History 2003: McData Sphereon 4300 Switch

The price for FC switches remains relatively high, particularly in comparison to Ethernet switches, while the thorny issue of interoperability, or lack thereof, means that users today wouldn’t dream of mixing units from different vendors.

QLogic has tried with little success to drive prices downward.

McData now has also made a step in this direction, with the launch of a low-cost unit, the Sphereon 4300, which is a stripped-down version of its successful 4500 (8 to 24 ports), with identical chips and architecture. The 4300 starts with 4 ports, continuing up to 8 or 12.

To keep the cost down, the company has sacrificed overall reliability, with the integration of a single power supply and fan. It’s therefore not recommended for mission-critical applications.

Is there really a market for only 4 ports? Not likely. For 12 ports, McData’s senior PR specialist Ryan Batty cited a price of $600 per port.

“This is Brocade’s price for 18 ports,” he added.

As with the 4500, users can upgrade from the 4-port version to 8 or 12. Also like the 4500, the 4300 will be offered in Dell’s and EMC’s catalogs for Clariion. We can thus look forward to a pretty little pricing war.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 188 on September 2003 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.