By introducing the first copper chip into a storage server and including a fibre channel connection (Ficon) system in its mainframes, IBM says it has increased its Shark storage solution performance six times and capacity four-fold.
IBM has enhanced Shark with a 24GB cache in addition to existing 8GB, 16GB and 32GB caches. Shark data transfers are reported to be up at 100MBps, compared to the enterprise systems connection (Escon) standard of 17MBps.
The Shark/Ficon storage solution also enhances distance (100km as against 9km on Escon) and sharing as well as reducing infrastructure costs by allowing multiple Escon channels to be replaced with a single Ficon channel.
Ficon-based storage for mainframes also allows customers to connect mainframes directly to open storage area networks (SANs) used by Unix and Windows/NT servers for the first time.
"A SAN infrastructure eases administration of storage networks and enables organisations to make rapid changes to their configurations to meet business requirements," says IBM SA`s storage solutions manager, Ben Gosling.
IBM has also introduced copper in its tape technology, having Ficon-enabled the backup systems eight months ago.
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