Business Services Industry

SANRAD Announces IP-SAN Option for IBM eServer BladeCenter

Business Wire, July 26, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- SANRAD Incorporated, a leader in developing and delivering intelligent iSCSI SAN solutions, today announced its intent to ship a version of the award-winning SANRAD iSCSI V-Switch for IBM eServer BladeCenter.

The new V-Switch BladeCenter Module will integrate a comprehensive iSCSI-based Storage Area Network into the BladeCenter architecture. It will also deliver a fully-managed data storage option ideal for customers who want to cost effectively pool, manage and protect data using a wide range of storage systems.

The new V-Switch IP SAN Module will pool any attached or fabric-connected FC, SCSI and iSCSI-based storage systems to deliver a highly scalable and easy to tier storage architecture for BladeCenter. BladeCenter customers can easily create, expand and manage volumes across all the pooled storage systems and securely assign those volumes to blade servers.

Data protection concerns are met using V-Switch IP SAN Module data mirroring and replication features. Two, three and four-way real-time mirroring to independent Fibre Channel storage systems, high-speed synchronous data replication between BladeCenters on a LAN and remote asynchronous data replication and vaulting ensure data is protected and available in the event of system or site outage.

"IBM opened the hardware specification for BladeCenter in September 2004 to allow companies to build and design their own products for the ecosystem. By working with partners like SANRAD, IBM currently provides one of the most highly integrated blade offerings on the market," said Juhi Jotwani, Director of BladeCenter Alliances, IBM. "IBM's work to deliver the most open, advanced blade offering available enables both enterprise and SMB customers to better manage their total IT infrastructure and build stronger on demand business environments."

"We see BladeCenter as the fastest growing server platform for data centers and iSCSI being quickly adopted for many enterprise applications. It's natural to bring together these two exciting architectures," explains Uli Gal-oz, SANRAD CEO, "BladeCenter customers will not only benefit from the iSCSI V-Switch storage management and replication features but also enjoy significant cost savings associated with lower priced Ethernet solutions."

BladeCenter customers who have an immediate need for the pooling, management and replication features planned for the V-Switch BladeCenter Module can use SANRAD's current standalone iSCSI V-Switch today as an alternative to be used in conjunction with IBM BladeCenter.

About IBM BladeCenter

IBM is the world's leading blade vendor. The award-winning IBM eServer BladeCenter systems collapse the complexity of corporate datacenters by integrating servers, networks, storage and applications in one system. The IBM BladeCenter Alliance Program joins the exemplary architecture of BladeCenter with the innovative technological skills of companies from a wide range of disciplines in order to create a defacto industry blade standard. For more information about IBM BladeCenter, visit http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/bladecenter/.> About SANRAD

SANRAD delivers intelligence at the network layer and is the leader in intelligent IP storage networking, enabling hundreds of organizations worldwide to effectively access, share and manage storage across standard Ethernet environments. SANRAD delivers a new dimension in the continuity and simple management of vital business information by coupling standard IP connectivity with network-based storage services to create IP-based Storage Area Networks. SANRAD IP SANs enable continuous data protection, full data availability and effective resource provisioning with excellent price/performance. SANRAD's U.S. sales, marketing and support offices are located in Silicon Valley/Bay Area, Calif., with research and development and international sales offices in Tel Aviv, Israel. SANRAD is backed by leading venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and is a member of the RAD Group, a family of more than 20 independent companies that together make up one of the largest multi-national revenue producers in networking.

IBM, eServer and BladeCenter are either trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States or other countries, or both.