The Four Hundred

IBM has announced a new series of Ultrium tape subsystems and autoloaders for midrange shops. The Ultrium tape format was jointly developed by IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Seagate Technology, and is based on the Linear Tape-Open that bears some resemblance to the Magstar technology developed by IBM, yet is incompatible with that Magstar format. The new IBM Ultrium drives can be attached to OS/400, Unix, Linux, Windows, and mainframe servers.

Like IBM's prior Ultrium 3580-H11 and -L11 drives, the 3580-H13 and -L13 Ultrium tape drives attach to servers through a normal SCSI peripheral connection. Both machines use Ultrium tapes with 100 GB of native capacity and sustained data transfer rates of up to 15 GB/sec. With 2:1 data compression activated, customers can cram 200 GB on a tape and see sustained data transfer rates approach 30 GB/sec. The 3580-H11 and -H13 models use a regular Ultra SCSI interface, while the 3580-L11 and -L13 use an Ultra2 SCSI interface. A second derivative of the LTO spec called Accelis, using a two reel format instead of the single reel in the Ultrium design, and loading from the midpoint of the tape (both of which speed up data read times), is under development. Ultrium tapes are available in 10 GB, 30 GB, 50 GB, and 100 GB native formats.

The first generation of IBM Ultrium tape drives, the 3580-H11 and 3580-L11 units, which shipped in September 2000, offered the same basic feeds and speeds as the new ones. However, new models have lower-cost-of-ownership prices because IBM is offering different warranty terms on the H13/L13 tape drives than it did on the older H11/L11 units. The original machines have IBM's standard one-year onsite warranty, which customers know and (presumably) love, while the new Ultrium units have a three-year parts-exchange warranty service, under which customers will help to identify parts that have failed in the unit and then send them back to IBM to be replaced. Customers save money because they don't pay those minimum monthly maintenance fees, which used to be an easy source of revenue for IBM, but now that the machines are so reliable, no one wants to pay those maintenance fees. The H11 and H13 units cost $5,375, and the L11 and L13 units cost $5,175. A three-year onsite warranty (24/7 support) for an H11 or L11 machine costs $2,091, but the three-year exchange maintenance plan for the H13 or L13 machines with support during the business hours of 9 to 5 only costs $900, and a 24/7 support version of this exchange plan costs only $1,200. This lower-cost maintenance plan is meant for customers who aren't concerned with the availability of their tape units, perhaps because they have many of them.

The 3581-H13 and L13 units are the same single-deck Ultrium drives, except that they include a seven-tape autoloader that provides a total unattended backup capacity of 700 GB in native mode and 1.4 TB in compressed mode. The 3581-H13 costs $8,060, while the 3581-L13 costs $7,860. The three-year exchange maintenance plan for these machines with 9-to-5 support costs $1,500, while the 24/7 support plan costs $2,000.

IBM's Ultrium drives require OS/400 V4R4 or higher on iSeries and AS/400 servers, and run on RS/6000 and pSeries servers with AIX 4.3.2 or higher, on Sun Microsystem's Sparc servers running Solaris 2.6, 2.7, and 8 (not the new Solaris 9), on HP Unix servers running HP-UX 11.0 or higher, and on Wintel servers running Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0 (SP6) and Windows 2000 operating systems.

Sponsored By

FAST400

What makes IBM different from Microsoft regarding Fast400??

What is Fast400?

You are hearing a lot about Fast400 aren't you? But what is Fast400? Fast400 is a "tuning" product for the iSeries. Fast400 will allow an iSeries server to utilize the available CPW for interactive processing. IBM would have you believe that these interactive cards that cost thousands to millions of dollars, actually add value to your server. By buying Fast400, you do not ever need to buy anther interactive card for your iSeries. For a free demonstration of Fast400, please visit www.fast400.net .

Why Fast400?

A few years ago Microsoft would not let other software companies build tools to work with the Windows operating system. Microsoft did all kinds of scurrilous things to stop other manufacturers software from working on their platform. They would put code in the base operating system that prevented other companies code from working properly. IBM even had these issues with Operations Navigator. In the early days of Operations Navigator, the developers in Rochester had to scrap early versions because Microsoft did not want IBM leverage on what was proprietary to them. Netscape also had a few problems using the Windows operating system.

The result

Now we all know what happened to Microsoft. After spending tens of millions of our tax dollars in the trial, the US government told Microsoft that they were acting as a monopoly and what they did was not right or fair.

The similarity

IBM is doing exactly the same thing to Fast400 as Microsoft did. IBM has changed the operating system of the iSeries 400 to prevent Fast400 from working. In fact this has been done several times now, and each time the Fast400 developers produce a new fix to circumvent the IBM action. Why does IBM do this? because Fast400 takes money out of IBM's pocket. The potential for IBM to make billions from its user base, for delivering virtually no product is tantamount to corporate deception! Did IBM change the operating system when EMC introduced a low cost storage solution for the iSeries?

The future

The cat and mouse game between IBM and Fast400 is already a year old. Every time IBM changes the operating system to disable Fast400, the developers of Fast400 produce a new version within days to enable it again. Does Fast400 have a commercial agenda? Of course it does. Fast400 is in business to provide its clients with added benefits, which will maximise the interactive performance of iSeries 400 servers. And as we are a business, why shouldn't we charge a nominal fee for that service? A fee that our clients see as being fair and proper. After all, it's not Fast400 that is making enemies in the user base. As long as IBM wants to play "David and Goliath" we will continue to "out" the giant. Fast400 is not running, you can be assured!!

For more information, please visit www.fast400.net.