Hitachi Data Systems Inc duly announced its new 7600 Disk Storage Subsystem yesterday – with precious little detail. The complex of 6.5 disk drives comes in 7693 and 7699 configurations and there is a new 7690 controller alternative to IBM Corp’s new 3990-6. The 7693 Disk Array offers up to 90Gb in a single frame and ships at the end of next month. The 7699, with up to 270Gb. follows a year later, in the third quarter of 1994. The 7960 takes up a third less space than its predecessor and features a new intelligent learning cache algorithm. It can address up to 256 logical paths, twice the number on IBM’s new controller. As with the IBM controller, cache goes to 1Gb. The IBM concurrent copy, sequential data striping, enhanced dynamic cache management and search assist will be available for the 7980-3 as well as the 7690 in the first quarter 1994. Subsystem prices go from $425,000 to $2m. Hitachi claims to have RAID 1 already implemented with the dual copy feature, and the firm is promising higher levels of RAID in the future.
