IBM Magstar 3590 Model E Tape Drives Offer Increased Attachment Support for Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Sun Solaris

At a Glance

You can now attach the industry-leading Magstar 3590 E Model Tape Drives with the Fibre Channel Attachment feature to a Sun or Intel-compatible Fibre Channel host. This attachment can:

• Enhance data rate performance
• Increase cabling distances
• Improve device sharing
• Enhance connectivity
• Provide native Storage Area Network (SAN) attachment

You may install the Fibre Channel Attachment feature on your currently installed Magstar 3590 Model E11 and E1A Tape Drives. Adding this feature protects your tape drive investment while giving you many other significant benefits.

For ordering, contact:

Your IBM representative, an IBM Business Partner, or IBM Americas Call Centers at 800-IBM-CALL (Reference: YE001).

Overview

If you are looking for heterogeneous host attachment support on the 3590 Model E11 and E1A Tape Drives (E Models), look no further. In addition to IBM RS/6000^® AIX^®, the 3590 E Models now support Microsoft™ Windows NT™, Windows™ 2000, and Sun Solaris servers with native Fibre Channel support. This attachment is available for stand-alone 3590 Model E11 Tape Drives, or 3590 Model E1A Tape Drives installed in a Magstar^® 3494 Tape Library or the 3590 Model C12 Silo Compatible Frame (which attaches to a StorageTek ACS library).

What advantages can the Fibre Channel Attachment feature bring to your IT environment?

• The 3590 E Model Tape Drives now deliver amazing data rates:
  • Up to 42 MB/s maximum sustained (with 3:1 compression).
  • Up to 100 MB/s maximum instantaneous.
• The maximum distance to attached hosts has been dramatically increased:
  • Up to 500 meters for direct attachment to host servers.
  • Up to 10 kilometers between the tape drives and host servers with the IBM 2109 SAN Fibre Channel Switch and IBM 2103 Fibre Channel Storage Hub.
• The ability to share the high performance, reliability, and capacity of the 3590 E Models has been enhanced:
  • The 3590 dual-port design lets you directly attach to two open system servers.
  • By using the IBM 2109, you can share the 3590 Tape Drive with an almost limitless number of SAN hosts.
• Critical backup performance has been improved:
  • By attaching the 3590 E Model with Fibre Channel Attachment directly to the SAN, you can utilize the full 100 MB/s bandwidth of the data path.

Key Prerequisites

The IBM Magstar 3590 E Model Fibre Channel Attachment can attach directly, or via a SAN, to a Qlogic QLA2200F Fibre Channel Adapter installed in a Sun or Intel^®-compatible server.

• A Sun server requires Sun Solaris Version 2.6, 7, or 8.
• A host Microsoft Windows NT server requires Server Version 4 with server pack 3, or later.
• A host Microsoft Windows 2000 server requires Build 2195, or later.

Information on specific servers, models, required adapter cards, software releases, device drivers, and supported configurations can be found at:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/tape/3590/3590opn.html

Planned Availability Date

September 15, 2000

Description

The IBM Magstar 3590 E Model Tape Drives, with Fibre Channel Attachment, can now connect directly to the growing number of open system servers with Fibre Channel capability. In June, IBM announced the ability to attach the 3590 E Models with the Fibre Channel Attachment feature to RS/6000 systems (refer to Hardware Announcement 100-197 , dated June 20, 2000). With today's announcement, the fibre attachment of the 3590 Tape Drive is extended to include connection to a Qlogic QLA2200F Fibre Channel Adapter installed in a Sun or Intel-compatible server.

With the native Fibre Channel Attachment, the 3590 E Models can offer a number of advantages to customers looking for high performance, reliability, and capacity for the enterprise class open systems computing environment:

• The IBM Magstar 3590 E Model Fibre Channel Attachment is an industry-standard Fibre Channel interface that complies with the ANSI FC-Tape standard.
• Many customers on high performance open systems will enjoy higher data rate performance with the Fibre Channel Attachment feature. The 3590 E Model is now capable of delivering amazing performance of up to 42 MB/s maximum sustained data rate (with 3:1 data compression) and up to 100 MB/s maximum burst data rate. The actual data rate performance achieved depends on factors such as the server utilization, customer data compressibility, and data block size.
• Fibre Channel technology extends the host distance of attached tape drives up to 500 meters, much beyond the traditional SCSI limitation of 25 meters. The technology also simplifies drive cabling. This distance can be increased to 10 kilometers by using long-wave adapters available with the IBM 2109 SAN Fibre Channel Switch and IBM 2103 Fibre Channel Storage Hub.
• Device sharing allows you to share the high performance, reliability, and capacity of the Magstar 3590 E Models. The dual-ported design allows direct attachment of one or two open systems servers, or two or more open system servers in conjunction with the SAN Fibre Channel Switch.

When converting from a 3590 B Model to the E Model, you may now include Fibre Channel Attachment on the tape drive instead of the Ultra SCSI interface, at no additional charge. You will need to order the appropriate Fibre Channel cables, and for the converted 3590 Model E1A, you will need to add the appropriate feature to your 3590 Model C12 Frame, or your 3494 Model L12 or D12 Frame.

Year 2000

This product does not have date dependencies and is therefore Year 2000 ready.

Product Positioning

The Magstar 3590, IBM's highest performance tape subsystem, provides high capacity and reliability for S/390^®, AS/400^®, RS/6000, NUMA-Q^®, and a variety of non-IBM UNIX^®, Windows NT, and Windows 2000 systems. It offers significant enhancements in performance, capacity, data integrity, reliability, and availability over IBM 3480, 3490, or 3490E tape drives. The Magstar 3590 may also relieve backup time and space constraints, and provide the increased capacity needed to support today's growing disk backup requirements.

The IBM Magstar 3590 E Model native Fibre Channel Attachment support is a key component in allowing the 3590 to participate in a SAN, or to be attached directly to an open systems server with Fibre Channel capability. It allows you to share the high performance, reliability, and capacity of the Magstar 3590 E Models with one or more SAN open systems servers, so you may meet your business requirements for storage resource sharing, data backup and recovery, and data sharing. (Although the 3590 provides the capability of very high tape performance, other components of the system may limit the actual performance achieved.)

Reference Information

Refer to Hardware Announcement 100-197 , dated June 20, 2000.

Order Now

 Use Priority/Reference Code: YE001
 
 Phone:     800-IBM-CALL
 Fax:       800-2IBM-FAX
 Internet:  ibm_direct@us.ibm.com
 Mail:      IBM Atlanta Sales Center
            Dept. YE001
            P.O. Box 2690
            Atlanta, GA  30301-2690

You can also contact your local IBM Business Partner or IBM representative. To identify them, call 800-IBM-4YOU.

Note: Shipments will begin after the planned availability date.

Trademarks

 

AIX, RS/6000, Magstar, AS/400, S/390, and NUMA-Q are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries or both.

 

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation.

 

Microsoft, Windows NT, and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

 

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.

 

Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.