ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 25, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Storage Networking World -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), the most trusted name in storage networking connectivity, today announced it is demonstrating live FC-SATA technology to attendees of the Fall Storage Networking World conference in Orlando, Florida (Kiosk PG11, in the Platinum Galleria). In addition, the company announced that the cache of storage industry partners supporting the development of FC-SATA technology has more than doubled as the technology moves forward through the ANSI T11 standards body adoption process.
FC-SATA is designed to drastically reduce the cost of enterprise storage systems by natively connecting near-line ready Serial ATA (SATA) disk drives into storage systems that use existing Fibre Channel embedded infrastructures. FC-SATA most cost effectively leverages forward storage system company investments to create tiered storage systems capable of concurrently providing high performance Fibre Channel storage and cost-effective nearline ready SATA storage. Detailed information about FC-SATA can be found at www.emulex.com/fcsata.
"We have accomplished a major progression milestone for FC-SATA this week. First, we are showing live FC-SATA technology running from Fibre Channel IOC's to native-attached, mixed Fibre Channel and SATA disk drive environments. Secondly, we now have a complete ecosystem solution set of industry leading partners supporting FC-SATA," said Bob Brencic, Senior Director of Switch Product Marketing for Emulex Corporation. "FC-SATA has quickly become a very real and very viable technology option for storage system providers looking to lower storage system costs while leveraging their existing investments in Fibre Channel."
FC-SATA technology was first announced in June of 2005, and was officially approved at that time by the ANSI INCITS T11 committee for technical standards development. Since that time, both the technology development effort under the guidance of the T11 standards body, and the growth of partner support for the technology have progressed. The T11 standards working committee has now been officially formed and a draft of the standard is expected as early as January of 2006.
"The primary emphasis of the live FC-SATA demonstration at Storage Networking World is to highlight the progress that's been made on the development front, and literally demonstrate this progress through the inclusion of live partner solutions using FC-SATA technology," added Brencic. "We now have 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel Infrastructure natively connected to, and storing data on SATA drives from Seagate, Fujitsu, Western Digital, Hitachi and Maxtor, via dual paths with SiliconStor's Active Active-MUX. These drives are in turn connecting to InSpeed-based Xyratex Fibre Channel SBODs (Switched Bunch of Disks). In addition our demonstration incorporates an FGPA platform of a future InSpeed embedded storage switch that incorporates FC-SATA capabilities. All of this is connected into IOC's from Agilent and Emulex. We believe we have an active demonstration that reflects what the future of tiered storage solutions in the working environment will look like."
Today, FC-SATA technology partners and supporting contributors include leading storage industry mainstays such Agilent Technologies, Brocade, The FCIA (Fibre Channel Industry Association), McDATA, Seagate Technologies, SiliconStor, Xyratex and Western Digital (WD) Corporation.
"As tiered storage matures, customers will be looking to protect and leverage their existing Fibre Channel investments and incorporate cost-effective SATA technology," said Tim Piper, director of marketing, Xyratex. "FC-SATA tunneling and the standards currently under review by ANSI T11 give customers a viable option for implementation. Xyratex looks forward to providing storage solutions that will be readily incorporated into these environments."
"The FC-SATA standard will further accelerate adoption of SATA drives in enterprise storage systems while allowing systems companies to maintain their Fibre Channel infrastructure," said Joel Warford, vice president of marketing, SiliconStor, Inc. "We intend to fully support this standard as a complement to the SiliconStor AAMUX technology for enabling enterprise-class SATA connectivity."
"Through their support of FC-SATA, Emulex and WD are enabling customers to take advantage of the benefits of highly reliable Enterprise Serial ATA hard drives while leveraging existing Fibre Channel investments," said Hubbert Smith, WD's director of enterprise marketing. "FC-SATA directly addresses an underserved market for highly reliable, high capacity enterprise storage systems."
By facilitating the seamless unification of Fibre Channel and SATA drive technologies within Fibre Channel systems, FC-SATA technology delivers a number of unique benefits and capabilities:
Investment Protection:
-- Leverages existing Fibre Channel infrastructures
Lowers storage system costs
-- Eliminates the high cost of bridge-based approaches for FC to SATA
conversion
-- Enables native SATA drive connection into FC storage systems
-- Enables fast time to market for solution providers
-- Leverages existing field-proven designs
-- Allows deployment of any storage as needed
-- FC and/or SATA storage all with one interconnect
Leverages field proven Fibre Channel interconnect
-- Stability
-- Efficiencies
-- Reliability, Availability, Serviceability
-- Performance While Scaling
Storage Networking World attendees are encouraged to visit the FC-SATA technology demonstration at the Emulex kiosk (No. PG11) in the Platinum Galleria.
About Emulex
Emulex Corporation is the industry's preeminent source for a broad range of advanced storage networking infrastructure solutions spanning host bus adapters, embedded storage switches, I/O controllers and SAN Storage Switches. Emulex ranked number 19 in the Deloitte 2005 Technology Fast 50 and most recently received recognition as one of Forbes 200 Best Small Companies.
The world's leading server and storage providers rely on Emulex HBAs, embedded storage switching and I/O controller products to build reliable, scalable and high performance storage solutions. The Emulex award-winning product families, including its LightPulse(r) HBAs and InSpeed(tm) embedded storage switching products, are based on internally developed ASIC, firmware and software technologies, and offer customers high performance, scalability, flexibility and reduced total cost of ownership. The company's products have been selected by the world's leading server and storage providers, including Dell, EMC, Fujitsu Ltd., Fujitsu Siemens, Bull, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, Engenio, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance, Quantum Corp., StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, Unisys and Xyratex. Corporate headquarters are located in Costa Mesa, California. News releases and other information about Emulex Corporation are available at http://www.emulex.com.
EMULEX -- We network storage
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