Infrastructure Digest
Duo teams disk and tape
Dynamic Network Factory has teamed traditional disk-based RAID with tape backup to provide relatively low-cost, fault-tolerant storage.
The company's DataStor RAID server, which was demonstrated at NetWorld+Interop in Atlanta last week, offers disk storage capacities of 75GB and 112GB as well as RAID levels 0, 1 and 5 in a box with fault-tolerant features and a data transfer rate of up to 80MB per second. The digital tape backup, provided by OnStream Inc., of Boulder, Colo., comes in 30GB and 50GB capacities with transfer rates of up to 2MB per second.
The package provides storage at about 2.4 cents per megabyte, said officials at Dynamic Network Factory, in Hayward, Calif.
The DataStor RAID server is available now with pricing starting at $2,995.
Dynamic Network Factory is at (510) 733-0103 or www.raidexpert.com. OnStream is at (303) 774-6705 or www.onstream.com.
RAID for the PC
The new DupliDisk RAIDcase software and hardware package mirrors two disk drives in a PC to produce RAID on a desktop.
Arco Computer Products Inc., which developed the product, provides SCSI cabling to link any two IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), Enhanced IDE or Uniform/ Direct Memory Access drives to the computer's IDE controller and power supply. Once the system is set up, data sent from the CPU to the primary drive is transparently mirrored to the second drive. In the event of a failure of the primary drive, the second drive takes over. The user is alerted to the failure through external LED lights and an audible alarm, said Arco officials in Hollywood, Fla.
Because DupliDisk requires no drivers, it is operating-system-independent.
Pricing for DupliDisk, available now, is $435.
Arco can be contacted at (954) 925-2688 or www.arcoide.com.
CA strengthens database tools
Computer Associates International Inc. took steps last week to enhance its line of tools for managing data on IBM mainframes through the acquisition of Innovative DP Designs Inc.
Innovative DP Designs' IMS ToolKit is a suite of 10 integrated IMS database products, including backup and recovery, database integrity validation, monitoring, and other critical tasks for database administration.
CA, of Islandia, N.Y., will pair Innovative DP Designs' OS/390 utilities for the IMS database management system with IMS and DB2 database utilities it gained through its acquisition in June of Platinum Technology Inc., officials said.
Terms of the acquisition were not announced.
CA can be contacted at (516) 342-5224 or www.cai.com.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Project Monterey, the Unix operating system being developed by IBM, SCO and Sequent Computing Systems Inc. for Intel Corp.'s IA-64 architecture, got another endorsement last week as Edinburgh Portable Compilers Ltd. announced plans to produce cross-compiling and native versions of its C/C++ and FORTRAN compilers. n Oracle Corp. last month lost longtime Senior Vice President Polly Sumner, who left to take a job as president and chief operating officer at AlphaBlox Corp., a maker of Java-based analytic applications.