Features - Storage Innovations:

XIOtech ANNOUNCES FIRST SHIPMENT OF MAGNITUDE 3D

XIOtech Corporation, a storage networking pioneer, announced first customer shipments of Magnitude 3D, a product line that features the industry's first and only dimensional storage clustering architecture for storage area networks (SANs). Magnitude 3D's innovative architecture applies the proven benefits of clustered computing to SANs, delivering resilience, responsiveness, and scalability, while eliminating the complexity traditionally associated with clustered architectures.

SANs were first developed to give enterprises an easier way to share storage resources across servers and applications, thus simplifying management and improving overall efficiency of IT environments. Although SANs have evolved and become widely deployed, traditional enterprise SANs continue to feature static, chassis-based architectures that focus on eliminating a single point of failure. These architectures have limited storage flexibility and come with large capital investment risks. Dimensional Storage Clusters deliver multiple layers of resilience (MLOR), in contrast to traditional, monolithic architectures that focus on eliminating a single point of failure.

"As commoditization is hitting the storage market harder and harder on the hardware side of the house, the new value in storage is the software that makes it all tick," said Steve Kenniston, technology analyst of the Enterprise Storage Group. "XIOtech's cluster software technology, and the ability to create a single system image across distributed locations allows for a greater level of data availability and protection."

MLOR is the ability of storage architectures to provide resilient availability, performance, and data integrity across infrastructure layers -- in many cases where traditional architectures would suffer from performance degradation, data loss, or outright failure. Dimensional Storage Clusters deliver resilience far beyond traditional single-chassis systems by embracing technology innovations to deliver distributed, N-way availability, continuous storage performance, full server and application infrastructure independence, and maximum data integrity in the event of site or cluster-wide disasters. Magnitude 3D is also the first storage solution with zero-server footprint, enabling intra-controller and cross-cluster storage failover without requiring any host software -- eliminating the accompanying complexity and downtime.

"Storage clustering delivers agile SANs that blend unmatched resilience with dynamic responsiveness," said Ken Hendrickson, CEO of XIOtech. "Magnitude 3D clusters are the next leap in uninterrupted storage availability, providing the industry's only solution that addresses the full spectrum of events that cause both planned and unplanned downtime."

"This configuration allows us to incrementally purchase the modules for controlling, managing, and storing data, investing our CAPEX dollars incrementally as required," said Anthony Lloyd, vice president of Operations-Technical Services of Warner Bros. "Plus, Magnitude 3D enables real-time responsiveness to business needs and changes, dynamically adjusting storage behavior without business disruption. We can scale and tune storage in response to demands -- whenever changes are needed."

"Magnitude 3D offers dramatic new storage networking capabilities based on a zero-server footprint, clustered storage architecture," said Doug Knight, vice president of business development & strategic partnering at Novell. "The tightly coupled, 'co-dependent' relationship between computation and legacy SAN environments, which forces users into compromised business choices and downtime events, has been completely eliminated. The resulting infrastructure independence accelerates business responsiveness while reducing administrator and lost opportunity costs, as well as planned downtime overhead for both server and storage infrastructure."