History (1993): First French RAID-5

Aton Systèmes in Créteil, near Paris, was the first French company to develop a RAID.

The company celebrated its first birthday by adding a RAID level 5 to its controller card Areka.

Here, data and parity are distributed through all disks. The card also supports, like in the past, level 0 (data stripping), 1 (data mirroring) and 0+1, an original combination of the 2 previous ones. The only thing missing is a RAID-3, often additionally offered by competitors.

The company developed a special technology that enhances specifications and that was the subject of a patent: the capability of simultaneous transfers between disks and the computer memory on one single bus.

Aton finally gave in and followed the trends and pressures of demands requiring a RAID-5 with lower writing specifications than in the 0+1 architecture, but with a better utilization of the disk space, 83% with 7 disks in the first case compared with only 50% percent in the second.

Two levels of RAIDs can simultaneously be on the same subsystem: RAID-0 for image processing, RAID-5 for data bases, etc. A failing disk can be replaced without changing the system (hot plug/hot swap).

This entity was developed by Dominique Ezvan, an internationally known expert in this segment.

The Areka card can be integrated in a PC and costs $1,824 for a EISA bus, $963 for an ISA version, without counting disk units – up to seven 3.5-inch ones, which means a maximum of 10GB that the buyer can personally choose. These prices are close to those of Compaq that has a very similar proprietary offer.

A driver dedicated to Windows NT will be available before the end of the year.

Like all the actors in the RAID market, the small French company hopes that 1993 will the year it will take off. Alain Besombes, its CEO, expects to sell 800 to 1,000 cards this year, compared to around 15 Iast year.

The company is counting on an European distribution network now being formed (Infodis and Softmart in France, Makotron and Borsu in Germany, Clever in Italy, Sonet in former Czechoslovakia) but has not yet brought a computer manufacturer to integrate its solution.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 67, published on August 1993.