News

posted on 30 April 2008 09:09

Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) has lowered the power consumption and extended the service life of its FibreCAT TX24 and TX48 small/medium enterprise tape automation products.

The TX24 is an autoloader in a 2U enclosure with two LTO-3 or LTO-4 drives and up to 24 tape slots, giving a maximum raw capacity of 19.2TB. It can be upgraded from 12 to 24 slots with a software license.

The TX48 is a small library with up to four LTO-3 or LTO-4 drives and 28 slots. It starts with 24 slots and the upgrade is via a license. The maximum capacity is 38.4TB of raw data. Individual drives and slots can be allocated to specific servers.

Both products come with a SAS interface and both SCSI and Fibre Channel will be made available.

Service life has been extended through the support of both LTO-3 and LTO-4 formats. Power consumption has been decreased compared to the first generation by only running the fan when the temperature needs to be lowered, and by altering the robot gearing to reduce the power draw.

Neither product needs a stand-by battery and both exceed RoHS requirements on hazardous substance use.

Dr. Helmut Beck, Storage Business VP at FSC, said: "The second generation of our FibreCAT TX systems ... shows that high-quality technology and environmentally friendly, energy-efficient systems are not mutually exclusive, but can complement each other brilliantly. Our customers benefit in two ways; they get future-proof, reliable devices that work with the latest storage technology, and these devices are also state-of-the-art in terms of environmental compatibility.”

FSC has commissioned a study showing that tape is the preferred nearline storage medium and that the LTO format is preferred to DAT. It can be downloaded here. 

 ^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}