Fujitsu Launches Nearline FC Drive for ETERNUS Storage Systems

Tokyo, November 21, 2005

Fujitsu Limited today announced the release of the Nearline FC disk drive for ETERNUS storage systems, a new high-capacity, high-reliability, low-cost storage drive. The new product will be available worldwide beginning with Japan. The product is designed to be used with the ETERNUS6000 enterprise disk array and ETERNUS3000 mid-range disk array storage systems. In addition, the company announced that several models in the ETERNUS series will support a 4Gbps Host Fibre Channel interface.

The new Nearline FC disk drive, which employs redundant Fibre Channel interfaces, is a superbly reliable nearline disk drive⁽¹⁾. Fujitsu achieves an industry first with support of the new 500GB Nearline FC disk drive for ETERNUS storage systems, delivering over 500TB of capacity in one ETERNUS6000 system. Data storage costs can be dramatically reduced with the new Fujitsu disk drive, making it well-suited for less frequently accessed archival and backup uses. ETERNUS "eco-mode⁽²⁾" delivers additional cost savings by rotating the spindle only when the drive is being accessed, reducing energy demands and environmental burden.

The amount of data in corporate and government institutions' information systems continues to mount. In order to back up these burgeoning data stores quickly, demand for "disk-to-disk" (D2D) backup is on the rise.

Furthermore, in light of record keeping requirements under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the U.S. and the Electronic Records Law in Japan, along with the general demand for long-term safekeeping of e-mail and logs, there is a clear need for low-cost disk drives that are infrequently accessed.

In response to these demands Fujitsu has developed and is now offering the Nearline FC disk drive, a low-price, high-reliability disk drive for use in its ETERNUS6000 and ETERNUS3000 storage systems. The Nearline FC disk drive can be used both with new installations and existing ones⁽³⁾.

Product Features

1. Nearline FC disk drive: Delivering high capacity, high reliability at low cost

(1) High capacity:

Available in disk capacities of 500GB—a first among nearline disk drives with redundant Fibre Channel interfaces—and 400GB.

(2) High reliability:

Redundant Fibre Channel interfaces for excellent reliability.

(3) Low data-storage cost:

Compared to Fibre Channel hard drives the cost of data storage is dramatically improved. This is ideally suited for backup and archival data that is not accessed frequently and does not need the performance of a Fibre Channel disk drive.

(4) Expandability:

Installing the new drives can expand the storage capacity of the ETERNUS6000 from 2.5TB up to a maximum of 500TB, and the ETERNUS3000 from 2.5TB up to a maximum of 118TB.

2. Efficient backups without stopping operations

(1) Advanced Copy function:

The ETERNUS3000 and ETERNUS6000 come equipped with support for Advanced Copy, a fast backup and recovery method that uses D2D transfer.

Advanced Copy supports two modes of data replication, Equivalent Copy (EC) and One-Point Copy (OPC). With EC, a working storage domain is synchronized with a duplicate storage domain, which can be used for disaster recovery, backup and recovery or many other applications. With OPC, data in the working storage domain is copied directly to the backup in a matter of seconds, simplifying the ability to create multiple generations of backups.

(2) Differential One-Point Copy:

The ETERNUS6000 and ETERNUS3000 support Differential One-Point Copy is an advanced version of OPC that reduces the overhead of creating point-in-time copies by updating the duplicate storage domain with only data that has changed since previous copy instance. This dramatically speeds up the backup process, and in conjunction with Nearline FC disk drives, simplifies the introduction of D2D backups from working storage domains.

3. Data storage optimized to the data's value

The ETERNUS6000 and ETERNUS3000 support intermixturing Fibre Channel disk drives and Nearline FC disk drives, allowing maximum flexibility in system configuration. As the value of data changes during its lifecycle, it can be stored on the most appropriate medium to strike a good balance between operating costs and access speed.

For example, data in a frequently accessed database could be stored on a high-performance, high-reliability Fibre Channel disk drive, whereas e-mail, financial records, tax documents, ledger data, and space-intensive CAD and research data could be stored on lower-cost Nearline FC disk drives.

4. Lower energy consumption reduces environmental burden

With the "eco-mode" function of the ETERNUS3000 and Nearline FC disk drive, which employs MAID technology⁽⁴⁾, customers will realize improved cost savings by exercising precise control over the power to disks in Nearline RAID groups. With "eco-mode" customers can realize energy savings of up to 20%⁽⁵⁾, reducing the overall environmental impact.

5. Fast host interface for improved access speeds

The ETERNUS6000 and models 300/500/700 in the ETERNUS3000 line now include 4Gbps Fibre Channel interfaces, doubling previous disk array access speeds. Fujitsu continues to deliver leading edge technology by delivering 4Gbps Fibre Channel performance technology to the customers today.

Fujitsu holds the second highest share ⁽⁶⁾(by value) in Japan's external disk storage market. Building on its long experience developing high-performance, high-reliability storage technologies, Fujitsu will continue to provide solutions responding to customer needs worldwide.

Sales Targets

Over the next two years, Fujitsu expects to sell 12,000 units worldwide of the ETERNUS6000 and ETERNUS3000 series combined.