Platform technology achieves necessary performance gains
Efforts to achieve the world's largest configuration
To support the world's largest system configuration, storage system controller modules needed to be increased from four to
eight.
Moreover, these controllers needed to be connected using 4Gbps transfer speed.
This combination was unprecedented in the storage world.
Yoshinori Terao, Hardware Development Project Chief says “Developing such large system is not without difficulties.
Lengthening the transmission channels for eight controllers at 4Gbps has the potential to cause data transfer problems.
Every time we develop a new product, we encounter problems requiring innovations that overcome existing technological limitations.
It all starts with the choice of materials for the printed circuit boards."
Weak transmission circuit signals cause problems in meeting target transfer speeds.
Fujitsu's intense research and development came up with a printed circuit board that could connect eight controllers.
Circuit design as a clue to resolving problems
Standard circuit boards use angular pathways. But at the new higher speeds these caused excessive signal attenuation. The
problem was solved with a new circuit design using curved pathways. This increased the signal strength and guaranteed the
world's first ever 4Gbps storage processing.
The largest model ETERNUS that is able to accommodate up to 2,760 disk drives uses optical fiber cables between controllers
and disk drives to maintain high speed data transfer even in a physically substantial configuration.
This impressive internal performance means an I/O transaction processing and data volume throughput boost of 250% compared
with existing ETERNUS models - the best performance in the world today.
This could then be thoroughly verified to ensure that customer business operations would not stop even in cases of unexpected
error.
Go to the next page: Simulation of all conceivable actions
Contents
- Fujitsu and Its Efforts in High-Performance, Large-Scale Storage Systems Development
- Background to development
- Platform technology achieves necessary performance gains
- Simulation of all conceivable actions
- New features to ensure security and reliability
- ETERNUS storage systems remove new business risks
Product lineup
- Enterprise storage systems with the largest scale and the highest I/O rate in the world.
ETERNUS8000 storage systems - Cost-effective midrange storage systems.
ETERNUS4000 storage systems
