BIOLOGY

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- Dot Hill (NASDAQ:HILL) announced today it has completed major upgrades to its storage software products, SANscape(R) and SANpath(R), as part of its effort to continuously improve the capabilities of its network storage solutions. The software has been enhanced with powerful new features to complement Dot Hill's SANnet(R) II family of storage systems. Both SANpath and SANscape remain backwards compatible with the original SANnet product line and are available for popular open systems platforms, including Windows, Linux and Unix. SANscape 3.0 storage management software has been expanded into an integrated suite of products: the improved SANscape Console, a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI); enhanced SANscape Agents, a collection of platform specific utilities; the new SANscape CLI, a scriptable command line interface; and the new SANscape Alert, a flexible "phone-home" event reporting tool supporting email, fax and pager notifications. Storage administrators can now choose their preferred management interfaces, whether GUI, CLI or both combined, and be assured they have complete access to all features regardless of the operating systems installed on their servers and workstations. Numerous features have been added to SANscape with this release, such as enterprise-wide management of storage solutions, real-time performance monitoring, administration of array-based LUN filtering, comprehensive management of JBOD storage solutions, and improved integration with enterprise-wide network management software, such as HP OpenView. Other new features include backup and restore of configuration files, secure in-band and out-of-band management access, remote controller and disk firmware downloads, and field replaceable unit (FRU) identification. With SANscape, storage assets can be managed from anywhere, anytime. SANpath 4.0 storage networking software provides servers with dynamic multipathing, load balancing, automatic path failover and failback, and LUN filtering. It automatically transforms physical LUNs into SANpath virtual storage devices then transparently manages the interaction between these virtual devices and available storage paths. SANpath ensures constant data availability, enhances storage access performance, enables on-line reconfigurations without interruptions, and provides secure storage access control. Enhancements include support for larger storage networks, rapid booting for servers with numerous LUNs assigned, and support for select third- party products. By creating parallel active storage paths, SANpath automatically and transparently reroutes server traffic to an available redundant storage path without any server interruptions in the event of a storage network problem. When the storage network issue is resolved, SANpath automatically detects restored paths and resumes services across them. SANpath continually monitors storage paths to prevent storage network performance bottlenecks. If a potential performance bottleneck is detected, SANpath automatically redistributes server traffic among a server's storage paths. "SANscape and SANpath are essential software tools that improve storage management, performance, redundancy and availability," said Dana Kammersgard, Dot Hill's chief technology officer. "When combined with SANnet II, they create comprehensive storage networking solutions for Windows, Linux and Unix environments."