Synapsys rolls out new Fibre Channel arrays, hubs
Synapsys Digital LLC this month put a snap into high-speed workgroup storage with the release of Triumph, the company's new line of Fibre Channel arrays and hubs.
Aimed at content-creation workgroups, the Triumph line includes tower systems with five, eight, 16, and 32 bays for removable hard drive modules, and an eight-bay system in a rackmount enclosure. The company said the units ship with dual, redundant 300-watt power supplies; managers can also replace a power supply without shutting down the system.
The Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) interface arrays come with Mac striping software from ATTO Technology Inc. Users who want data-redundancy capabilities can pay an extra $99 for Adaptec Inc.'s Remus RAID software, which supports mirroring and parity levels 4 and 5. The company said the arrays support hot-swapping of drive modules.
The systems also use FC-AL Hub Manager, Mac software that controls the FC-AL network for sites with multiple users. The software can set read and write privileges for files and volumes.
According to President and CEO Thomas Isakovich, the arrays currently support the sharing of files by multiple users for Macs. A single-user version for Windows NT is also available, and a version that supports multiple NT users is expected to ship by the end of the month.
The multi-user Windows software will send the read/write status for files and volumes via a separate Ethernet connection, Isakovich said. By contrast, the Mac software uses the FC-AL network to send the information and manages the status on the array.
The Triumph arrays come with one or more FC-AL PCI cards, based on ATTO's ExpressPCI FC technology (see 12.01.97, Page 21). The cross-platform cards support Macs and Windows systems, Synapsys said.
Several of the systems come bundled with the company's $1,799 FC-AL hub, which provides five standard FC-AL full-duplex ports.
The company's entry-level array, the five-bay Triumph IA 18.2GB, costs $8,995. The system comes with two 9.1-Gbyte FC-AL hard drive modules based on 7,200-rpm mechanisms from Seagate Technology Inc., as well as the FC-AL PCI card and RAID software. The Triumph IA enclosure can only hold a single power supply.
Using a larger five-bay enclosure, the $13,594 Triumph I MAX 36.4GB array ships with four 10,000-rpm drives, a PCI card and RAID software. It comes with two power supplies. Isakovich said the array will provide a sustained data transfer rate of 55 Mbytes per second for a single user accessing a file over the network.
Synapsys' eight-bay towers are the $22,490 Triumph II MAX 72.8GB and the $24,289 Triumph II MAX 72.8GB FC-AL Power5. Both models come with eight 9.1-Gbyte, 10,000-rpm drives; striping software; and a PCI card. The higher-priced array adds an external FC-AL hub.
The 16-bay Triumph III MAX 145.6GB FC-AL Power10 model, packed with the 9.1-Gbyte drives, costs $46,209. It comes with a PCI card, RAID software and two hubs.
The top-of-the-line Triumph III MAX Duo 292GB FC-AL Power20 uses two 16-bay enclosures. The $120,530 package comes with eight PCI cards, four hubs, Remus software and an eight-user license for the FC-AL Hub Manager software.
In other FC-AL news Synapsys said it plans an April release of its FC-AL-to-Ultra SCSI-3 bridge box, which will let Triumph users connect to older Ultra arrays. While the company has not set final pricing, it expects the unit to cost about $3,999.
Synapsys Digital LLC of Palo Alto, Calif., can be reached at (888) 886-8551; fax and phone (650) 497-0532; info@synapsysdigital.com; http://www.synapsysdigital.com.