Features - Storage Innovations:

StoneFly NETWORKS ANNOUNCES FIBRE CHANNEL SUPPORT IN i1500FS

StoneFly Networks, the innovator of the first affordable, end-to-end IP SAN appliances, has announced the Storage Concentrator i1500FS, the industry's first IP SAN appliance with 'plug and play' access to existing storage, including support for Fibre Channel storage devices. The i1500FS is the third addition to StoneFly's Storage Concentrator family of products and further delivers on the company's vision for simple, affordable IP SANs. The i1500FS is cost-effective as customers aren't required to purchase additional storage to work in conjunction with it, and the Storage Concentrator ensures a simple transition with almost no downtime.

The i1500FS Storage Concentrator provides both Fibre Channel and SCSI support for external storage systems. The i1500FS features a new Direct Path functionality that enables a customer to unplug their existing storage from their servers and plug it directly into a Storage Concentrator-enabled IP SAN without having to first migrate their data. Data can be migrated to managed volumes when it is convenient, and the storage can then be converted into a StoneFly managed volume later. The Data Path functionality substantially reduces the cost of migrating storage to a Storage Concentrator as customers aren't required to purchase additional storage to work with the Storage Concentrator. In addition, once the Storage Concentrator is installed, access to existing storage is almost immediate ensuring almost no down time in the transition.

"StoneFly's Storage Concentrators deliver upon StoneFly's vision to turn storage into an easy-to-use and easy-to-manage network resource," said Jeffrey Schnabel, vice president of marketing, StoneFly Networks Inc. "As a fully transparent intelligent IP SAN appliance, Storage Concentrators enable customers to unplug their existing storage, install a Storage Concentrator, and immediately begin utilizing existing storage elements and storage management applications. Storage that exists within servers can also be moved to an external storage architecture and supported. Storage Concentrators are the industry's first appliances that free enterprise storage from physical restrictions and turn it into a flexible network-based resource."

StoneFly's i1500FS Storage Concentrator enables enterprise customers to centralize 'storage intelligence' in their networks to efficiently view and manage all storage resources thereby eliminating the IT resource time required to manage stranded storage. The Storage Concentrator i1500FS with Direct Path ensures conversion of customer data stores to an IP SAN architecture is simple and straightforward. The i1500FS, along with StoneFly's complete family of Storage Concentrators, feature an easy-to-use HTML-based graphical user interface (GUI) that provides a wide array of performance and storage management features. Through the GUI, administrators easily manage storage operations including controlling distributed Storage Concentrators centrally and securely from anywhere on the Internet.

"With the advent of iSCSI, small and medium sized businesses can now access storage devices through IP Networks as a way to control their stored data," said Dianne McAdam, analyst, Illuminata. "Intelligent IP SANs that move traditional host-based volume management into a purpose built IP SAN engine allows companies to pool all their storage assets providing an easy way to use, manage, deploy and reconfigure storage -- and with all storage centrally managed, back up times will be significantly reduced. New appliances like the Storage Concentrators will supply users with the storage management they need with a lower total cost of ownership and with far less complexity than other SAN alternatives."

About StoneFly's Storage Concentrators

StoneFly's new line of Storage Concentrators combine the functionality of an iSCSI-based storage router, bridge and an extensible logical volume manager to provide an end-to-end storage provisioning solution that significantly reduces the cost and complexity of managing storage assets. Like StoneFly's i1000 and i1500 Storage Concentrators, the i1500FS adds intelligent block-level logical volume management to existing IP networks to pool existing and new storage assets, thus providing more efficient utilization, streamlined management, rapid deployment and reconfiguration of storage, and reduced SAN-based backup and restore times.

Features include:

• iSCSI host support to create a full-function block-storage IP SAN
• Logical volume management to create a common pool of storage, increasing overall disk utilization rates
• Advanced storage packet routing and 128-bit SSL security
• iSCSI to SCSI and Fibre Channel bridging, supporting the most common interface standards for storage systems today
• Dual-hot swappable power supplies to ensure high availability
• RAID mirroring of the OS and metadata

Storage Concentrators are the industry's first IP SAN appliances to provide simple to manage in-band iSCSI block-level storage pooling to enable users to access storage without the need to know where the devices are located on the network, or how they are configured. Through effective storage pooling, Storage Concentrators deliver virtual volumes to hosts connected over industry-standard Ethernet networks, without the need for host-based agents or a separate metadata out-of-band storage management device. Storage Concentrators are simple to use and can often be installed in less than 20 minutes enabling multiple servers/workstations and storage devices to store, retrieve and transfer data efficiently and cost-effectively.

Availability

StoneFly's Storage Concentrator i1500FS with Direct Path and support for Fibre Channel is available now at an MSRP of $12,995 through the company's channel distribution partners and select resellers. To support the Direct Path feature, the i1000 and i1500 Storage Concentrators can be easily upgraded to Version 1.1 of the StoneFusion operating system. The upgrade is available free of charge by contacting StoneFly Networks. The Storage Concentrators come standard with a one-year warranty and 24x7 support with a four-hour on site response time. All Storage Concentrators offer a simple software upgrade path to new releases.

About StoneFly Networks Inc

StoneFly Networks Inc is based in San Diego, California and was founded in April 2000 to develop simple, affordable IP SAN appliances that add intelligent storage management to IP networks transforming them into IP storage area networks (SANs). The company's complete line of Storage Concentrators combine the functionality of an iSCSI-based storage router, bridge and provisioning manager to provide an end-to-end storage provisioning solution that reduces the cost and complexity of managing storage assets. Storage Concentrators are based on StoneFly's patent-pending StoneFusion storage networking architecture to consolidate and optimize data storage to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase return on investment (ROI). StoneFly Networks is a member of the Storage Networking Association (SNIA) and the founding member of the IP Storage Institute (IPSI). For more information, please visit the company's Web site at www.stonefly.com.

Contact: Julee Vecchio of StoneFly Networks Inc, 858-678-2450, jvecchio@stonefly.com.