Amdahl delivers industry leading Fibre Channel connectivity for the LVS 4500 Storage System; new LVS 4500 system connectivity significantly improves ultra-high performance and system flexibility for large data center users

Business Wire, March 13, 1997

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 13, 1997--Amdahl Corporation (ASE:AMH) today announced Fibre Channel connectivity for the LVS 4500 Storage System.

This new technology provides a foundation for significantly increased performance, connectivity, and network distances for effective server clustering while enhancing storage configuration capabilities for the high performance UNIX and Windows NT data center market.

"Fibre Channel allows our customers with large database, decision support, and clustering requirements to address a centralized data center storage system with single or multiple LVS 4500 Storage Systems. This is significant for our large system customers, as they are no longer bound by the connectivity, transfer rate, or distance limitations of standard SCSI," said Charles Foley, Vice President Marketing, Server Business Group. "Now the full potential of the LVS 4500 Storage System can be realized."

With Fibre Channel technology, the LVS 4500 Storage Systems is capable of transfer rates up to 200MB/sec, a significant increase in throughput performance. In addition, the distance between host and storage devices is greatly lengthened by the Fibre Channel offering. The current SCSI standard is 85 feet while the Fibre Channel standard is up to 10 kilometers or 6 miles. Host and data storage can now be separated by significant distances for remote copy facilities and disaster recovery.

By implementing Fibre Channel technology, the number of attached devices also increases from 16 to as many as 126 nodes on most networks. Very large host/storage systems can now be built, adding even more flexibility to the LVS 4500 Storage Systems. This provides easy, flexible configuration of large "data farms" in support of data warehouses, OLTP, and decision support systems. As a result of its extended distance and high throughput, Fibre Channel is also ideal for configuring high-availability, high-performance server clusters in the UNIX and Windows NT environments. Field upgrades will also be available for currently installed LVS 4500 Storage Systems, protecting existing customers' investments.

Fibre Channel technology will provide the basis for future development of multi-host server clusters addressing a single LVS 4500 Storage Systems. This is the first step in reaching the objective of data sharing between dissimilar servers.

Worldwide services for Fibre Channel implementation and the attached LVS 4500 Storage Systems are provided by Amdahl Customer Services. 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, MVS and UNIX operating systems. By providing Fibre Channel host bus adapters for both PCI and S-bus environments, the EnVista server line and the Sun Microsystems server line will be Fibre Channel enabled with the LVS 4500 Storage Systems.

Amdahl is also a leader in IT Fiber Optic Services, providing equipment and technical expertise around fiber optic needs in our customers' data centers. Fiber Optic Services designs and provides fiber optic components, and handles the installation and testing of custom fiber optic infrastructures.

About Amdahl

Amdahl Corporation (ASE:AMH) provides integrated enterprise computing solutions designed to meet the needs of the leading, most compute-intensive environments around the world. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Amdahl combines hardware and software products and services methods with best-of-breed offerings to create customized solutions that help clients gain a competitive advantage in their industries. -0-

Amdahl is a registered trademark and LVS 4500 and EnVista are trademarks of Amdahl Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited. NT and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Sun Microsystems is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. MVS is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation. All other trademarks and product names are property of their respective owners.

Note to editors: Amdahl news releases are available on the Internet through Amdahl Corporation's home page at http://www.amdahl.com . The Amdahl home pages provide current, in-depth information on Amdahl offerings and solutions for enterprise computing, including Amdahl's Intranet Services.

CONTACT: Amdahl Corporation

Dyan Phillips, 408/992-2770

dyanp@oes.amdahl.com

or

The Benjamin Group Inc.

Jim Ashborn, 408/559-6090

jashborn@sv.tbgi.com