Sun Microsystems Extends Microsoft Windows NT Compatibility Across Entire Family of Sun StorEdge Arrays and Tape Libraries

Business Wire, Sept 9, 1998

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 9, 1998--Furthering its commitment to the heterogeneous storage market, Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the Sun StorEdge(TM) A1000 array for workgroups, the new Sun StorEdge A3500 array for online transaction processing (OLTP) and the Sun StorEdge A5000 fibre channel array for data warehousing will be optimized for Windows NT support. In addition, Sun's entire line of tape libraries will be optimized for Windows NT support.

With this announcement, Sun is leveraging its success as the number one UNIX(R) storage provider to bring proven, advanced enterprise storage technologies to the Windows NT world. Sun already offers combined Windows NT and Solaris(TM) systems compatibility with both the Sun StorEdge A7000 Intelligent Storage Server(TM) system and the Sun StorEdge A3000 array.

This initiative provides many benefits to Sun's customers. First, the ability to connect storage devices to either Solaris or Windows NT servers provides maximum operational flexibility and investment protection. This enables customers to purchase the same enterprise class storage for their Solaris or Windows NT servers from Sun. Second, in combination with technology code named "Project Cascade," (see separate release titled "Sun Brings Proven Reliability and Scalability to Windows NT World" for details) customers can access NT network services on scalable Solaris servers using Sun StorEdge products which can also provide concurrent storage support to Windows NT Servers.

Sun's NT storage compatibility plans are part of a broad initiative within the company to enable Sun and Microsoft systems to better integrate and coexist. Sun today also announced a technology agreement with AT&T which enables Sun's Solaris operating environments to run native Windows NT services. In addition, Sun announced a new SunPCi co-processor card that lets the Ultra(TM) workstation users run Microsoft Windows applications in native mode on their Sun(TM) workstations (see separate release titled "Sun Customer to Experience the Best of Both Worlds" for details.)

"Sun's customers are demanding more scalable, heterogeneous network storage solutions that deliver information sharing capabilities and Windows NT compatibility," said Jeff Allen, senior director of marketing for Sun Microsystems Network Storage. "With NT and Solaris support across our entire line of storage arrays and tape libraries, customers will be able to maximize the power of our Intelligent Storage Network by coupling it with virtually any server that exists within their enterprise."

"For us, heterogeneous, scalable, reliable storage is critical to our production computing environment," said Greg Brandeau, Director of Information Systems, Pixar Animation Studios. "We have been using Sun disk arrays for several years and Sun's commitment to the heterogeneous storage market makes us confident that its storage solutions will continue to meet the growing storage demands of our studio."

The Sun StorEdge Product Family

Sun StorEdge A1000 Array

Meeting the needs of file and workgroup servers for customers wanting to start small and grow, the Sun StorEdge A1000 subsystem is available as a stand-alone, desktop device or a rack-mounted solution. The A1000 array scales from 16 GB to 144 GB in a single tray and up to 1.3 TB with the nine tray Sun StorEdge Expansion Rack.

Sun StorEdge A3000 and A3500 Arrays

The Sun StorEdge A3500 array is based on the design of the Sun StorEdge A3000 subsystem, which set over 40 world benchmark records. The A3500 has increased storage density; new, higher performing D1000 disk trays; and is best suited for write intensive operations such as on line transaction processing applications. It is designed to scale from the department to the data center and delivers the highest performance of any subsystem of its type in the marketplace with a scalable capacity from 90 gigabytes (GB) up to 2.16 terabytes (TB).

The Sun StorEdge A5000 Array

The Sun StorEdge A5000 array is the industry's highest performance, industry-standard fibre channel storage array. A full fibre channel solution from the host connect to the drives, the Sun StorEdge A5000 is the perfect fit for applications where high bandwidth is key to application performance, as well as for fully redundant, mission-critical business applications.

Sun StorEdge A7000 Intelligent Storage Server

The Sun StorEdge A7000 Intelligent Storage Server system, coupled with Sun StorEdge DataShare software, enables true information sharing among mainframes, Solaris operating environments, other UNIX servers and Windows NT systems simultaneously. Housing two quad-processor UNIX computers, the Sun StorEdge A7000 allows customers to implement storage applications -- such as information sharing, remote data copy, and backup -- at the storage level, thus minimizing the load on the host computer.

Sun StorEdge Tape Libraries

Sun also provides a family of scalable, multiterabyte tape libraries which will offer Windows NT compatibility. The DLT(TM) 7000-based libraries provide the high-capacity, high reliability storage and browser-based storage management capabilities demanded by companies running storage intensive applications in mission critical environments. Products in the family include the high-end Sun StorEdge L3500 library with a compressed capacity of 7 terrabyte (TB) of data.