History (1998): Separately, Grau and StorageTek Combine RAID and Tape Library

A complete, closed subsystem, including disk array and tape library – now that’s a new idea.

One of its first proponents is Storage Technology, and the new company Grau Software (Pleidelsheim, Germany).

The objective here is to offer open system architecture users a total solution, with storage, backup and archiving in a package much easier to use than separate components.

The only possible criticism that can be evoked with multifunction systems concerns the overall MTBF of solutions that integrate several different hardware devices. STK’s OPENstorage subsystem, for cluster Windows NT servers, combines:
– a 9153, the first in a series of modular RAIDs that hold up to 40 disk drives, with a capacity ranging from 45 to 720GB,
– a 9370 library that can support over 21TB of storage on DLT tape cartridges. This subsystem, which can support up to 512MB of cache, boasts a 5 backend bus architecture and supports Ultra SCSI and FC attachments.

A solution with 90GB on disk and 360GB on tape costs $85,000.

Grau Systems’ offer is presented differently, to the extent that the disk array is basically a cache for the tape library. The overall integration was particularly ingenious, since it is capable of stocking up to 7.5TB, native capacity, on a surface area of half a square meter (approximately 390 square inches), with a height of 1.92m (72 inches). This compact design was managed using tiny 8mm cartridges and 3.5-inch tape drives based on Sony’s AIT technology.

Grau’s Infinistore Virtual Disk thus consists of:
– a RAID-5 disk cache from 25 to 100GB,
– an automatic library of 4 to 16 drives and 200 to 300 AIT 8mm cartridges with 25GB each which are placed along the closet, on all its height.

According to Herbert Grau, a complete solution runs $30,000/TB, with software and embedded Windows NT 4.0 machine.

It is possible to configure the tape drives in mirroring mode.

Grau also indicated that he was in discussions with Exabyte, who seem interested in the new architecture.

Readers will perhaps recall that the German firm Grau, founded by the family of the same name, was for 10 or so years a reputable manufacturer of huge automatic libraries for 3480-type cartridges. The company was acquired in 1995 by Emass/E-Systems.

Grau Storage Systems GmbH is in fact the name of the company’s German subsidiary, in which Grau himself still holds 20% interest.

Clearly, Grau and Emass upper management do not see eye to eye on matters of which strategy to follow. Which is why Grau reactivated a company founded in 1988 under the name Obis, only to become Grau Software in 1996. It was the latter that developed MVS and VM software for the Grau libraries.

Now the company has added subsystem manufacturing to its list of activities.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 125 on June 1998 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.