Features - Storage Innovations:

SPINNAKER OFFERS INTEGRATED ATA OPTION FOR ENT NAS CLUSTER

Spinnaker Networks, a leading developer of next generation NAS storage solutions, announced recently that its SpinServer 3300 NAS platform now supports economical ATA disk storage, allowing customers to deploy cost-correct storage for applications such as on-line backup and recovery, data archival, and storage of fixed content and reference data.

With support for ATA storage, Spinnaker has given SpinServer customers the freedom to select from a full range of data storage options to precisely match the price and performance of the storage asset to application requirements. A single SpinServer 3300 or multiple SpinServers in a scalable cluster can be deployed with any of three storage options:

• High performance Fibre Channel disk storage
• SAN-based storage systems from industry leading vendors
• ATA disk systems for cost-sensitive applications

The ATA storage option allows customers to utilize the innovative SpinServer architecture for a street price entry point of $50,000 for a 2 terabyte solution. With 2 terabyte capacity increments, customers can expand to larger configurations with a street price of less than $.01 per megabyte -­ and achieve an on-line ATA storage option with Spinnaker for less than the cost of competitive near-line storage offerings.

"Spinnaker Networks' support of Serial ATA broadens the options available to customers in supporting multiple kinds of digital content, reference data and NAS environments," said Jamie Gruener, Senior Analyst at the Yankee Group. "Spinnaker Networks' flexible platform should be considered by customers who are evaluating NAS, NAS gateways, online backup, reference and fixed data platforms."

"The reality of today's enterprise storage environments is that not all data is created equal, and not all applications demand expensive, high performance storage," said Jeff Hornung, Spinnaker Networks' vice president of Marketing. "The Spinnaker ATA option addresses this need and gives our customers the ability to optimize their storage hardware investment with an integrated hierarchy of storage subsystems that are performance-tuned to specific application requirements."

Adding economical ATA storage to a SpinServer cluster provides two key advantages compared to conventional NAS servers utilizing ATA disks: dynamic allocation through non-disruptive data movement, and more efficient storage management by eliminating "NAS islands."

Unlike traditional NAS servers -­ which require taking data off line during a move, consequently making it unavailable to users and applications ­- deploying and managing ATA storage on the SpinServer 3300 is a simple process. The combination of Spinnaker's SpinFS global distributed file system and SpinMove software enables files to be moved physically to lower-cost ATA storage while logically remaining in the same place in the file system. SpinMove enables transparent on-the-fly, non-disruptive physical movement and relocation of data while the data is in use, without users' knowledge or any modifications to users' shares or mount points. With SpinMove, storage administrators are empowered to relocate, redistribute and reconfigure an entire storage landscape, both across storage classes and across multiple SpinServers in a scalable cluster that can span a LAN, MAN or WAN.

Deploying ATA arrays in a conventional NAS environment requires each ATA near-line device to be configured, managed and protected as a separate server. Managing these "ATA islands," in addition to any existing "Fibre Channel islands," greatly increases the operational cost of the NAS installation. ATA storage that is added to a cluster of SpinServers simply becomes part of a single, centrally managed, global storage pool.

The advanced functionality of the SpinServer platform and SpinFS is extended even further with the new levels of affordability enabled by ATA drives. A range of new secondary storage applications and market opportunities are possible that were previously cost prohibitive to deploy on Fibre Channel disk storage, such as on-line backup and restore, on-line data archival, and on-line access to fixed content and reference data. According to a UC Berkeley study, fixed content data represents about 75 percent of all new digital data. Some examples of fixed content storage are CAD/CAM designs, check images, historical documents, medical images, digital media content, photographs, presentations, financial records, and seismic data.

About SpinServer

The SpinServer 3300 System and 3300G NAS Gateway consolidate the file services of any size enterprise by non-disruptively scaling a single file system from 1 terabyte to 11,000 terabytes of capacity and provide cost savings through simplified management and more efficient use of hardware resources. Near linear performance scaling inherent to the Spinnaker architecture delivers the ever-increasing throughput demanded by the file system as it is scaled up in size. The Spinnaker architecture delivered the highest results ever posted on the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp (SPEC) System File Server 3.0 (SFS 3.0) test for NAS server performance, where the SpinServer 3300 recorded 31,876 IOPS in a single node test and 131,930 IOPS in a 6-node cluster test.

About Spinnaker Networks

Spinnaker Networks is a leading developer of next generation NAS storage solutions. The Spinnaker SpinServer is based upon a powerful 2-stage global distributed file system and has posted the highest score ever reported on the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) system file server 3.0 (SFS 3.0) test for NAS server performance. Spinnaker products are available as complete storage systems and NAS gateways with Fibre Channel and ATA disk options. The standards-based SpinServer supports NFS, CIFS, NDMP, SNMP and CIM, to provide the most efficient management while ensuring interoperability among diverse computing and storage environments. Founded in December 1999, Spinnaker Networks is a privately held company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company has secured $51 million through two series of funding rounds. For more information, visit www.spinnakernet.com.