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Winchester Systems Teams with Mercury Computer Systems to Build Storage Area Networks for Printing and Publishing Applications

R.R. Donnelley & Sons - Glasgow Division Color Swap App. Takes Traffic Off Network

WOBURN, MA (July 20, 1999) As a distributor of Mercury Computer System's (NASDAQ: MRCY) SANergy, Winchester Systems Inc. has enabled its FlashDiskÒ OpenRAID storage system customers, such as R.R. Donnelley & Sons, to share data in different file formats via a storage area network (SAN), and to move bandwidth-intensive applications from a LAN to a lightning-fast SAN. (A SAN is a central pool of storage made available to multiple host servers through a network of high-speed interconnects, such as SCSI or fibre channel.)

Ken Platter, Winchester Systems' national account manager for SANergy, says, “Workstations needing data often connect to disparate storage resources on general-purpose network servers. These servers, in turn, connect to a LAN, which ferries files to and from the workstations. However, some prepress users require access to large files very rapidly. To this end, sharing files through a LAN is too slow for the operational efficiency of digital press equipment. A SAN, on the other hand, provides users who have heavy I/O file transfer demands to have direct access to a shared-storage repository at rates 10 to 100 times faster than a LAN.”

FlashDisk and SANergy Make Color Swap Application Run 10 Times Faster Than Before

A storage area network (SAN) based on the FlashDisk OpenRAID storage system and SANergy has helped the R.R. Donnelley & Sons - Glasgow Division, Glasgow, Kentucky, increase the speed of a color swap application. This division does prepress work and printing for magazines, and catalogs, producing titles such as PC Magazine, Yahoo Magazine, and Harvard Business Review.

For the color central application, the plant prints low-resolution file versions of the original high-resolution files. Users make changes to the low-resolution image files, which don't take up a lot of memory. When all the files are ready for final printing, the Open Prepress Interface (OPI) software swaps the modified low-resolution images files for their matching high-resolution image files.

Tony Wallace, the division's prepress systems analyst, says, “Swapping 50-Mbyte files over our Ethernet network was taking too long and consuming too much bandwidth.” To speed things up, Wallace created a SAN by moving the two Intergraph InterServ 8400s, which run the same application, off the network, and then by attaching them to Winchester Systems' FlashDisk OpenRAID storage system. Mercury Computer Systems' SANergy allows the files to be swapped via a SCSI connection, bypassing the network, and thus eliminating a lot of network congestion between other devices on the network. Wallace says that the combination of the FlashDisk and SANergy is giving him 10 times the performance of the previous network swapout. He adds, “Winchester Systems' FlashDisk has the high I/O performance capabilities needed to send the files to their destination.”

FlashDisk OpenRAID and SANergy Comprise a Prepress SAN

Working together, Winchester Systems' FlashDisk OpenRAID storage system and Mercury Systems' SANergy make up the two components needed for a prepress SAN. Winchester Systems' FlashDisk OpenRAID functions as the speedy, central RAID storage repository, which can connect directly to four to 36 servers -- each server having the same or different operating system-- in the SAN. Mercury Computer Systems' SANergy software, which runs under Windows NT, stores files in a universal file format.

To this end, multiple servers running different operating systems can actually share the same files. Each operating system sees the data as standard native files with standard device drivers. The universal file format is completely transparent to the host server's operating system. This technique eliminates lengthy data transfers over a LAN. All users on the SAN can now access the FlashDisk and get the same files whether they are Windows NT, MacOS, Silicon Graphics IRIX, or Sun Solaris. SANergy takes the data transfer off the LAN and moves it across the SAN. Data transfers can now take place at the speed of FlashDisk.

SANergy runs under Windows NT and extends the file system so it can make use of the storage system on the SAN. (Other servers can have different operating systems.) Running in the background on any server or PC installed between the SAN and the LAN, SANergy, in effect, redirects requests for local storage on a Windows NT computer to the storage in the SAN. And since the SANergy file system is an extension of Windows NT, it retains the security and administrative functions of NT, including password access.

Because of the differences in operating systems, file sharing on a SAN hasn't been easy to accomplish. For example, it may appear that a JPEG file format can be accessed by virtually every operating system. However, if a JPEG file is stored on a shared storage system formatted with Microsoft Corp's NT file system (NTFS), a Unix service or Macintosh computer won't be able to access that file. This is true even if the device has exclusive ownership of the storage system. SANergy solves the problem of incompatible file systems by storing all data on NTFS volumes controlled by Windows NT systems and letting Unix and Mac workstations access files via protocols such as Network File System.

FlaskDisk OpenRAID Delivers at Top Speed

Designed for use with any open (non-proprietary) server in either a LAN or a SAN, Winchester Systems' external FlashDisk OpenRAID storage system delivers Ultra2 SCSI speed and robustness required for prepress storage applications. The host server independent FlashDisk can simultaneously support operating systems, such as Windows NT, Macintosh, Linux, Novell, and Unix. FlashDisk comes in four upgradeable models ranging from the one-cubic-foot tabletop model, which offers 250 Gbytes of storage and supports two hosts; to the six-foot data center model, which offers 3.6 Tbytes of storage and supports up to 36 hosts. FlashDisk RAID storage systems come with either 9-, 18-, 36- or 50-Gbyte drives and offer RAID levels 1, 3, 5, and 1+0.

Two networking trade magazines-Performance Computing (formerly Unix Review) and Server/Workstation Expert (formerly SunExpert)-have singled out Winchester Systems' flagship product, FlashDisk OpenRAID, as the “World's Fastest SCSI RAID storage system.” Speed is the key feature that makes the FlashDisk storage system excel over comparable storage systems from leading competitors. FlashDisk delivers the speed that organizations need for (1) sequential applications-including multimedia, Web servers, imaging, and pre-press and for (2) processing transaction-intensive applications, such as Oracle and Sybase.

About Mercury Computer Systems

Based in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, Mercury Computer Systems' Shared Storage Business Unit develops and markets SANergy for environments such as digital video, digital prepress, and enterprise computing. The product is marketed through a community of resellers and systems integrators worldwide. Other business units of Mercury Computer Systems provide high-performance image and digital signal processing computer systems that transform sensor data to information for real-time analysis and interpretation. Winchester Systems' FlashDisk competes with RAID storage systems from EMC (NYSE: EMC), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP), and Sun (NASDAQ: SUNW).

About Winchester Systems Inc.

Founded in 1981, Winchester Systems Inc. is dedicated to providing technically superior disk and tape solutions to a diverse clientele worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies. Since 1989, customers such as Honeywell, MCI, Motorola, Boeing, Tropicana, Siemens, Ceridian, Deloitte & Touche and the U.S. Coast Guard have deployed Winchester Systems' FlashDisk solutions with great success. Many customers report that FlashDisk accelerates their disk-intensive applications by 100 percent to 500 percent. FlashDisk massively parallel cached RAID solutions deliver fast, simple, reliable and cost-effective access to server data.

Winchester Systems pioneered the concept of “plug-and-play” OpenRAID storage by adhering to strict industry SCSI standards without relying on proprietary host software, drivers, or storage managers. Winchester Systems' FlashDisk competes with RAID storage systems from EMC (NYSE: EMC), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP), and Sun (NASDAQ: SUNW). More information is available at http://www.winsys.com, or by calling 800-325-3700.

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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