STORAGE

Intransa, the global leader in enterprise IP SAN storage systems, announced today that its modular IP Storage Area Network (SAN) was utilized as the IP backbone by the San Diego Supercomputing Center (SDSC) as part of an industry I/O performance record. SDSC used Intransa's IP SAN in a first-ever demonstration at Supercomputing 2004, showcasing multiple servers accessing the same data in parallel -- via a clustered file system -- spread out across a traditional Fibre Channel SAN and an IP-based SAN in the same infrastructure as part of an ASC StorCloud Challenge. SDSC judges announced two winners as part of the ASC StorCloud Challenge in demonstrations including the Massive Parallel Quantum Chemistry (MPQC) -- "Most Innovative Use of Parallel I/O to Better Science" -- and Blockbuster, chosen for "Best Randam I/O Performance." The Blockbuster demonstration, engineered by volunteers from Sandia and Lawrence Livermore National Labs, the nation's premier defense research facility, and enabled by IBM's Global Parallel File System on Linux. Blockbuster is a scalable animation display designed to render a large scientific data-set on large computer displays. It shows the benefits of high-performance computing in a clustered server environment using high-speed Gigabit-Ethernet and 10-Gigabit-Ethernet interconnects and both a traditional Fibre Channel SAN and a modular IP-based SAN from Intransa to provide concurrent user access to the storage infrastructure. "We are pleased to be a part of the winning Blockbuster demonstration in achieving a world record in I/O performance for the industry," said Ravi Pendekanti, vice president of global marketing, Intransa. "The StorCloud challenge validates the performance and scalability for Intransa's modular IP storage systems and how well our offerings perform side-by-side with traditional Fibre Channel SANs." Intransa's Approach to IP Storage Area Networking Intransa leads the pack of IP SAN providers by delivering the industry's most comprehensive suite of IP SAN solutions to meet the needs of small, mid-tier, and enterprise-class customers alike. The Intransa IP storage offering is based on the company's IntraStor three-tiered modular architecture that enable companies to quickly adapt and grow storage resources without requiring major forklift upgrades. This leading approach allows customers to independently scale and provision storage resources without impacting the management or performance of their network storage system. In addition to the IntraStor architecture, the Intransa StorControl system software provides a complete suite of enterprise-class storage management and data protection features that allow IT administrators to seamlessly grow and manage their storage environment based on business requirements.