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FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box Eliminates Costly SAN Infrastructure

Burlington, MA. October 11, 2001 -Winchester Systems announced a new low cost "SAN-In-A-Box" solution to Storage Area Networks (SANs), eliminating the expensive fibre-channel infrastructure that prevents many organizations from adopting SANs. The FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box effectively slashes the entry price for implementing a SAN while delivering higher speed by using 160 MB Ultra160 SCSI instead of 100 MB fibre-channel.

The company's unique FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box provides an ultra-high performance FlashDisk OpenRAID disk array with six Ultra160 SCSI host ports to provide a shared storage pool for up to six servers simultaneously. These servers can be any mix of brand or operating system. This approach permits IT managers with 24 servers of any variety, for example, to create an enterprise-class SAN with just four FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box units. SAN-In-A-Box scales easily in capacity and is managed independently of the host servers with the company's FlashConsole secure management workstation. A single 82" Data Center Cabinet holds nine FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box systems, with up to 13 TB of total storage, that supports up to 54 servers.

"Winchester Systems is delivering this new FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box to meet the market's demand for SAN capabilities and sophisticated backup but without the high SAN price tag and infrastructure requirements of most SAN products. We think that FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box will meet the market sweet spot for easily managed, shared storage pools for many enterprises -- especially in today's economy," states Mr. Jerry Namery, the company's chief technology officer. "IT managers get many of the benefits of a SAN using mature, completely field proven technology that can be deployed immediately with no risk," he added.

Simple and Affordable SAN
FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box is a simple, affordable way to get full SAN capabilities. The SAN-In-A-Box provides open, easy-to-manage shared storage. The storage is managed out-of-band over IP using a secure web console for centralized storage management. This approach eliminates most of the costly components of typical SANs and uses only mature, field proven and inexpensive Ultra160 SCSI host-bus adapters. Thus, there are no interoperability issues and no training is needed. It installs in minutes and is completely plug-and-play -- right out of the box -- a true "SAN-In-A-Box." One FlashDisk satisfied customer explains how this solution performs and replaces more complex fibre-channel solutions. Adam Anderson, an IT manager, published an article called, "What I did instead of buying a SAN," in SysAdmin Magazine, September 2001 and the full text can be viewed at the link below:
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1146/sam0109a/0109a.htm.

Shared Storage Pool
A single FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box supports up to six servers with up to 1.45 TB in a single rack mount shelf or pedestal enclosure. The total capacity can be allocated in any amount by partitioning the storage into as many as 32 logical volumes (LUNs). Each volume can then be assigned to a specific host server or multiple servers and connected in simple Ultra160 SCSI point-to-point connections. FlashDisk employs new slim and ultra-flexible SCSI cables no thicker than Ethernet cables to eliminate SCSI cable tangles. Each FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box unit is an OpenRAID disk array that supports RAID 1, 3, 5, 10 and 15.

SAN Functionality
FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box provides true SAN functionality. It provides the ability to consolidate servers with an easy to manage, shared storage pool. Data partitioning and access security is granted and controlled by each SAN-In-A-Box unit and administered on the centralized FlashConsole. Multiple servers can be clustered using any cluster operating system including Veritas, Microsoft, Solaris, UNIX, Steeleye or Mission Critical Linux clustering products to provide business continuance despite hardware failures. SAN-In-A-Box also provides a platform for creating disk-to-disk backups, snapshot backups plus remote mirror and disaster recovery images using today's popular backup and replication software tools including Falconstor, Veritas, Microsoft and others. The high performance of the six parallel Ultra160 connections aboard FlashDisk makes it ideal for rapid recovery from a disaster using disk-to-disk backup and restore.

Increased Reliability
FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box provides IT managers with the ability to replace or augment limited internal storage arrays with reliable external storage. External storage provides superior reliability since, unlike internal storage, it continues operating if the server fails. With external storage, the servers can easily be replaced or upgraded without disrupting the critical data.

Reduced Storage Management Time
Many organizations use a variety of UNIX and NT servers and each requires learning separate storage management routines. External storage is server and host independent and thus only one storage architecture needs to be mastered. This greatly reduces administrative overhead and saves valuable system administrator time.

High Performance
Each FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box unit delivers up to 13,000 I/O operations per second for random access applications and 117,000 per cabinet. It also delivers up to 121 Mbytes per second sustained data throughput per unit and up to 1.1 GB per cabinet.

Price and Delivery
FlashDisk SAN-In-A-Box with eight 7,200-rpm disk drives of 181.4 GB each that stores 1.45 TB is priced at $62,580 - about four cents per MB. This provides 242 GB per server for each of six servers at a low cost of $10,430 per server. For higher speed requirements, using more and faster spindles, FlashDisk provides twelve 10,000-rpm disk drives of 73.4 GB each to store 880.8 GB and is priced at $51,153 -- only $8,526 per server. Delivery is two to three weeks.

About Winchester Systems
Winchester Systems provides SAN and NAS capable enterprise storage solutions including high performance SCSI and fibre channel RAID disk arrays, solid-state disks, tape backup devices and other high performance commercial and military grade storage for mid-range servers including UNIX and NT. Winchester Systems provides products that support today's most demanding industrial, government and commercial applications. For more information, contact Winchester Systems Inc., 149 Middlesex Turnpike, Burlington, MA 01803, USA. Toll free: 800-325-3700, international: 781-265-0200, fax: 781-265-0201. E-mail address: info@winsys.com, web site: www.winsys.com.

Winchester Systems, FlashDisk and OpenRAID are trademarks or registered trademarks of Winchester Systems All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

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