New Sequent Systems Extend Leadership in High-End Open Systems; Symmetry Platforms Advance Scalability, Availability for Decision Support and OLTP Solutions

Business Wire, April 17, 1995

Increased Availability

Sequent also announced ptx/EFS (Enhanced File System ), which significantly improves system availability by dramatically reducing the amount of time required to recover a system following a failure. It provides intent logging, which dramatically reduces file system recovery time; extent-based allocation, which provides higher performance for databases that use file systems as their storage medium; support for online file system resizing, which allows system configuration changes to be made without system downtime; and online file system defragmentation, which allows for file system tuning without system downtime. Scheduled to be available in May, ptx/EFS is priced starting at approximately $10,000.

Finally, Sequent announced ptx/CLUSTERS 1.3, a new release of Sequent's high-availability system software, scheduled to be available in September. Version 1.3 introduces Sequent's Scalable Data Interconnect (SDI) technology, which provides a direct, memory-to-memory or node-to-node communication pipeline that allows cooperating applications -- such as an upcoming version of Oracle7 from Oracle Corp. -- to use all the processing power of CPUs in a multinode cluster to process database queries. The SDI technology allows customers to take advantage of out-of-box scaling to handle database queries of the largest order. Pricing for ptx/CLUSTERS begins at approximately $50,000.

Sequent Computer Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNT), based in Beaverton, is a leading architect and provider of open client/server systems for business computing. Sequent provides professional consulting, educational and support services and develops scalable multiprocessing computing systems.

The World Wide Web address for Sequent Online is http://www.sequent.com/. This news release, a background paper on Symmetry 5000 systems and other information are available from Sequent's news-on-demand fax service at 800/356-0834.

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-- Sequent, Symmetry and DYNIX/ptx are registered trademarks and ptx/CLUSTERS and Enhanced File System are trademarks of Sequent Computer Systems Inc.

-- Intel is a registered trademark and Pentium is a trademark of Intel Corp.

-- Oracle is a registered trademark and Oracle7 is a trademark of Oracle Corp.

-- UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.

-- Macintosh is a registered trademark of Apple Computer Inc.

CONTACTS: Sequent Computer Systems Inc., Beaverton

Mike Green, mgreen@sequent.com

Helen Connor, helen@sequent.com

503/626-5700

or

Waggener Edstrom, Portland, Ore.

Wendy Hughson, wendyh@wagged.com

Doug Duffield, dougd@wagged.com