Storage Technology Corp, Louisville, Colorado has expanded its IBM mainframe disk drive offerings with the addition of a two-director 8900 cached controller and a half-string 8380R disk subsystem, offered as field-ugrades to the existing models and as stop-gaps to the fault-tolerant storage arrays that it has in development. The 8900 cached control unit will support existing 8880 and 8890 controllers later this year to provide quad-path capability. Cache sizes will be available in 32Mb increments from 32Mb to 256Mb and the thing supports 4.5Mbyte-per-second channels as well as taking 25% less power than the 8890. The Half-8380R will provide users with from 5.04Gb to 15.12Gb of storage in the 8380R packaging which cuts floor-space requirements over IBM’s disk strings. The Half-8380R is field-upgradable to a full string of 8380R. The Actuator Level Buffer feature which reduces rotational position sensing misses will alsobe available for the Half-8380R. The 8900, $140,000 with 32Mb, ships next quarter, Half-8380R, $142,750 with 5.04Gb, $196,125 with 15.12Gb ships this quarter.
