Enterprise Tape System 3590 demonstrates IBM's continued commitment to providing advanced tape solutions to meet the growing demands of the enterprise. The IBM 3590 offers attachment to the iSeries (AS/400), pSeries (RS/6000), xSeries, zSeries (S/390), Hewlett Packard ** HP, Linux **, Microsoft ** Windows NT/2000, and Sun ** servers. The 3590 is designed for high-performance tape applications, including:

• High-speed data save operations where backup windows are critical, and large amounts of data are archived to tape.
• Large-scale automated tape environments where performance and reliability are required. These are primarily half-inch tape drive environments.
• Large-scale mass data archive applications where massive amounts of data need to be quickly saved to tape for storage and later recall. Examples include the seismic industry, data warehousing, and record management applications.

IBM has enhanced the popular Enterprise Tape System 3590 by introducing Model H1A Tape Drives (H Models). These enhanced models are intended to meet the growing needs of both new and existing customers across a wide number of environments.

Advantages of these 3590 H Model Tape Drive include:

• Larger capacity, meaning that fewer cartridges are required and floor space can be reduced
• Higher performance than the B Model (and the same performance as the E model), which can reduce the number of tape drives
• A wide range of attachment options, enabling greater usage of the 3590
• High reliability, which can improve operations
• Investment protection, allowing over 87,000 existing 3590 B Model and E Model Tape Drives to be upgraded and still read existing tape data cartridges

Capacity

These 3590 H Models employ a new fifth-generation magneto-resistive (MR) head design that provides a 50% increase in the amount of data that can be stored on a cartridge (versus an E model) and three times the data that can be stored on a cartridge (versus a B model). The following table compares the cartridge capacity versus the current B and E Models:

This capacity increase is due to increasing the number of tracks written to 384 tracks, versus 256 tracks written by the E model, and 128 tracks written by the B model. This can be very beneficial in space savings and economy of data storage, since it lowers the cost of storage per megabyte. For applications that fill current data cartridges this can reduce the number of tape cartridges required. The reduced number of cartridges can also free up floor space for other requirements as well as reduce the number of automation slots used.

Performance

The 3590 H Models, with a 14 MB/s native transfer rate, offer a 50% higher data transfer rate than the B model and the same high performance as the E Model. Higher data rate performance allows tape applications to read or write data more quickly and has the potential of reducing the number of tape drives required. Using the built-in data compression capability, it can more effectively utilize the full capability of the 40 MB per second Ultra SCSI interface. It can also attach directly to the growing number of open systems that support native Fibre Channel Attachment.

Note: The actual throughput a customer may achieve is a function of many components, such as system processor, disk data rate, data block size, data compressibility, I/O attachments, and the system or application software used. Thus, although the drive is capable of a 14-40 MB/sec instantaneous data rate, other components of the system may limit the actual effective data rate.

Attachment Options

These 3590 H Models allow a wide range of attachment flexibility. The drives can be directly attached to open systems servers with Ultra SCSI or Fibre Channel attachments, or to ESCON or FICON servers with the 3590 Model A60 Controller. These 3590 H Models are supported in a wide range of environments including selected zSeries, S/390, iSeries, AS/400, pSeries, RS/6000, xSeries, Sun, and HP servers, as well as Intel-compatible servers running Microsoft Windows NT, Microsoft Windows 2000, and Linux. These 3590 H Models provide exceptional value-add when supported in an Enterprise Tape Library 3494 and in a StorageTek 4410 or 9310 Automated Cartridge System (ACS) environment.

Enterprise Tape Library 3494 Attachment

The IBM 3590 Model H1A was designed for easy attachment in models of the Enterprise Tape Library 3494. The IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive Expansion Frame 3494 Model D12 can contain up to six 3590 drives while an IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Library Base Frame 3494 Model L12 can contain up to two 3590 drives. The IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Drive Expansion Frame 3494 Model D14 can contain up to four 3590 drives and an IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape Controller 3590 Model A60. If a 3494 Model L14 or D14 Frame contains one or more 3590 Model H1A drives, either a 3590 Model A60 controller must also be installed in that frame or the drives must be attached to an A60 controller in an adjacent Model D14 frame. The 3590 drives can be installed in the same libraries with 3490E drives.

The part numbers for additional supplies are: