LOS ANGELES - DataDirect Networks announced the introduction of their intelligent S2A8000 storage network controllers to broadcasters and professional video users at NAB 2003. The blazingly-fast S2A8000 allows creation of high performance SANs quickly with a simple to deploy, easy to manage storage network controller, bringing performance, cost-effective scalability and simplified management to broadcast and production environments. For broadcasters and creative professionals needing high stream count, rock solid audio and video streams, storage and host scalability, and simplified management, DataDirect Networks S2A8000 intelligent storage network controller technology sets new standards in application acceleration and plug and play simplicity. The S2A8000 storage controller is the ideal product for high performance, high capacity enterprise-class storage networking requirements of broadcasters and video professionals. The S2A8000 offers 8 full duplex FC-2 Fibre Channel host connections, 20 FC drive loops to storage, built-in hardware RAID, full redundancy, an internal bandwidth of 7.2 GB/sec., up to 20 GB of cache, storage virtualization and parallel port technology, and up to 130 TB of storage with Fibre Channel Disks and 300TB with SATA Disks. Providing the highest levels of sustained performance with scalability and ease of management, the S2A8000 breaks down the barriers to creating large-scale yet manageable storage infrastructures (SAN and SAN/NAS convergence solutions) and is optimized for the high-bandwidth and capacity requirements of broadcasting, professional video, streaming, and rich media. Delivering up to 1.3 GB/sec. of sustained write bandwidth, the S2A8000 can supply over 120 concurrent streams of 50Mbit/sec. MPEG2@ML content, 50 HDCAM streams or 5 uncompressed HD streams per S2A8000 controller. At NAB (DataDirect Networks: Booth SL2933), the S2A8000 will power a multi real time HD stream SAN providing well over 1GB/sec. throughput from one system and enabling multiple stations to access the same content concurrently at 220 MB/sec. each. In another demonstration for NAB audiences, DataDirect will show its broadcast archive solution based on the S2A8000 with SATA drives at the show. This new S2A8000-enabled solution allows users to keep thousands of hours of content on-line at the fraction of the cost of similar solutions. "As a company that makes the world's fastest, most scalable storage network systems for broadcast, news, HDTV, audio and professional media, we take pride in releasing our S2A8000 and S2A-enabled solutions to the creative community, bringing a substantial tool that makes it easy to deploy storage networks," Paul Bloch, president, DataDirect Networks, said. "Using DataDirect's intelligent S2A8000 storage network controllers can deliver scalability, performance and ease of management to extend core production technology, and our newest S2A8000 solutions can deliver powerful productivity and workflow benefits to broadcasting and creative facilities around the world." Growing S2A Family Delivers Storage Network Results to Creative Facilities With built-in hardware RAID, a massive cache, storage and LUN virtualization, parallel Fibre Channel port technology and support for up to hundreds of terabytes of storage, DataDirect's S2A controllers provide cost-effective and reliable support for the high bandwidth and large storage requirements of demanding broadcasting and rich media networks. In addition to the S2A8000 storage network controller, DataDirect has also created S2A3000 storage network controllers to bring scalability and affordability to workgroup and departmental broadcast and professional video applications. Based on proven S2A technology, and available in singlet and couplet implementations, the 1U high S2A3000 allows an easy-to-manage SAN to be up in running in hours to serve station and production needs. The easy-to-install, easy-to-scale S2A3000 offers 8 full duplex FC Fibre Channel host connections, 12 FC drive loops to storage, built-in hardware RAID, full redundancy, an internal bandwidth of 4 GB/sec., up to 6 GB of cache, storage virtualization and parallel port technology, and scales up to 30 TB of Fibre storage and 80TB of SATA storage. The S2A3000 supports Linux, Unix, Windows NT/2000, Sun, AIX, HP-UX and SGI compute nodes.