Lucent Technologies' Metropolis enhanced optical networking system qualified by IBM as interoperable in IBM geographically dispersed parallel sysplex (GDPS) environments

b>October 8, 2002--Lucent Technologies announced the successful completion of interoperability testing with IBM that will allow service providers to provide their enterprise customers with business continuity in the wake of a disaster and other storage networking wavelength services.

Oct. 8, 2002

2 min read

Lucent Technologies announced the successful completion of interoperability testing with IBM that will allow service providers to provide their enterprise customers with business continuity in the wake of a disaster and other storage networking wavelength services.

Testing was done between the Lucent Metropolis enhanced optical networking (EON), a metro DWDM system, and the IBM eServer parallel sysplex and geographically dispersed parallel sysplex (GDPS) environments. The combination of storage technology with metro optical DWDM systems enables service providers to support local storage networks by connecting facilities that are separated by great distances. This helps enterprises and service providers connect offices and islands of mission-critical information within a region as well as help speed data recovery in the wake of a disaster.

"Continuous availability of mission-critical applications and a near-seamless disaster recovery process are the cornerstones of our GDPS system," said Hernan Vega, vice president of IBM Global Telecommunications Industry. "With this qualification, service providers can use the Metropolis EON combined with IBM's GDPS architecture to transport a variety of traffic over wavelengths and offer enterprise customers powerful business continuity solutions."

"IBM validation is based upon the successful completion of all test scenarios on IBM eServer zSeries deemed vital to GDPS operation," added Vega.

These scenarios must run error free without disrupting normal customer operations up to the maximum fiber distance specified in the testing. The qualification testing showed that the Metropolis EON supports connections between two GDPS sites 40 km apart, which is the maximum distance supported by peer-to-peer remote copy (PPRC) applications. Interoperability was also verified in GDPS extended remote copy (XRC) environments up to the maximum supported FiCON application distance of 150 km.

"This is yet another step toward bringing wavelength services to the data center," said Dominick Scordo, general manager, metro WDM business, Lucent Technologies. "This qualification demonstrates that the Metropolis EON can help service providers extend the storage networking capabilities of their enterprise users."

For more information about Lucent Technologies' (Murray Hill, NJ) Metropolis EON system, visit the company website at http://www.lucent.com.eon .