BlueArc Selected by Lawrence Livermore Labs to Deliver 115 Terabytes for Supercomputing Cluster

Business Wire, May 20, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 20, 2002

BlueArc's SiliconServer(TM) Technology the only solution

capable of delivering scalability and performance required by

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

BlueArc Corp., provider of the world's highest performance enterprise-class network attached storage (NAS) systems, announced today that it will deploy Si7500 Storage Systems, with a combined storage capacity of 115 terabytes, to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The systems will be used as the Object Storage Target (OST) for LLNL's Multi-Programmatic and Institutional Computing Capability Resource (MCR) cluster project. This multi-million dollar implementation underscores BlueArc's ongoing ability to meet LLNL's performance, scalability and reliability requirements in strenuous production environments together with the company's commitment to customer satisfaction.

"OST technology on the BlueArc Si7500 will play a key role in the MCR Lustre file system. It represents a watershed change in the way we build clusters, and provides us with an opportunity to extend the Lustre file system beyond the boundary of the cluster," said Mark Seager, assistant department head for Terascale Systems at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "We believe that BlueArc will be a worthy partner in this storage activity. Not only has system performance stood up to the test in previous cluster builds, but BlueArc's field services organization surpassed our expectations."

Once built, this high-performance Linux computing cluster will contain in excess of 700 Nodes with two Pentium 4 processors per node and a peak performance exceeding 6.7 teraFLOP/s. The project will utilize Lustre, a new file and storage architecture, developed in part by Cluster File Systems, Inc., that abandons traditional block-based storage protocols, instead using an intelligent object-based approach and protocol. This allows the Lustre Open Source file system for Linux clusters to scale to over tens of thousands of compute servers accessing petabytes of storage at rates of hundreds of gigabytes per second. The Si7500 Storage Systems, with a combined capacity of over 115 Terabytes, will perform the role of a Lustre Object Storage Target. Because of the tremendous raw throughput required for a project of this scale, BlueArc's hardware-based SiliconServer Architecture with OST is a natural technology match to the performance and scalability requirements of this demanding I/O environment.

"This project is a major validation of the scalability, performance and TCO advantages of our SiliconServer Architecture. This large-scale deployment also validates our technology and vision to sustain our leadership position in high-performance enterprise NAS," said Gianluca Rattazzi, chairman and CEO of BlueArc. "We are delighted Lawrence Livermore has entrusted the storage resources for the MCR program to BlueArc."

About Lawrence Livermore National Labs

Founded in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a mission to ensure national security and to apply science and technology to the important issues of our time. The University of California manages Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. More information about Lawrence Livermore Nation Laboratory or the ASCI Program is available online at www.llnl.gov.

About BlueArc Corp.

BlueArc Corp. delivers the world's highest-performance enterprise-class network attached storage system. BlueArc's systems are designed to simplify the way our enterprise customers design and build their storage infrastructures, allowing them to fully exploit their networks while dramatically lowering their total cost of ownership. BlueArc is able to provide products with groundbreaking speed, scalability and low total cost-of-ownership as a result of its unique SiliconServer Architecture. This revolutionary technology removes the bottlenecks that limit performance in other network storage systems on the market today. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, Calif. with UK operations based in Bracknell, England. More information on BlueArc is available on the Internet at www.bluearc.com.