STORAGE

LOUISVILLE, CO -- StorageTek(R) (Storage Technology Corp.) (NYSE:STK) and JNI(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:JNIC) today announced that StorageTek has certified JNI's 2 Gb Ready(TM) FibreStar(R) PCI and SBus Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) for use in StorageTek's leading tape automation and virtual backup/restore solutions. Two families of JNI HBAs have been qualified by StorageTek: The 2 Gb Ready FCE-6460 PCI and 2 Gb Ready FCE-1473 SBus HBAs, part of JNI's new family of Emerald IV-based host bus adapters. Emerald IV is JNI's second-generation 2 Gb ASIC controller. JNI was the first company to introduce a 2 Gb host bus adapter in May 1999. The newly qualified JNI HBAs are one of the industry's first 2 Gb HBAs to be qualified for use in 2 Gb or 1 Gb Fibre Channel environments by a major storage manufacturer. Nearly all certifications to date of competing 2 Gb products are only certified for 1 Gb environments. The new 2 Gb Ready HBAs offer on-demand 2 Gb native FC-Tape support for superior performance and reduced equipment costs in a Fibre Channel-based storage network environment, with automatic switching to 1 Gb data link rates for 1 Gb products. Tape backup was one of the original "killer apps" for SANs and Fibre Channel; utilization of 2 Gb data link speeds coupled with 2 Gb capable tape drives doubles the data backup rate at an incremental cost. This is especially important in storage network environments that limit backup operations to off-peak periods. By using a 2 Gb tape drive, twice as much data can be stored during the backup period. This reduces the total number of tape devices required in the tape library to complete the backup process -- a potential savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars per data center. "2 Gb native Fibre Channel tape drives offer superior performance to 1 Gb Fibre Channel or SCSI tape drives in a Fibre Channel storage network," said Gary Francis, StorageTek corporate vice president and general manager, Automated Tape Solutions. "As StorageTek products migrate to 2 Gb speeds, it will be important for the 2 Gb SAN infrastructure of HBAs and switches to be in place to take full advantage of the higher data transfer speeds. "JNI has been a great partner in supporting the interoperability testing that is required for these types of environments. The certification of JNI's HBAs at both 1 and 2 Gb speeds in Solaris environments is another demonstration of the continuing drive towards meeting our customers' connectivity needs today and in the future," Francis said. "StorageTek has proven time and again to be the market and technology leader in tape automation solutions for mission-critical applications in the open data center," said Neal Waddington, president and CEO of JNI Corporation. "By providing early certification of our new family of 2 Gb Ready HBAs, StorageTek assures that JNI-enabled Solaris and AIX environments will be ready to take full advantage of Fibre Channel's migration to 2 Gb speeds." "Our two companies have leveraged our long-term relationship to create 'Best of Breed' products for the customer's benefit," Waddington said. "By working together on developing 2 Gb technology and advancing native FC Tape support, StorageTek offers its customers the highest performance at the lowest cost of installation and ownership." The new JNI HBAs are certified for use with five families of StorageTek products: -- Tape Drives -- the 9840, T9840B, and T9940. The recently announced T9840B is the fastest and hardest working tape drive in the industry and the first tape drive capable of running at 2 Gb link speeds, which can cut backup time in half over current products, which connect at 1 Gb speeds to Fibre Channel storage networks. -- Libraries -- the L180 and L700 libraries -- Shared Virtual Arrays -- the 9500 and V960 Shared Virtual Arrays -- Open Systems Arrays -- the 9176 RAID and 9170 Storage Arrays -- StorageNet Manager -- the VTM: SN6000 Virtual Transport Manager. The StorageNet 6000 storage domain manager employs virtualization technology to enable a single backup and recovery implementation for open systems enterprise environments. JNI's 2 Gb Ready HBAs are certified to connect Sun Microsystems servers running Solaris 6 or Solaris 8 to all certified StorageTek products at 1 Gb or 2 Gb speeds, and is certified to run at 2 Gb speed to StorageTek's 2 Gb T9940B Tape Drive. In addition, the FCE-6460 has been certified to connect IBM servers running AIX 4.3 to the T9940B Tape Drive at 1 Gb or 2 Gb speeds. JNI HBAs passed StorageTek's rigorous Compliance Test plan, which outlines 154 test configurations necessary to receive certification. The comprehensive testing ensures product robustness and reliability in the most demanding enterprise-level, mission critical applications. StorageTek is the leading manufacturer of tape automation equipment and software, with nearly 30 percent of the total market value according to IDC. The company's 9840 and enhanced capacity T9940 have become the de facto standard in Fibre Channel tape drives. The new T9840B enhances that standard. The StorageTek L180 is designed for midsize Unix and Windows NT environments. It can support six StorageTek 9840 tape drives. The StorageTek L180 with 9840s stores up to 3.5 terabytes of data. The L700 tape library is designed for large, distributed open systems implementations in Unix and Windows NT environments. It can support 12 StorageTek 9840 or T9940 tape drives, and stores up to 40.6 terabytes of data with T9940 tape drives. The StorageNet 6000 solution, combining the storage domain manager and StorageTek Virtual Transport Manager software, creates an intelligent, integrated, network-attached solution. By placing intelligence in the network and dynamically mapping storage to a shared pool of physical devices, it enables users of heterogeneous hosts and different backup software to share a single pool of backup devices. StorageTek has certified a variety of JNI Fibre Channel host bus adapters for use on multiple platforms across a broad range of its tape automation products. JNI has received StorageTek certification in the past for its SBus-based FCE-1063, FCE2-1063, FC64-1063, and PCI bus FCI-1063 for Solaris platforms, as well as its PCI bus-based FCE-6410 for Solaris and Windows NT environments. JNI's FCE-6460 and FCE-1473 2 Gb HBA offers the same high performance and enterprise reliability of the industry's first 2 Gb Fibre Channel HBA, which debuted in May 1999. At 2 Gb speed, the FibreStar CompactPCI HBA offers peak throughput performance of up to 400 megabytes-per-second (MB) in full-duplex mode, approximately 200 MB in half-duplex. On demand 1 or 2 Gb auto rate negotiation enables a smooth and automatic migration path to 2 Gb-enabled storage networks by operating in 1 Gb, 2 Gb or mixed 1 Gb and 2 Gb Fibre Channel environments. Widespread deployment of 2 Gb Fibre Channel infrastructure is expected to take place in 2002.