Amdahl Introduces Integrated Solution for Solaris Environment Delivering End-to-End Data Availability; FailSafe Datacenter Solution Offers Customers Continuous Data Access in Event of a Hardware or Software Failure

Business Wire, August 26, 1996

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 26, 1996--Amdahl Corporation today announced the FailSafe Datacenter Solution (FSDS), a fully integrated, high availability turnkey offering for the Solaris(TM) environment. Available today, this solution of hardware and software offerings meets the growing user demand for non-stop operation of business critical applications in such industries as banking, finance and telecommunications.

The tested and proven solution includes the Amdahl LVS 4500(TM) storage system, paired Ultra(TM) Enterprise(TM) Servers, Amdahl A FailSafe Multi Server Failover software, Veritas Volume Manager and File System software, and Amdahl installation, training and maintenance services.

"FSDS is unlike any other high availability offering on the market today in the UNIX(R) environment. Amdahl has integrated the strongest and most reliable system components with key services expertise to deliver mainframe class data availability for our customers," said Charles Foley, vice president, Open Enterprise Storage Systems. "FSDS will provide protection against costly downtime due to failures at the disk hardware, the I/O path, and the server levels of hardware and software."

The solution is built upon paired Ultra Enterprise Servers. The Ultra Enterprise servers contain hot swappable components, including I/O boards, CPU/memory boards, and power supplies. Each of these may be changed while the system is operating. Because of the modularity of Ultra Enterprise servers, I/O throughput and computing power can be matched to application requirements.

The servers are clustered using the Amdahl A FailSafe Multi Server Failover software which provides continuous data availability. In the event of a critical failure, A FailSafe will reroute all I/O requests from a failed server to an alternate server. This alternate server assumes the identity of the down server, accessing its data from the shared LVS 4500 storage system. This functionality allows users continuous access to their data even during failures, scheduled maintenance, and hardware and software upgrades.

The high availability configuration is completed by the Amdahl LVS 4500 Logical Volume Storage system. Noted for industry-leading performance, the LVS 4500, with its dual path architecture, is also designed for continuous "end-to-end" data availability. At the drive level, data is protected by RAID with redundant data paths to each drive. LVS 4500 has hot swappable components and global hot spare disk drives. The dual Availability Managers (storage processors) within the LVS 4500 contain mirrored, non-volatile cache and provide automatic failover between the managers in the event of a failure.

In a separate announcement, Amdahl also introduced five integrated solutions based upon its EnVista Server offerings for Windows NT(R) environments, making it easier for companies to incorporate Windows NT into existing computing environments. The solutions are: EnVista SNA Gateway Server Solution, EnVista Branch Office Server Solution, EnVista I-Net Server Solution, EnVista Database Server Solution and EnVista Groupware Server Solution.

Amdahl has more than two decades of experience in working with large-scale computing solutions and client/server technology. The company supports heterogeneous architectures found in mission-critical customer sites which blend Windows NT(R), MVS and UNIX operating systems. Amdahl world class service and support assists customers in the installation, configuration and training of the FailSafe Datacenter Solution.

Amdahl Corporation (AMEX:AMH) provides integrated enterprise computing solutions designed to meet the needs of the leading, most compute-intensive environments around the world. Amdahl combines hardware and software products and service methods with best of breed offerings to create customized solutions that help clients gain a competitive advantage in their industries. Press announcements and other information about Amdahl Corporation are available on the Internet via the Worldwide Web at http://www.amdahl.com. -0-

Note to Editors: Amdahl is a registered trademark of Amdahl Corporation. LVS 4500 and EnVista are trademarks of Amdahl Corporation. Solaris is a trademark and Ultra and Ultra Enterprise are trademarks of Sun Microsystems Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively (except in Japan where such license is non-exclusive) through X/Open Company Limited. X/Open is a registered trademark of X/Open Company. Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Amdahl Corporation

Pattie Davis, 408/746-6158

pfd10@amail.amdahl.com

or

The Benjamin Group Inc.

Traci Calderon, 408/559-6090 ext. 304

tcalder@sv.tbgi.com