Hitachi answers call for more data in one box

By ADAM GIFFORD

In the leapfrog world of technology, today's leader is tomorrow's laggard.

That's why Hitachi Data Systems is making a lot of noise about its Lightning 9900 storage subsystem, which can hold up to 37 terabytes of data in a single unit.

So who needs a box containing 37 terabytes of data?

Hitachi's Sydney-based storage solutions product manager, Ross Harper, said e-commerce was driving demand for those levels of storage.

"We expect to see an enormous amount of storage growth. A lot of people want video on disk. You have Government departments who want their documents on line in real time.

"We're seeing insurance companies which are taking all their claim files and putting them on Unix or NT servers, so when someone calls with a query, the call centre operator can see the whole file on the spot."

Mr Harper said organisations were starting to build storage area networks (SANs) that used "fibre channel" to link a number of storage devices.

Fibre channel has a higher data throughput than competing networking standards like ethernet or SCSI, and connections can be longer - 10km, compared with SCSI's 20m.

The SAN concept has been around for some time, but because of the huge investment required, customers have been cautious about adopting the technology.

Local adopters include the Wellington City Council and North Shore-based technology distributor Sealcorp, which has an internal SAN and is also building some for customers.

Hitachi is now proposing that SANs are just a subset of a Freedom Data Network.

By passing data through internal switching networks, such as those in the Lightning 9900, as well as through externally attached switching fabrics such as SANs, performance can be increased six to 10 times over traditional internet protocol LAN (local area network) configurations.

Mr Harper said a key reason storage was going to largely self-managed networks was the lack of skilled people available to manage it.

Managing storage on a distributed network such as a LAN can require one person for every 200 to 300 gigabytes of storage.

In a well-structured mainframe environment, one person can handle one or two terabytes of storage.