Enterprise Storage
Sun Makes a Fresh Attack on Low-End Server Market
Sun Microsystems this week will announce two low-end Solaris servers, the Sun Fire V210 and Sun Fire V240. Suns new servers will mark a fresh assault on the low end, said Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata. The systems are based on Suns UltraSparc IIIi Jalapeno chip, which features technologies optimized for use in low-end servers. Sun also plans to introduce a new family of midrange storage products featuring its N1 virtualization and provisioning technologies, according to a Computerworld report. The announcements are part of the quarterly technology refreshes that Sun promised earlier this year and that will also include several planned services-related announcements and price cuts, the sources said. Sun declined to comment on unannounced products.
Read the full story on:Computerworld
Hitachi Readies SAN Bundles for Microsoft Exchange
Hitachi Data Systems is preparing to offer a preconfigured SAN aimed at the Microsoft Exchange market. The SAN bundle, based on the companys Thunder 9570V storage array, includes four Emulex Fibre Channel host-bus adapters, two 16-port Brocade Silkworm 3800 Fibre Channel switches, Brocades Web-based SAN management and SAN zoning tools, and HDS device management and LUN security tools. Besides its use in Exchange environments, the preconfigured SAN can also be used to help customers migrate Windows NT 4 and Exchange version 5.5 to Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000, said Marc Trimuschat, director of OEM marketing at Brocade.
Read the full story on:CRN
Personal Storage
New Addonics Kit Turns Hard Drives to Serial ATA
Addonics last week announced its Serial ATA product lineup, including a adapter that converts existing parallel ATA (commonly called IDE) and ATAPI drives compatible with the new standard. The $35 converter attaches to an drive and lets users take advantage of many Serial ATA (SATA) features. For example, the converter supports hot-swapping and RAID, the company said, including RAID 1 for mirroring and RAID 0 for striping.
Read the full story on:PC World
Storage Business
A New Financial Era for Western Digital
After two years in the red, Western Digital snapped back in fiscal 2002, ended June 30, racking up earnings of $65.4 million, or 34 cents a share. Its stock was beaten down from 54 in 1997 to 3 in July, 2002. The stock price has since jumped to 9.93. “And it isnt over,” said Joseph Phillips of Redwood/Technimentals Research, who rates the stock a buy, figuring its worth 15 based on fundamental and technical measures. Zachs Investment consensus estimate for 2003 is 84 cents a share. WDCs new drive, the ATA WD Raptor, represents a new era in disk drives, Phillips said. The sharp rise in demand for the drive “signals a big change in WDCs outlook,” he said.
Read the full story on:BusinessWeek Online