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HOUSTON, TX -- The future of Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) architectures became clear today as Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE: CPQ) announced the imminent availability of a new, paradigm-changing NAS solution: StorageWorks NAS Executor E7000. Compaq's advanced NAS solution resolves incompatibilities between traditional NAS and SAN, integrating both technologies in order to deliver the synergistic strengths of a complete, fully virtualized NAS-SAN fusion known as Universal Network Storage. The NAS Executor offers enhanced SAN capabilities with file-level access and storage virtualization as well as traditional NAS capabilities enhanced with unbounded SAN scalability and simplified storage management. "With the new StorageWorks NAS Executor E7000, customers can now drive to a single storage infrastructure solution that provides unlimited storage scalability and maximizes the ownership advantages of consolidated storage," said John Young, vice president and general manager of Compaq's Network Attached Storage Division. "The NAS Executor supersedes other high-end NAS offerings from companies such as Network Appliance that do not integrate in any way with the SAN, the backbone of the enterprise storage infrastructure." The StorageWorks NAS Executor brings three new dimensions to NAS - unlimited scalability, continuous data availability, and lower total cost of ownership: -- Unlimited scalability is possible because data is stored in the SAN, not in the NAS box itself. With SAN scalability, NAS can scale in capacity, performance and geographic dual disk capacity to eliminate certain storage reconfigurations; data replication for synchronous and asynchronous wide area data mirroring; cluster support to eliminate single points of failure. -- Minimized total cost of ownership is realized by leveraging the benefits of SAN resource sharing, consolidation, accessibility, management and protection. The use of standards-based architectures guarantees seamless integration into existing environments, including backup, anti-virus and systems management. "Customers are looking for ways to extend the information management benefits of SAN fabrics out beyond the wall of the data center," said John Webster, senior analyst and IT advisor at Illuminata. "Compaq's StorageWorks NAS Executor builds a bridge between data center and distributed storage environments and allows enterprises to extend the benefits of storage networking to departments and workgroups." Mark Lewis, vice president and general manager of Compaq's Enterprise Storage Group, added: "One out of every two SAN-attached RAID arrays shipped in 2000 was shipped by Compaq, making Compaq the clear SAN market supplier. The NAS Executor was designed to increase the value and flexibility of both future StorageWorks SANs and our current installed base. As always, we recognize that maintaining full investment protection for our customers is crucial." NAS Executor in Real World Environments "FreeMarkets has implemented Compaq NAS as a critical part of its infrastructure," said John Benzinger, vice president for information technology at FreeMarkets. "We are looking forward to investigating the new Universal Network Storage technologies with the StorageWorks NAS Executor E7000, which would allow us to integrate our existing NAS and SAN storage pools, thereby driving further operational efficiencies." Significant Features Unique StorageWorks NAS Executor E7000 features include support for StorageWorks Modular Arrays plus the new StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array announced today. VersaStor Technology enables Vsnaps, pooling and dynamic virtual disk expansion. The NAS Executor allows customer choice for anti-virus protection, and supports Compaq Insight Manager. In addition, there are other important features: -- Multi-protocol support for NFS, CIFS, NCP, Appletalk and HTTP – access the same data at the same time from any client system. -- A highly scalable platform (processors, memory, network controllers). -- High availability options that include proven hardware redundancy, clustering, and data replication using SANworks Data Replication Manager or NSI Software Inc.'s DoubleTake for NAS. -- Native backup support from leading vendors such as Computer Associates, Legato, Tivoli and Veritas Software Inc., plus NDMP support. For more information visit www.compaq.com/storage