MacNews Category Review: Fibre-channel connectivity products for the Mac
This MacNews Category Review looks at fibre-channel connectivity products for Mac OS X. Products covered include Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card, Astera Durax High Available Storage, ATTO products and QLogic products.
Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card
[url=http://www.apple.com]The Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card[/url] is a Fibre channel host bus adapter that can be added to the Xserve G5, Xserve, Power Mac G5, or Power Mac G4 for connection to Xserve RAID.
Astera Durax High Available Storage
The [url=http://www.asteratech.com/]Astera Durax High Available Storage[/url] is a cluster failover solution for Mac OS X that operates in conjunction with OS X IP Failover. The Durax Cluster kit contains two Astera Rhino Optical Fibre Channel HBAs (3120F) and Durax cluster software. Configured on two Serves (Xserve or PowerMac), it's built to provide fast, transparent storage failover in the event of a failure. The company also makes The Rhino-3000, a Dual Fibre Channel to PCI-X Host Bus Adapter (HBA) targeted at work group and collaborative applications like video and audio editing.
ATTO products
[url=http://www.attotech.com/]ATTO[/url] offers a number of Fibre-channel connectivity solutions. The The Celerity FC-21PS is a single-channel 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel storage adapter that's designed as a high-quality, cost-effective choice for connecting servers and workstations to the Storage Area Network (SAN) fabric. The ATTO Celerity FC-24XL quad-channel Fibre Channel Storage Adapter offers four independent channels of 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel connectivity for embedded and edge device designs. The Celerity FC-42XS (dual-channel) and FC-41XS (single-channel) Storage Adapters are the next generation of ATTO’s storage connectivity solutions. The Celerity FC-44ES and FC-42ES leverage next-generation storage technologies: PCI Express (x8 PCIe) and 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel. The ExpressPCI FC 3300, single-channel 2-Gigabit Fibre Channel adapters offer high-speed centralized data sharing. The iPBridge 1500E/D & 1550E/D are iSCSI-to-SCSI, RoHS compliant bridges offering a storage connectivity solution for connecting existing SCSI-based Direct Attached Storage (DAS) using Ethernet technology. They feature one independent Gigabit Ethernet port and one independent Ultra3 SCSI port and provide near-native speeds with throughput of over 400GB/hr. The ATTO iPBridge 2600C/R/D is designed to provide a migratory path for organizations interested in using iSCSI, but have already invested thousands of dollars in SCSI-based storage. The iPBridge 2700C/R/D offers organizations a solution for transforming Fibre Channel storage devices into network-enabled addressable devices. The iPBridge 2700C/R/D is an iSCSI-to-Fibre Channel bridge offering scalable solutions for iSCSI networks.
QLogic products
[url=http://www.qlogic.com/]QLogic[/url] also offers a number of Fibre-channel connectivity solutions. The SANbox 5200 12-Port Fibre Channel Switch, the SANbox 5200 16-Port Fibre Channel Switch and the SANbox 5200 8-Port Fibre Channel Switch let you connect your Fibre channel devices. The SANbox2-64 Base Chassis (16-port) fabric switch scales from 16 to sixty-four 2GB and 1GB switch ports in only 4U of rack space. The QLogic SANbox2-64 IO module provides non-disruptive 8-port upgrades for the SANbox2-64. The IO module is an auto switching 1GB and 2GB Fibre Channel IO card that provides eight available user ports. Each IO module provides 32GB of SAN bandwidth; individual ports can be configured to communicate to your storage, servers or other SAN switches.