Meantime in the US, Hitachi Data Systems has leaped in to anticipate the IBM Corp announcement expected this Wednesday with enhancements for its mainframe disk and tape subsystems. The enhancements include a new Synthetic Channel tool for customer service representatives, a microcode upgrade for the 7980-3 Storage Controller to increase performance of the 7390 drives, and enhancements to the Data Compression feature to improve storage and performance of the 7490 and 7480 Cartridge Tape Subsystems. The Synthetic Channel enables engineers to carry out installation and support activities on storage subsystems off-line without using valuable mainframe resources. It emulates System 370 and System 390 channel protocols to enable pre-staging, pre-checking and formatting to be done off-line. It will be implemented worldwide on Hitachi disks over the next 12 months. Data Compression II is now generally available; and the company is now supporting DASD Fast Write and Cache Fast Write on its 7980-3 Storage Controllers – it is to be offered free within 30 days.
