Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced it has expanded its storage portfolio to include the Sun StorageTek ST2500 Low Cost Array (LCA), Sun's first serial-attached SCSI (SAS) storage array. It's the newest member of the modular disk storage family that works with the Solaris Operating System (OS) and other heterogeneous data center environments. Sun also announced next-generation data management capabilities for its storage portfolio that include the addition of partitioning functionality to its StorageTek SL8500 enterprise tape library and secure encryption to its Sun StorageTekT10000 FICON tape drive.

Sun continues to enhance its storage infrastructure portfolio with its first SAS storage array: the Sun StorageTek ST2500 Low Cost Array (LCA), priced under $10,000 and designed as a data access and protection tier for emerging and established mid-tier customers and enterprises.

The 2500 series arrays join five other storage products that are available as Sun Systems Packs, which make it easier for Sun customers to acquire the right level of support with their hardware.

Product features include: Application-oriented provisioning using Sun's StorageTek Common Array Manager (CAM); support for either FC or SAS host interfaces; small footprint at six drives-per rack unit; data protection with a fully redundant RAID; and remote connection to Sun Service. The iSCSI version of ST2500 is expected to be available later in 2007. This Tier 2 storage product includes a common set of management tools that allows customers to scale their data requirements to Tier 1 (fast access) data devices, all under the same management module, and then scale to the ST6140 or ST6540.

Sun has also announced the addition of the fourth generation of LTO drive technology in its tape portfolio. The LTO 4 FC Tape Drive delivers high capacity (800 GB/cartridge native) and increased performance (120MB/sec) for customers' open systems environments to improve storage density in new or existing libraries and allow for upgrades to newer technology in the same automation footprint. LTO 4 FC drives will initially be available in Sun's tape automation products, including the StorageTek SL8500, L1400 and SL500, later this quarter and additional interfaces and support are expected to follow in the next quarter.