SAN DataDirector SANappliance Seen as Key Network Architecture for Hub-Spoke Internet Data Centers

Business Wire, May 23, 2000

Business Editors

Spring ISPCON 2000

CHATSWORTH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 23, 2000

Highly Scalable SANappliance From DataDirect Networks to be Shown

on Both Coasts -- at Real Conference 2000 and ISPCON Spring 2000

DataDirect Networks Inc., a leader in SAN network infrastructure solutions, will unleash its powerful new SAN DataDirector(tm) SANappliance to East and West Coast trade show audiences this week.

ISP professionals attending ISPCON Spring 2000 in Orlando and streaming media professionals attending Real Conference 2000 in San Jose will get the chance to see the world's first SANappliance(tm) and determine how its feature set can substantially extend the network functionality of their existing Internet infrastructures.

The SAN DataDirector SANappliance is an intelligent network infrastructure device that incorporates all the key functionality of current SANs into a single integrated, reliable, plug-and-play appliance that makes it easier to build and manage a SAN. Analysts and company officials see the SAN DataDirector SANappliance as providing key network architecture advantages for advanced hub-spoke Internet data center use.

"The emergence of Internet data centers, as deployed by ISPs, ASPs, SSPs and interactive media/content providers, are creating a data center revolution in which SANs will play an increasingly larger role," said Farid Neema, president of Peripheral Concepts Inc., a consulting firm operating out of Santa Barbara, Calif. "Highly scalable architectures, such as that provided by DataDirect Networks' SAN DataDirector SANappliance, will help build the infrastructure needed for delivery of rich-media content in next-generation distributed Internet topologies."

"ISPs, dot-coms and their remote data centers need a rock-solid network infrastructure designed to broadly support the changing makeup of data, maximizing quality of service (QoS) while minimizing total cost of ownership (TCO)," Alex Bouzari, chief executive officer, DataDirect Networks, said. "A centralized network infrastructure, based on SAN DataDirector technology, allows Internet data centers the ability to stage data out to the edge of the Internet at high speeds, without QoS degradation, bringing high-performance content delivery, sharable and scalable resources, and fortress-like security."

The SAN DataDirector SANappliance brings extremely high levels of fault tolerance, high bandwidth performance and strong management capabilities to co-location facilities and Internet data centers, offering significantly better QoS and a wide range of competitive features to streaming media dot-coms and ISPs.

In extensive benchmarking tests in customer environments, the SAN DataDirector SANappliance recently delivered more than 136,000 concurrent data streams using media formats that stream at 38 kb/second. The SAN DataDirector SANappliance was also found to be capable of delivering more than 17,000 concurrent data streams at the 300 kb/second rate employed in broadband applications.

Streaming media companies are rapidly turning to SANs in large numbers to gain the benefits of high bandwidth performance with the scalability they require; the SAN DataDirector SANappliance excels in these multi-format, rich-media environments.

The result of a multi-year effort to bring high-bandwidth, highly fault tolerant access to shared storage resources while providing intelligent centralized data and network management in a single device, the SAN DataDirector SANappliance enables IT professionals to quickly deploy and scale a high-bandwidth SAN as a "next generation" data access infrastructure.

The SAN DataDirector SANappliance provides a reliable, consolidated and easy way for business to migrate to SAN with all the functionality needed to deploy a fully functional, centrally managed storage area network. The SAN DataDirector SANappliance either co-exists with -- or completely upgrades -- the network and storage systems currently employed in data centers, providing maximum flexibility while drastically reducing TCO.

The SAN DataDirector SANappliance, representing the industry's most advanced and efficient architectural approach to high-bandwidth SAN data access and data management, offers a number of compelling benefits to businesses looking to move to SAN-enabled environments. With installation times as short as two hours (as compared to two to five days with first-generation SANs), the SAN DataDirector SANappliance establishes a new level of simplicity to SAN deployment.

The SAN DataDirector SANappliance offers an open systems interoperability approach for IT environments, allowing a heterogeneous mix of Linux, Windows NT/2000, Sun, AIX, HP-UX and SGI servers and workstations access to data. The SAN DataDirector SANappliance also allows easy connection of a mix of RAID, JBOD and tape storage systems.

The SAN DataDirector SANappliance also fully supports current network connectivity devices, such as Fibre Channel switches and hubs for those wishing to extend the SAN DataDirector infrastructure into a broad range of smaller workgroup pods.