EARTH SCIENCES

CHATSWORTH, CA -- As part of a continuing commitment to expand and enrich Linux-enabled networks, DataDirect Networks has announced SAN DataDirector(TM) compatibility with Cisco's 5420 iSCSI Fibre Channel to Ethernet router. The Fibre Channel SAN DataDirector makes it simple to provide servers, workgroups and clusters with high performance parallel access to centralized storage pools. Using the SAN DataDirector in conjunction with Cisco's 5420 router enables an easy, cost-effective way to network Linux clusters to high performance storage through IP networks. In real world situations, using inexpensive Linux-based clusters with SAN DataDirectors have enabled customers to achieve ten-fold performance gains over their earlier infrastructures. The ability to easily connect Cisco's 5420 routers now brings an additional tool to extend the SAN DataDirector's functionality and power to users. Mixed Fibre Channel and iSCSI networks may also be architected to share the same storage resources through the SAN DataDirector's unique parallel architecture. DataDirect Networks is the recognized first mover in storage networking appliance technology, having released the SAN DataDirector to the public in April 2000, and the SAN directION(TM) product in November of last year. When compared to traditional SAN and storage solutions, both storage networking appliance products from DataDirect Networks bring lower TCO to forward looking businesses. Both the SAN DataDirector and SAN directION products also bring storage networking scalability to heterogeneous, real-world IT environments. "DataDirect Networks' SANappliance product family brings a revolutionary storage networking technology to Linux users around the world, delivering speed, productivity and results," Brad Winett, vice president, product marketing, DataDirect Networks, Inc., said. "By implementing our SAN DataDirector and SAN directION solutions to manage their storage domains, Linux users today can consolidate and share their storage resources through an easy to deploy, open, high performance solution." The SAN DataDirector and SAN directION storage networking appliances provide a substantially different and far more advanced approach to data access for Linux-enabled data center use than NAS or pre-appliance SAN solutions. The SAN DataDirector and SAN directION storage networking appliances use silicon-based parallelism (in a much simpler architecture) to dramatically increase performance and reduce I/O bottlenecks that exist in pre-appliance SAN technology. The SAN DataDirector can be installed in a matter of hours, is supported on all major server platforms, and offers far more performance capacity (from hundreds of Gigabytes to 138 usable Terabytes) than first generation SANs with the same footprint. The SAN directION offers an additional "Pay as You Grow"(TM) scalability feature, enabling a cost-effective growth path to the largest SAN DataDirector configurations. The storage networking appliance hardware and software needed to cope with future workloads can be installed during initial deployment, with users paying for only that portion of the configuration actually placed into service. When performance or capacity increases are needed, users simply contact DataDirect to activate the additional features. For more information visit www.datadirectnet.com