ACADEMIA

CHATSWORTH, CA -- JMR Electronics Inc., the design and manufacturing resource for the popular FORTRA(TM) family of disk array products, announced that it has begun shipping its first 2Gbit/sec Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop disk array enclosures. The new products fully support the 2Gb/s bus and are backwards compatible with 1Gb/s host adapters and disk drives as well. The 2Gb/s FORTRA(TM) products are differentiated from earlier 1Gb/s versions by the addition of a "G" and a "2" in the part number, denoting "GBIC" and "2Gb/s" compatibility. While the original 4-drive FT04 product was denoted FT04-F2x-1 (x indicates the color of the product), the new 2Gb/s compatible units are FT04GF2x-12, wherein the "G" indicates GBIC, and the "2" at the end of the P/N indicates "2 Gb/s." The result of six months of research, development and compatibility testing is the release of JMR's first fully compatible 2Gb/s enclosures. These products support the 2Gb/s FC-AL bus from hosts, through the disk drives, and back out to the loop expansion ports. Using SFF (small form factor) 2Gb GBICs that are user-supplied or available as accessories from JMR, the new FORTRA(TM) 2Gb family requires no "loopbacks" and provides dual-host clustering support internally without need for external accessories. JMR has completed all compatibility testing using Emulex's Lightpulse LP9002L 2Gb/s host bus adapters and Seagate ST318451FC 2Gb/s FC disk drives to build the arrays; however, further compatibility testing is in process, and a compatibility list will be published and updated regularly. "We are excited to be among the first to ship fully compatible 2Gb/s multi-disk, removable-drive enclosures," said Duran Alabi, director of marketing and business development for JMR. "Market demand is very high for 2Gb/s compatible enclosures, and we are quite pleased that many of our initial shipments are going to technology providers, who will be able to perform their own product assessment more easily with the use of our FT04. "Shortly," Alabi continued, "we shall release other JBOD and RAID disk array products, including our popular 10- and 15-drive models, to support the 2Gb/s Fibre Channel bus all the way through. The entire product line will be 2Gb/s compatible by calendar year-end." "Emulex is a pioneering leader in the development and deployment of 2Gb/s Fibre Channel host bus adapters, and is pleased to work with JMR to ensure interoperability of emerging 2Gb/s Fibre Channel solutions," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing at Emulex Corp. "Interoperability testing with JMR assures rapid deployment and provides end users with high-performance Fibre Channel solutions for mission-critical applications." For additional information visit www.jmr.com