Sun Ships Record 1.6 Petabytes
of Fibre Channel Storage for
Enterprise Class Decision
Support and Business
Continuance Applications
Extends Lead In Fibre Channel Storage Area Network Solutions
with Delivery of Microsoft Windows NT Support for Sun StorEdge A5000 Array.
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Further solidifying its fibre channel
and storage area network (SAN) leadership, Sun Microsystems, Inc., today announced
it has shipped 1.6 petabytes (PB) of Sun StorEdgeTM A5000 array fibre channel storage
since the product's introduction one year ago. The company also announced its Sun
StorEdge A5000 array is now interoperable with Microsoft Windows NT operating environments,
making it the most popular fibre channel storage solution in the industry.
As a central building block of Sun's Intelligent Storage NetworkTM (ISN), the Sun
StorEdgeTM A5000 arrays enable customers to specifically tailor their storage needs
to applications that require high availability and performance within the enterprise.
The Sun StorEdge A5000 arrays allow customers to build and deploy a storage infrastructure
over distances spanning 500 meters when used with Sun's fibre channel hubs. Later
this year Sun plans to increase the distance to 10 kilometers via a SAN architecture
enabling incremental data consolidation, improved disaster recovery and freedom
from the space constraints of the data center. Such flexibility, along with exceptional
availability and performance, have made the Sun StorEdge A5000 array the industry's
most popular full-fibre, second-generation solution for network storage applications
such as data warehousing, where high bandwidth is key to application performance,
and disaster recovery and business continuance.
"Sun is leading the disk storage industry with end-to-end fibre channel shipments.
Its second-generation fibre channel romp is a proof-point for how explosive, pervasive,
and important fibre channel and storage networks will become. Our latest research
forecasts a 100% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) for fibre channel based storage
networks between now and 2002, culminating in a 2002 market revenue of over $2.3
billion," said Robert Gray, Research Analyst for International Data Corporation.
Large configurations of multiple Sun StorEdgeTM A5000 arrays scale to more than
one gigabyte (GB)/sec with zero-downtime expansion capabilities for mission-critical
availability and virtually unlimited scalability. In the future, Sun plans to provide
fibre channel switches which will further increase the connectivity options and
distance capabilities of Sun's ISN. Now with full Windows NT support, the Sun StorEdge
A5000 array allows for the implementation of heterogeneous fibre channel storage
within the enterprise.
"Sun's industry lead with the Sun Enterprise 10000 servers coupled with clustered
Sun StorEdge A5000 arrays deliver the best, highly available fibre channel based
solution in the industry," said Jeff Allen, senior director of marketing for
Sun Network Storage. "We are continuing to deliver the key connectivity and
functionality requirements to successfully match storage solutions with specific
enterprise applications."
Recent benchmark success underscores the Sun StorEdge A5000 array's industry leadership
by matching large-scale storage feature, functionality and connectivity with specific
application needs. The world record TPC-D 1 TB (SE1000) benchmark with a single
Sun Enterprise TM 10000 server - running the highly robust Solaris Operating EnvironmentTM
software and Oracle8i database - showcased Sun StorEdge A5000 array's enormous bandwidth
with extremely high I/O per second response, giving customers faster access to massive
amounts of data. The recent world-record online transaction processing (OLTP) Transaction
Processing Performance Council Benchmark C (TPC-C) included the Sun StorEdge A5000
array, the mid-range Sun EnterpriseTM 6500 server running Sybase ASE and the new
SolarisTM 7 software environment. It successfully simulated an order-entry environment
for enterprise warehouse operations such as airline reservation and inventory control
environments.
"With the Sun StorEdge A5000 storage system, we can easily scale up capacity
and we don't have to buy sophisticated RAID devices that can introduce another source
of downtime. The system has no single point of failure, so it gives us the mission-critical
support, quick response time and accessibility we need," said Marc Hansen,
Vice President Systems Architecture, J.Crew.
Intelligent Storage Network
Sun's Intelligent Storage Network combines all the traditional
attributes of high-quality storage systems - reliability, availability, performance,
and manageability - with all the connectivity, flexibility and distributed access
benefits of network computing. The result of such an intelligent storage network
architecture integrates technology from many areas, not just traditional storage
subsystems, but servers, networking technologies, system and application software,
and services.
Sun's Fibre Channel Leadership
Sun began working with fibre channel standards in 1989 and
in 1993 co-founded the Fibre Channel Systems Initiative (FCSI) in conjunction with
Hewlett-Packard and IBM. Sun began shipping its first fibre channel product, the
SPARCstorageTM Array, in 1994 and since that time has shipped more than three million
gigabytes (three petabytes) of fibre channel storage while garnering support from
many industry-leading vendors. Sun's early leadership in fibre channel technology
is winning new customers who want the same availability, scalability, and performance
advantages Sun customers have been getting from the company's fibre channel arrays
for years. By leveraging Sun's fibre channel storage arrays, as well as their tight
integration with Sun's industry-leading Sun Enterprise server line, customers are
voting for proven, high performance technology rather than relying on unproven technology
from other vendors.
Pricing and Availability
The Sun StorEdgeTM A5000 array lists at $35,000* for an entry-level
configuration. The Sun fibre channel hub, which is included with rack mounted configurations
of the Sun StorEdge A5000 array, lists at $2,300* and is supported by Sun only with
the Sun StorEdge A5000 array. Both products are available in volume today for the
Solaris and Microsoft Windows NT operating environments.
About Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision, "The
Network Is The ComputerTM," has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW),
to its position as a leading provider of high quality hardware, software and services
for establishing enterprise-wide intranets and expanding the power of the Internet.
With more than $10 billion in annual revenues, Sun can be found in more than 150
countries and on the World Wide Web at http://www.sun.com. @Macarlo, Inc. @Macarlo's Shareware & Web OS/2 Java Lobby Member
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