AUSTRALIA, Sydney - 12 June, 2007 Network Appliance, Inc.
(NASDAQ: NTAP), a leader in advanced networked storage solutions,
and the industry's fastest growing fibre channel (FC) SAN
vendor¹ continues to enhance its SAN interoperability and
broad switch portfolio by announcing the worldwide availability of
the Brocade 5000 Fabric Switch. The Brocade 5000 is the first
switch to support connectivity to native Brocade Fabric OS®
(fabric operating system) or Brocade M-Enterprise OS (McDATA OS).
It also provides the lowest power dissipation for a midrange
switch, with savings of 20 percent over the previous Brocade switch
models and 76 percent over competing products, contributing to a
lower total cost of ownership.
The Brocade 5000 provides NetApp customers greater ease in SAN
deployment and management by allowing non-disruptive expansion of
existing SAN fabrics with existing management tools that deliver
enhanced fabric-wide performance. Customers can also benefit from
increased switch to switch bandwidth (up to 32 Gbp/s) and dynamic
path selection, which allows customers to balance loads across
inter-switch links (ISL's), also known as "trunks". Customers can
"trunk" distances as far as 250 km, allowing them to connect more
data centers and access more data with higher speeds and greater
availability. Additionally, eight virtual channels provide quality
of service capabilities to help customers optimise the performance
of their applications, while ISL trunking optimises performance and
simplifies the management of multi-switch SAN fabrics that delivers
fabric-wide performance enhancements.
"Brocade and NetApp are aligned in our commitment to help IT
management succeed in the next generation of networked storage
solutions by providing customers with improved SAN interoperability
and a lower total cost of ownership," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade
Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. "The advanced capabilities
of the NetApp® storage systems coupled with the new Brocade
5000 switch provide customers with industry-leading
interoperability and investment protection."
"NetApp is excited to offer the Brocade 5000 switch. It further
strengthens our position as the fastest growing FC SAN vendor in
the market today," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions
Marketing at Network Appliance. "With this new offering, our
customers will easily be able to adapt and expand their FC SAN
networks while protecting their existing investments and lowering
their power consumption needs."
To complement the addition of the new FC SAN switch support, NetApp
offers SAN design and implementation services and can assist
customers in developing a well-documented design and detailed
implementation plan when integrating NetApp FC SAN or IP SAN
storage systems into existing IT environments. The service allows
customers to achieve a smooth and efficient deployment, increases
overall utilisation, and, in most cases, provides near-zero
downtime during integration. For more information on NetApp
services, visit www.netapp.com/support.
About Network Appliance
Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions
for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992,
Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner
firsts that simplify data management. Information about Network
Appliance™ solutions and services is available at www-au.netapp.com.
NetApp is a registered trademark and Network Appliance is a
trademark of Network Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other
countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be
treated as such.
¹IDC Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker Q3 2006,
December 2006 and Gartner, Inc. Market Share: NAS/Unified Storage,
Worldwide, 2000-2005, April 2006
Media Contacts:
Mark Heers
Director Marketing and Alliance
Network Appliance
Tel: +61 2 9979 5623
mheers@netapp.com
Rachel York
Max Australia
Tel: +61 2 9954 3492
Rachel.york@maxaustralia.com.au