DEFENSE

Auspex Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: ASPX), a provider of Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions, today announced that the University of Texas at Arlington has purchased and installed an Auspex NetServer to store and serve files for 28 Compaq processors in a new supercomputing farm utilized by the college's research community. The university decided to deploy a NAS system because the centralized storage and file serving capabilities would eliminate the need to manage direct-attached storage for each of the 28 dual and quad processing systems in its new supercomputing environment. Officials selected Auspex's NAS system over competitive offerings because Auspex provided important performance, high availability and fault tolerance advantages for file systems that sometimes reach several gigabytes because of the massive data sets involved. One of the deciding factors was Auspex's support for multiple RAID formats (RAID 0, 1, and 5), which supplies the rapid data transaction and transfer rate, efficient parity scheme and level of fault tolerance necessary to handle the exceptionally large files of the university's research operation. The option to mix multiple RAID configurations, the system's high-performance file serving, and the ability to scale from the university's initial 500 GB installation to multiple terabytes on the same server were also key considerations. U.T. Arlington's new 66-CPU supercomputing farm replaces a Silicon Graphics supercomputer, providing a heterogeneous platform that is expected to save money by allowing the university to upgrade components rather than purchasing a new supercomputer every few years. The system facilitates research projects in various disciplines, including computational chemistry, molecular modeling, solid state physics and computational fluid dynamics. "We believe that our new supercomputing platform will be a model for other universities because of the ability to upgrade component by component as more powerful technology becomes available," said Dr. Dennis Marynick, Jenkins Garrett Professor of Chemistry and Chair of U.T. Arlington's High Performance Computing Committee. "In moving away from a self-contained supercomputer to a farm with multiple processing boxes, a central file server is vital for ease of maintenance, and Auspex offers clear advantages for the large files inherent in this kind of operation." "Auspex has long had a presence in the higher education market, but this is our first university installation to be used exclusively for a heavy research application," said J. Michael Carrigan, Vice President Sales, West and Latin America, for Auspex Systems. "The University of Texas at Arlington's selection of our NAS system demonstrates the robustness and versatility of the Auspex technology for extremely demanding computing environments." Auspex's NetServer family of products are used by industries and enterprises to optimize storage management infrastructures and provide fast, reliable access to multi-terabytes of consolidated Unix and Windows data. Designed for customers with traditional business applications as well as corporate Internet sites, including those with dynamic business-to-business e-commerce functions, Auspex filers include a full suite of data management tools that ensure high availability, high-speed backup and replication, and maximum uptime. They also provide fast and seamless file sharing between Unix and Windows clients, with a unique restricted file permission that prevents unauthorized users from accessing protected Unix or Windows files across platforms. For further information visit www.auspex.com or www.uta.edu/