Features - Storage Innovations:

EqualLogic LAUNCHES EXPANDED FAMILY OF iSCSI SAN SOLUTIONS

EqualLogic Inc, a provider of iSCSI-based, self-managing networked storage solutions, announced the expansion of its award-winning storage area networking (SAN) product line. Building on the foundation of the successful PeerStorage Array 100E, the new PS Series matches a wide range of customer requirements, offering small businesses to Fortune 100 companies six different configurations that bring enterprise-class reliability and performance with intelligent, automated management to SANs. The PS Series of storage arrays include an entry-level system, a high-performance model with 10,000 rpm drives and high-capacity enterprise-storage systems featuring new 400GB drives.

EqualLogic has more than 180 customers with an aggregate of more than one petabyte of data in production on its storage arrays, leading the industry in native iSCSI deployments. With the PS Series family, EqualLogic is expanding its market leadership in providing iSCSI-based storage solutions that give customers what they need: reliable, self-managing, scalable pools of storage that can respond nimbly to user demands. The new EqualLogic PS Series offers higher performance and higher capacity configurations optimized for larger enterprise-level deployments.

EqualLogic is the first iSCSI storage vendor to bring enterprise-class performance and reliability to the mid-range market in an all-inclusive SAN solution -- offering a comprehensive and fully integrated standard feature set at no additional cost to the customer. As customers have proven the enterprise quality of the EqualLogic SAN architecture and the market has accepted iSCSI, the EqualLogic solution is being deployed in increasingly larger installations. The new high-capacity models, ranging from 22 to more than 44TB, offer a lower cost per gigabyte for those customers who require capacity, performance and enterprise features without the excessive capital and operational costs that come with traditional SAN systems.

"While iSCSI-based SANs have made the biggest inroads into small-to-medium businesses, large enterprises are now incorporating iSCSI technology into their data centers, and EqualLogic is following this adoption curve," said William Terrill, senior analyst with industry analyst firm Burton Group. "Expanding its product line and targeting larger installations where the market is taking iSCSI positions EqualLogic for broader adoption of its pioneering storage solution."

EqualLogic customer Wurld Media has implemented a 30-terabyte EqualLogic SAN and views EqualLogic as its partner for future growth. "We needed a large pool of storage that could scale easily and without disruption for our new digital media distribution service," said Kirk Feathers, president and CTO of Wurld Media, Inc. "No other system we looked at could offer the scalability, performance characteristics and intelligent features of the EqualLogic SAN solution. We deployed 12 PS100E arrays in a single storage Grid to meet and even exceed our needs for dynamic storage allocation, load balancing and redundancy. As our storage needs expand, we know the EqualLogic SAN will expand with us on demand and at a reasonable cost."

PS Series Enterprise Features

Each EqualLogic PS storage array comes with fully redundant fault-tolerant hardware, automatic storage-management software and a host of intelligent enterprise features, including: automatic load balancing, automatic snapshot management, automatic replication, volume cloning, volume management, storage virtualization, and multi-path input/output (MPIO). The PS Series ensures five 9s (99.999 percent) system availability by combining its proprietary Auto-Stat Disk Monitoring (ASDM) technology with RAID and redundant, hot-swappable components. For enterprise performance, each PS array delivers 60,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS) out of cache.

Customers purchase only the storage they actually need today because they can scale easily, cost-effectively and without disruption at any time. Multiple PS Series arrays can be combined to form a scalable enterprise storage Grid of over 100 terabytes. Laboratory tests have proven that EqualLogic's patented peer storage architecture allows each PS Series group to scale linearly in performance as arrays are added to achieve over one million IOPS.

EqualLogic storage arrays have been deployed in a wide range of enterprises to migrate from the limitations of direct-attached storage and enjoy the simplicity, efficiency and cost-savings of consolidated storage. Beyond its extensive Windows operating system support and integration, EqualLogic arrays support all other operating systems. The PS Series works seamlessly in mixed OS environments that include Windows, Solaris, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, NetWare, and Mac OS. EqualLogic arrays support a broad range of business-critical applications, including customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), database, e-mail, file-and-print, Web services, data warehousing, streaming media, geophysical analysis and online transaction processing.

"The new PS family is designed to make the purchase and installation of the EqualLogic PS storage solution even easier, in particular for enterprise deployments where a large pool of expandable storage capacity is required," said John Joseph, vice president of EqualLogic. "As the word has spread about the performance and reliability of iSCSI technology and our peer storage architecture, we have been pulled into larger installations. With our new 22 and 44TB configurations, we have a ready-to-roll solution for the enterprise SAN."

About EqualLogic

EqualLogic Inc, is a provider of intelligent, all-inclusive iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses -- from Fortune 100 to small and mid-size organizations -- to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage. The company's PS Series of storage arrays, based on the company's patented peer storage architecture, is the industry's first automatic storage platform that delivers operational simplicity, functional integration, and high data availability in a single, scalable pool of storage. EqualLogic's headquarters are located in Nashua, N.H. For more information, please visit www.equallogic.com.