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SAN DIEGO, Calif. – March 29, 2006 -- The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) today announced that it will showcase a wide variety of 4 Gigabit per second Fibre Channel (4GFC) and tiered storage solutions from a broad range of leading vendors and solution providers in its demonstration (Booth G-10), entitled, “Future Proof your Storage,” at Storage Networking World (SNW), which will be held April 3-6, 2006 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, California.
Industry acceptance of 4GFC is at all time high and with PCI Express technology the performance of 4GFC has broken all performance barriers. The goal of the FCIA’s “Future Proof your Storage” demonstration is to highlight the unprecedented speed of 4GFC, and demonstrate its flexible role in creating cost-effective, tiered storage solutions. SNW attendees can witness first-hand a wide variety of commercially available 4GFC offerings that are well suited for high-bandwidth applications like data backup and transactional processing.
"The FCIA is delighted to work with the leaders in tiered storage solutions and 4GFC," said Tom Hammond-Doel, chairman, FCIA. "Since the introduction of 4GFC in 2005, the industry has quickly adopted the technology because of its flexibility in creating cost-effective tiered storage solutions and because of its performance in running high-bandwidth applications. The FCIA tiered storage demonstration 'Future Proof Your Storage' shows why Fibre Channel is the price/performance leader in storage infrastructures, and is truly the storage of business."
By offering full compatibility with past (1GFC and 2GFC) and future (8GFC) purchases, 4GFC also delivers on its promise of investment protection for storage networking customers. In addition, tiered storage allows customers to maintain true system flexibility and investment protection by providing customers with the flexibility to mix and match the type of drives in their enclosures according to the needs of their applications.
“As a global storage leader, LSI Logic provides a complete family of 4GFC solutions that enable early market adoption,” said Harry Mason, director of industry marketing, Storage Components Group, LSI Logic. “From custom silicon to ICs and HBAs, out to RAID solutions, software and storage systems, customers can rely on LSI for a full range of serial technology products. By partnering with FCIA and its member companies, LSI actively helps drive next-generation industry standards and technology adoption.”
“Channel products to capitalize on their existing investments in fully compatible legacy systems," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corporation. "By using Emulex’s 4GFC solutions and tiered storage products currently in development, such as FC-SATA, these innovators are protecting previous investments while lowering costs and benefiting from the flexibility afforded by new applications that require the increased bandwidth."
"Fibre Channel remains a viable solution today and the adoption of FC-SATA (a new FC protocol extension) will scale to meet the growing demand for flexible, cost-effective tiered storage solutions," said Mike Fitzpatrick, senior research executive, Fujitsu Computer Products of America. "The availability of 4GFC performance and interoperable nearline Serial ATA solutions protect enterprise investments, and build a foundation for future enhancements and cost per gigabit savings."
“Hitachi has been a leader in developing advanced interfaces and was first in the industry to ship 4GFC drives, which have ushered in new levels of performance, reliability and availability for large enterprise customers,” said Marcia Bencala, vice president, strategy and product planning, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “We are excited to showcase the Ultrastar15K147 and demonstrate the performance benefits of 4GFC for storage area networking, file sharing and other mission-critical applications. Hitachi's Deskstar 7K500 drives will also be on display at Storage Networking World to highlight the benefits of 3Gb/s SATA for tiered storage environments."
“Intel has been a key player in moving the industry to 4GFC,” said Robert Zona, marketing director, Intel's Optical Platform Division. “The backwards and forwards-compatibility designed into our optical modules provides seamless transitions from one generation to the next. Intel’s success in the 4GFC space is helping to facilitate close working collaboration with key industry players in developing a time-to-market 8GFC product.”
"Fibre Channel is the dominant and proven storage interconnect for storage area networking, and will continue to meet the business-critical needs of customers across a range of verticals, including finance, banking, insurance, telecommunications and utilities - now, and well into the future,” said Bob Williamsen, senior director of strategic marketing, McDATA and FCIA board member. “As a leading provider of Fibre Channel switching products, McDATA is pleased to showcase its award-winning Sphereon™ 4700 Fabric Switch and SpectraNet™ Replicator for Exchange in the FCIA tiered storage demonstration."
"Tiered storage is the ideal way for enterprises to maximize their data resources,” said Frank Berry, vice president corporate marketing, QLogic Corporation. “Fibre Channel provides businesses with the ability to network servers and storage at the fastest I/O speed available, four gigabits per second, while allowing SAN administrators to incorporate storage systems with a wide variety of interfaces at the drive level, including SATA, SAS, SCSI or Fibre Channel, which best suit their performance and budget needs.”
"SATA-IO has developed a great relationship with the FCIA in the tiered storage arena," says Joni Clark, SATA-IO marketing chairwoman and Seagate’s manager of SATA marketing. "This demonstration shows SATA and Fibre Channel technologies successfully working together showing the industry how SATA technology works within a Fibre Channel infrastructure as an advanced/nearline storage application."
"As IT professionals require more storage system performance with easier manageability and added flexibility, the need has never been greater for 4GFC Fibre Channel solutions optimized for these demanding enterprise environments," said Sherman Black, senior vice president and general manager, Seagate’s Enterprise Storage Group. “These requirements have driven Seagate to continue advancing its Cheetah family of 4GFC enterprise-class drives as well as to provide unique solutions such as the
NL35 Series FC drive, the industry's only native FC nearline drive that enables high capacity, cost-effective Fibre Channel-based tiered storage architectures."
"Sierra Logic is proud to be showcasing our tiered storage technology within two platforms here at SNW," said Bryan Cowger, vice president of marketing, Sierra Logic. "Our first product, the SR-1216 Silicon Storage Router, within the LSI Logic Engenio system, enables tiered storage solutions within a 2GFC environment. Sierra Logic's BR-2401 Silicon Storage Bridge, demonstrated today in the Xyratex system, delivers 4GFC connectivity while using low-cost SATA drives, even allowing the same storage system to contain FC and SATA drives side-by-side. These Sierra Logic solutions demonstrate that FC investments can be readily preserved using SATA drives, the bulk storage disk drive of choice across the industry."
"SiliconStor is teaming with FCIA storage industry leaders to show how the Fibre Channel system infrastructure is evolving to address the tiered storage trend by enabling seamless integration of either Fibre Channel or SATA hard drives,” said Joel Warford vice president marketing, SiliconStor. “FC-SATA technology will further accelerate adoption of SATA drives while allowing systems companies to maintain their existing Fibre Channel infrastructure. We intend to fully support this emerging standard as a complement to the SiliconStor AAMUX technology for enabling enterprise-class SATA drive connectivity."
“4GFC offers unprecedented performance and scalability demanded in today’s high bandwidth applications. With the introduction of the 4G SBOD and the support of SATA II drives in a 4GFC environment, Xyratex continues its commitment of offering best-of-breed solutions to the OEM and Channel markets,” said Tim Piper, director of marketing, Xyratex. “Xyratex is pleased to be working with the FCIA and its member companies as part of this demonstration.”
About the Fibre Channel Industry Association
The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a nonprofit international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators, developers, systems vendors, industry professionals and end users. With 80 member companies and FCIA affiliates in the United States and Japan, FCIA is committed to delivering a broad base of Fibre Channel infrastructure to support a wide array of industry applications within the mass storage and IT-based arenas. FCIA working groups focus on specific aspects of the technology, targeting both vertical and horizontal markets including storage, video, networking and SAN management. For more information on FCIA, please visit our web site: www.fibrechannel.org, contact us: info@fibrechannel.org or call 1-415-561-6270.
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