The Four Hundred

When it comes to high-end tape drives that are suitable for big OS/400, mainframe, Windows, and Unix shops, IBM and StorageTek have been the dominant suppliers for as long as anyone can remember. While new technologies are encroaching on the high-end tape market from the midrange, an IBM 3590 or STK 9480 tape drive is the drive of choice.

That's why IBM continues to invest in the 3590-style "Magstar" drives, and why last week it announced a kicker to the machines, called the 3592. The 3592-J1A is the new tape drive, and the 3592-J70 is a new controller for attaching it to IBM and clone mainframes that use FICON fiber-optic channels.

The 3592-J1A is what will interest most midrange customers, mainly because the drive can be used in a mode for high capacity or fast data transfer. The 3592 tape cartridge is the same format as the 3590 cartridge, and can hold 300 GB of data natively and 900 GB with IBM's 3:1 data compression turned on. That is about five times the density of earlier 3590-H tape drives, which can pump data at a peak 14 MB/sec. With a data rate of 40 MB/sec, the 3592 is a lot faster than the 3590-H, which will make a lot of people very happy. The 3592 tape drive is half the physical size of the 3590-H, and links to servers and SAN switches through a dual-port, 2-Gbps Fibre Channel link. (IBM has just rolled out PCI-X cards for the iSeries that let it link to the new 3592 tape drive.)

High data density is a good thing, but with such a large amount of data to sort through, companies that need to be able to grab data off the tapes a lot faster wouldn't have much of an option other than only filling a portion of their 3592 tapes. (This has been common practice for decades.) Tape media is ridiculously expensive, so only partially populating tapes is not a good thing from an economic standpoint.

To help customers cope with this problem, IBM is launching a second 3592 tape cartridge that only holds 60 GB of data, which is the same capacity as the 3590-H drive using the extended high-performance 3590 tape cartridges. With this skinnier 3592 tape, companies can store the same data on 3592s using the same number of tapes as they did with the 3590-Hs, but can get to that data nearly three times as fast. And because the same 3592 drive supports both tapes, customers can pick one data set for the big tapes, and can keep vital data they need quick access to on the skinny tapes. Further down the road, IBM will allow customers to mix fast and slow access on the same 3592 tape, putting data they need instant access to on the beginning of the tape and stored at the 60 GB density, with other files stored on the back end of the tape in the 300 GB format (and with 3:1 data compression, if they want). This is an elegant solution to a real problem in dealing with tape archives.

By the way, the 1/2-inch tape cartridge used in the 3592 is the same size and shape as the 3590 cartridge. That means that automated tape libraries and tape silos that have been programmed to manipulate 3590 tapes can handle 3592 tapes as well. The bad news is that tapes written using 3592 drives can't be read by 3590 units--IBM often allows new drives to write in an old format--and tapes written in the 3590 format, which is a linear, serpentine format, like the STK 9840s use, can't be read by the 3592 drives.

The 3592-J1A tape drive will have a list price of $32,000; maintenance on the device will amount to $202 after the initial warranty expires. IBM will start shipping the new drive on October 31, with cleaning cartridges and a 20-pack data cart shipping next February. A 3590-H1A drive, which supports a maximum of 120 GB of storage per tape, costs $43,500, with maintenance of $230. A 3590-H11, which supports the fatter 180 GB capacity, sells for $46,500. IBM is being quite aggressive with the 3592, mainly because it is trying to push back STK.