gb deskside system starts at $50,212, a fully configured 96Gb system is priced at $720,000. It ships next month.
