Top Of The News - Networking:

New Brocade SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric Switch

XIOtech Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seagate Technology and a networked storage pioneer, has announced the addition of Brocade Communications System's SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric switch to its line of networked storage product offerings. The SilkWorm 12000 is the industry's first 2 Gbit/sec, modular core fabric switch designed to support the unique demands of enterprise storage applications and services. XIOtech is a Brocade Fabric Elite Partner and offers the complete family of Brocade fabric switches and software from entry-level to enterprise class.

The SilkWorm 12000 provides from 32 to 128 ports of connectivity in a single, highly available chassis. The SilkWorm 12000 also forms the basis of core-edge configurations for very high port count for storage area networks (SANs). In addition to high port density and high availability provided by enterprise-class switches, the SilkWorm 12000 delivers excellent performance and reliability. The redundancy of key components and its failover capability for its dual processors provides the higher availability required in today's data centers. Information on the SilkWorm 12000 can be found at www.brocade.com/products/silkworm.html.

"Brocade is very pleased to have XIOtech offer the Brocade SilkWorm 12000 as part of their product offering," said Jay Kidd, vice president of Product Marketing for Brocade. "XIOtech has been a leader in networked storage technology by providing customers with easy to manage solutions for the ever-growing data storage needs of today's big and small businesses. The XIOtech MAGNITUDE hardware platform is a storage product of choice for hundreds of Brocade customers."

The Brocade SilkWorm 12000 also offers investment protection for the future with an architecture that can grow and adapt to new and changing requirements and technologies. In addition, the Brocade SilkWorm 12000 offers unique Advanced Fabric Services based on the Brocade Intelligent Fabric Services Architecture. Designed to improve the investment protection, security, performance, scalability, and manageability of storage environments, these innovative services include, among others, ISL Trunking, Advanced Zoning and Advanced Performance Monitoring. This wide range of services can be leveraged to improve SAN operations while significantly increasing the return on SAN infrastructure investments.

"We are pleased to incorporate Brocade's SilkWorm 12000 as XIOtech's first director-class switch," said Dan McCormick, vice president of Worldwide Marketing, XIOtech. "Similar to the MAGNITUDE storage platform's scalability and adaptiveness, the SilkWorm 12000 provides the connectivity and redundancy required by customers with today's larger enterprises, and will be able to support future speed and protocols."

The XIOtech MAGNITUDE hardware platform conforms to open systems standards and incorporates all storage components into one centralized configuration: a high-performance storage controller, management software, and up to 64 disc drives, or 11.5 terabytes of storage. The MAGNITUDE system is the only networked storage solution designed from the ground up to include a virtualized storage architecture. XIOtech's Real-time Data Intelligence (REDI) architecture aggregates all physical drive spindles within a MAGNITUDE into one virtual pool. The result is a networked storage solution that scales easily to accommodate growing storage needs. The MAGNITUDE uniquely protects a customer's current investment, as new technologies can co-exist with legacy components.

About XIOtech

XIOtech Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seagate, develops comprehensive networked storage solutions and was the first in the industry to develop true storage virtualization. XIOtech's virtualized storage architecture -- composed of the MAGNITUDE hardware platform and REal-Time Data Intelligence (REDI) software family -- incorporates all the components of networked storage foundation into a tightly integrated, easy-to-manage, highly available configuration. XIOtech's virtualized storage architecture makes storing, managing, safeguarding, and retrieving data on heterogeneous computing platforms easy and cost effective. For more information, visit XIOtech's Website at www.xiotech.com, call 952-983-3000, or email info@xiotech.com.

About Seagate

Seagate is one of the world's leading providers of storage technology for Internet, business, and consumer applications. The company's products include disk drives for the enterprise, PC, and consumer electronics markets, as well as SAN solutions. Seagate's market leadership is based on delivering award-winning products, customer support, and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.

Contact: Rachel Gold, XIOtech Corporation, 952-983-2278, rachel--gold@xiotech.com.