Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

Here's a riddle. If the largest capacity drive that can run on the iSeries is a 35 GB, why is BCC Technologies introducing a drive with a 146 GB foundation? There are several parts to the answer, but one of the top factors is the likelihood that IBM will remove the 35 GB governor in the first quarter 2003 and allow the iSeries to have 73 GB capacity. Later in 2003, it is probable that 146 GB will be the new limit. Another factor is BCC's penchant for speed.

The latest in storage-related products from BCC was announced last week. It is the first in the 10K RPM Extender ?Disk Drive family to merge IBM's sixth-generation Ultrastar 146Z10 hard drive assemblies with BCC's FAST2 technology. This combination, BCC loves to point out, provides iSeries users with the fastest and most reliable 10K RPM drives available for heavy-computing environments on the iSeries.

BCC claims that disk-access times on IBM's 146Z10 hard drive assemblies are markedly improved, with seek times as low as .85 ms and instantaneous media transfer rates as high as 83 MB per second. The latest hard drive assemblies' "significantly improved" reliability features include Rotational Vibration Safeguard, "pixie dust" media coating, and Drive Fitness Test for more enhanced systems management.

The FAST2 technology requires 146 GB hard drive assemblies because, according to John Gimpl III, vice president of BCC, FAST2 involves "short-stroking" the drives to boost their access times. "It takes a 146 GB native drive to produce a 35 GB FAST2 drive," Gimpl said.

With BCC's 10K RPM disks, FAST2 delivers up to 136 OPS, or operations per second. This compares to IBM internal disks that deliver 63 OPS, according to BCC sources. OPS ratings are the most common way to compare performance of disks.

Reliability and high performance share the spotlight in the iSeries world, Gimpl said. He credits the IBM hard drive technology with "supercharging" the 10K Extender ?Disk Drive family.

Before using the Ultrastar's 146 GB capacity, BCC made use of 73 GB hard drive assembly. The upgrade improved the average seek time from 4.9 to 4.7 ms, according to BCC's figures. The company also reports that the new Ultrastar hard drive assembly doubles the disk cache from 4 to 8 MB and that high-end media transfer rates are doubled to 83 MB per second.

The latest hard drive technology has added an impressive list of reliability developments that include a rotational vibration safeguard, which counteracts the effects of rotational vibration in multi-drive cabinets. Also of note is the use of anti-ferromagnetically coupled media, known as "pixie dust." It sandwiches a three-atom coating of ruthenium between two magnetic layers on a disk for superior media jacket. In terms of disk systems management, IBM's Drive Fitness Test is a useful feature that enables self-testing and analysis of the drive.

Performance of the 146 GB hard drives is boosted by more powerful processors and read/write channels. Extra muscle is also provided a sophisticated command queuing algorithm, hardware automation, and superior data rates at 83 Mbps. Finally, improvements to the giant magneto-resistive heads double the areal density to 26.3 gigabits per square inch.

BBC's president, David Breisacher, expects that the new drives will be popular with companies that are growing their business on the iSeries. "Those utilizing iSeries for Web serving is one avenue, but it's also for any company that wants to utilize the xSeries integration into the iSeries. If IBM can get that idea to its customers, there will be massive capacity increases in iSeries storage requirements. Also, iSeries server consolidation will be a big part of it. If, for instance, eight other machines are consolidated into one, the disk capacity has to increase."

All BCC 10K Extender ?Disk Drive solutions, with the new Ultrastar foundation and FAST2 Technology, are immediately available through BCC and its authorized resellers, which are listed on the company's Web site at www.bcctech.com.

Pricing for the disks, always a thorn in the side of iSeries customers, are below the IBM charges, but still not inexpensive. The high-performance drives are priced at $2,900.

Breisacher illustrates the expenditure this way: "Say you have a Web server and you want to put 10 35-GB drives on it, because your company will be doubling its capacity every six months. If you look at a normal 35 GB capacity drive, which costs $1,400, that amounts to $14,000 for the 350 GB investment. Now, with the higher capacity drive, 146 GB capability, you spend $2,900 rather than $14,000."