Artecon Expands Storage Options for Sun Ultra 5/10 Workstations With New Sphinx Enclosures

Business Wire, Dec 29, 1998

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 29, 1998--

Space-Efficient Rackmount Solutions Add Functionality and

Security to Rugged Applications

Artecon (Nasdaq: ARTE), a global leader in high-availability open systems network- and server-attached storage solutions, today announced its Sphinx(TM) enclosures for rackmounting and adding alternative storage configurations to Sun Microsystems' Ultra(TM) 5 or Ultra 10 workstations.

The new Sphinxes provide tremendous flexibility to the high-performance Ultra workstations and are ideally suited for ruggedized and mission-critical applications in government and telecommunications network infrastructures.

To date, more than 7,500 Sphinxes have been fielded. Sphinx rackmounts are currently used in ground transport, surface and submarine vessels, and aircraft by the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and French Army, among others. Artecon Sphinxes are also being utilized by major network service providers (NSPs) and Internet service providers (ISPs) such as MCI Internet, Worldcom/UUNET and Cable and Wireless.

"Since these new Sphinxes are built to NEBS (Network Equipment-Building System) standards, they enable network service providers to build carrier-class Intelligent Peripherals," said Michael Harman, vice president of TeleCom at Artecon. "The Sphinx offers ISPs and NSPs a convenient and cost-effective means of bringing services quicker to market by expanding configuration choices of high-end workstations and servers with hot-swappable storage devices."

Sphinx Offers Built-in Storage Expansion Capabilities

The rugged Sphinx rackmount protects against physical and electrical shock and unauthorized intrusion. Sphinx is offered in zero-bay, two-bay and four-bay models to allow up to four hot-swap removable devices to be added. Since the additional bays or slots support any 3.5" or 5.25" half-height hot-swap devices such as disk drives, CD-ROMs, 4mm and 8mm tape (fixed DLT in four-bay models only), a variety of powerful and expandable configurations can be constructed to extend the flexibility of the Sun Ultra workstations.

A typical Sphinx four-bay configuration can consist of dual mirrored hot-swap boot drives and DLT tape backup. Other variations include up to 72GB of local storage or 54GB of RAID using Artecon's LynxArray RAID controller and 18GB drives in the four-bay Sphinx. Typical two-bay configurations include hot-swap removable data and boot drives to minimize the need to access inside the Sun workstation.

Sphinx's extremely compact form factor allows workstations and servers to be rackmounted with the maximum degree of space efficiency, yielding up to 45 percent space savings in compute-intensive environments. A locking front panel and unique mounting brackets requiring special tools significantly increase security and can deter theft of high-end computers.

Sphinx Built to NEBS and MIL SPEC Standards

As with other models of the Sphinx rackmount product family, the new Sphinx is manufactured to NEBS-compliant and military on-the-move operational specifications. This affords opportunities for the telco infrastructure because many telecommunications companies use NEBS-compliance as a prerequisite for product deployment into the Central Office. Sphinx rackmounts have also been tested by the armed forces to permit utilization of Sun workstations and servers in ground, sea and air transport vehicles.

The elegant design of the Sphinx ensures that the workstation or server remains unmodified so manufacturer's support agreements such as warranty, service and upgradeability stay intact. Power on/off, serial and keyboard ports are located on the front of the chassis, and users have unobstructed access to the backplane of the workstation or server for easy service.

About Artecon

Founded in 1984, Artecon designs, manufactures, markets and supports a broad range of enterprise storage solutions to satisfy the high availability, performance and capacity requirements of the open systems market.

On March 31, 1998, Artecon completed a merger with independent RAID storage vendor Storage Dimensions, creating one of the world's largest open systems, independent storage companies serving the PC-LAN and Unix markets. The combined company's products consist of server-attached as well as network-attached storage systems. In addition, the company's EXTREME product line includes disaster-tolerant RAID systems for telco Central Office and Internet applications.

Artecon has a Japan-based subsidiary and a Europe-based subsidiary with offices in France, England and the Netherlands. The company also operates through reseller and distributor channels worldwide. Additional information on Artecon can be found on the Internet at http://www.artecon.com.