ACADEMIA

Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance Provides Best Price/Performance in its Class, Delivers 55 Percent Performance Boost Over Previous Generation in One Year -- Sun Microsystems today announced the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance, the first Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution based on the AMD Opteron processor model 252. The Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance builds on the global success of the Sun StorEdge 5000 NAS Appliance family, and one year after the announcement of the previous generation product, the new solution is delivering a 55 percent increase in performance. The Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance also delivers investment protection via a data-in-place upgrade and price/performance that outpaces comparable solutions from competing NAS vendors by up to 50 percent. As enterprises seek ways to keep costs down while managing the exponential growth of data and keep pace with compliance requirements, Sun NAS appliances provide a highly scalable, cost-effective data storage solution with the ability to scale by adding only disk, rather than new NAS servers. Unlike the competition, Sun also continues to offer fair and competitive licensing without additional hidden software costs. The Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS system is a key component of Sun's overall data management portfolio, which offers technology that solves customers' data management challenges today and into the future. "With the Sun StorageTek 5320 based on the AMD Opteron processor, Sun is demonstrating its commitment to continuous innovation and providing customers with a superior alternative to existing NAS solutions. While other vendors are requiring forklift upgrades, Sun is delivering industry-leading scalability and performance with the added benefit of investment protection on a system that can be upgraded and installed in as little as 15 minutes," said Paul Giroux, vice president, Disk, Data Management Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "By leveraging the AMD Opteron processor, we're also enabling customers to leverage Sun's investments in record-setting x64 industry standard servers." "The Sun-AMD alliance has been incredibly successful in the x64 server space, and we're pleased to extend that relationship in to the storage market via the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS system," said Marty Seyer, senior vice president, Commercial and Performance Computing, AMD. "AMD has set new records in terms of performance, performance-per-watt and stability of architectures in the server market. AMD Opteron is destined to be the perfect architecture for storage subsystems. Joining AMD's strength in the processor market with Sun's systems and storage expertise ultimately delivers incredible solutions with compelling price/performance, scalability and ease of use, all built on a high-performance, industry-standard chip architecture." The Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance uses AMD Opteron processors to deliver higher performance NAS solutions today while maintaining the ability to quickly adopt new Sun Fire x64 server platforms as the product line evolves. Key features in the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance include: - iSCSI support - Microsoft Windows Hardware (WHQL) certified for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Exchange environments, the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance provides customers with an increased ability to consolidate storage for both file and block level storage with low-cost IP remote access. - Gateway Support - Includes additional gateway support for the midrange Sun StorEdge 6130 and 6920 systems and Sun's entire high-end disk portfolio, including the Sun StorEdge 9970, 9980, 9985 and 9990 systems, as well as Sun's FlexLine systems. - Anti-virus support - Includes integrated real-time file system anti-virus support for data protection against computer viruses and is certified with multiple scanning engines for anti-virus protection, including Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine. - Compliance Archiving Software Option - Stores and protects information and provides write-once-read-many (WORM) functionality for protected data on the same Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS server. Sun's StorEdge Compliance Archiving System, a combination of Sun NAS technology with Sun StorEdge Compliance Archiving software, provides authenticity, integrity, ready access and security to enable the stringent requirements of a broad range of regulations including SEC 240, 17a-4. Additionally, Sun NAS solutions with enterprise content management software and email archiving solutions allow companies to reduce costs by automating eDiscovery searches, providing audit logs and identity information, and ensuring corporate information is always available for rapid retrieval in the event of litigation. "We believe that deploying the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance at Georgia State University for the purposes of archiving Oracle logs off site will provide significant savings and reduced exposure in the event of a production system failure. Our initial findings have determined that our recovery exposure in the event of a failure will be reduced to only an hour from what had been seven to fourteen days. This implementation will also provide a lower cost alternative to a SAN-based approach, which would have required a fibre link between Atlanta and Alpharetta," said J. L. Albert, associate provost for Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) and CIO at Georgia State University. "Our staff also found the StorageTek 5320 NAS system easy to install and use and were able to provide a proof of concept within hours after setting the system up." SUN SERVICES OFFERINGS ROUND OUT NAS SOLUTIONS To get the most from Sun NAS appliances and ensure responsiveness to change while protecting the investment, Sun offers an array of integrated services and solutions. These include Installation, Configuration, Integration, Data Migration, Operations Migration, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services. Delivered by Sun StorageTek service professionals, these services help optimize and manage the performance of Sun NAS appliances. SUN EXPANDS "TRY AND BUY PROGRAM" TO STORAGE WITH FREE 60-DAY PRODUCT TRIAL Sun is also expanding its popular "Try and Buy Program" to include its storage products. The program enables customers and reseller partners of all sizes to evaluate and test a Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance at no charge for 60 days, with the option to purchase the system at the end. Visit its Web site for more details. PRICING AND AVAILABILITY The Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS appliance is available now through Sun and its qualified reseller partners, starting at $49,990 (U.S. list) for a 2.0 terrabyte system. For more information on Sun's NAS solutions, visit its Web site.