IBM Delivers on SAN Initiative with New Solutions and Industry's Largest SAN Testing Center

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SOMERS, NY - 15 Dec 1999: -- IBM* today extended its Storage Area Network (SAN) initiative with five new SAN solutions based on its Netfinity* server line and the opening of the industry's most extensive facility for testing SAN solutions.

The solutions enable resellers, distributors and large enterprise customers to implement robust SANs that securely store and manage data in industry-standard, heterogeneous environments. IBM also announced SAN management applications from five leading software companies that have been tested for interoperability with Netfinity servers. In addition, IBM announced new functions for its Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Manager * software.

"Companies are looking to open SAN solutions to keep up with the explosive storage demands of e-business," said Walter Raizner, vice president for marketing and strategy, IBM Technology Group. "IBM is unique in its ability to bring together a combination of storage, services, servers and software to take advantage of this important trend."

IBM's SAN initiative allows companies to share and manage their technology resources -- application servers, storage subsystems, networking hardware and software -- to provide transparent access to information anywhere, any time, independent of vendor computing systems and software applications. By separating information management from information processing, IBM's SAN solutions provide flexibility between server and storage elements.

The five new SAN solutions address specific enterprise storage requirements including:

Netfinity Disk and Tape Pooling allows multiple servers in diverse locations to utilize a common pool of SAN-attached disk and tape storage devices in a non-clustered environment. This configuration reduces backup time, helps improve disaster protection, allows centralized management and a phased approach to implementing a SAN.
IBM Availability Extensions for Microsoft** Cluster Service allows eight clustered servers to share disk storage in a redundant, highly available and scaleable solution. As the industry's only availability extensions for MSCS, this configuration provides more balanced performance of the disk subsystem, significant manageability, problem determination and resolution. High availability, scaleable tape backup matching solutions are also available.
Netfinity Advanced Cluster Enabler for Oracle*** Parallel Server provides expansive scalability, redundancy and fibre channel protection while leveraging Oracle's database clustering solutions on Windows NT**. Also available are high availability, scaleable tape backup matching solutions.
Netfinity Server and Storage Consolidation allows multiple servers in diverse locations to share storage resources in a non-clustered environment . Leveraging IBM's Enterprise Storage Server or "Shark", this SAN solution offers 11.2(1) terabytes of data, meeting the storage needs of most small and medium-sized businesses. System performance is optimized through a variety of host attachment choices such as fibre channel, ESCON, UltraSCSI and FICON.
Distance Cluster with Remote Mirroring enables the separation of the two server nodes in a Microsoft MSCS two-node cluster allowing local data to be mirrored to the server in a remote location up to 10 Km away. If there is a local site failure, the remote node can resume the operation without impacting data. As the industry's only Microsoft-certified remote mirroring solution, this SAN is a fast and reliable disaster readiness solution based on SSA technology.

"As IBM continues to develop and support new enterprise storage configurations, we reinforce our position as the industry's premier total SAN solutions provider," added Jim Gargan, director, Product Marketing, IBM Netfinity Brand. "IBM is delivering on its X-Architecture initiative by extending enterprise SAN solutions based on Netfinity servers and storage options to provide customers the best solutions for storing and managing critical e-business data."

SAN Interoperability Lab
IBM can help businesses implement a successful SAN solution by customizing and testing these and other storage configurations at the new IBM SAN Interoperability Lab. Located at IBM Global Services' National Testing Center in Gaithersburg, Maryland, it offers customers the ability to evaluate and prototype SAN solutions for reliability, scalability and security. The 80,000 sq. ft. facility also offers customers SAN performance management testing, stress testing and SAN proof of concept testing.

Extensive testing suites help customer IT teams to bunker down for weeks to simulate and test SAN configurations connected to hundreds of PCs and servers simultaneously around the clock. In addition, the SAN Lab is linked to 17 IBM regional test centers throughout North America, allowing customers to combine and coordinate resources to conduct remote tests. The center also can run e-business applications utilizing SAN Tape and Disk pooling solutions.

With the center's technical assets and capability of replicating true production environments -- such as generating real-time traffic conditions from real client loads using a client's own business applications -- the IBM SAN Interoperability Lab at Gaithersburg is unparalleled in the industry:

The Lab can process 10,000 million instructions per second and has 40 trillion characters of disk storage for testing and enough fibre-optic cabling to stretch from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles and back again.
It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, and just in case, has diesel-powered back-up generators to ensure maximize testing up time.
The Lab also is unique in that it can leverage an enormous variety of industry hardware and software already in place at IBM's National Testing Center, used by IBM Global Services to conduct performance testing of customers' IT environments.
On hand, and used interoperably, are hundreds of NT, UNIX, enterprise server and storage subsystems from Brocade, Compaq, Crossroads, Dell, EMC, HDS, HP, IBM, McData, Sun, STK and other networking and hardware vendors. The SAN Lab also features IBM's new Enterprise Storage Server or "Shark."

Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Manager 7.0
IBM also upgraded its Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Subsystem with new Storage Manager software. This new software, with improved functionality, can be utilized across multiple Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Subsystems in SANs. Designed to support the increasingly complex fibre channel storage product portfolio, the Java-based Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Manager v7.0 offers:

Storage partitioning -- a compelling new feature that enables consolidating storage from multiple Netfinity servers to a single RAID storage subsystem thus reducing the overall storage management costs by creating "pools" of available shared storage;
An integrated, easy-to-use management console with intuitive graphical interface;
Automated device discovery and one-button configuration to reduce the complexity of configuring the RAID storage subsystem;
Background data scrubbing, designed to reduce or eliminate problems in the physical storage media;
Greater flexibility in configuring large storage arrays.

Starting today, the Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Manager 7.0 will be bundled with new Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage Subsystems and available as a free upgrade to existing customers, who can download this software from http://www.pc.ibm.com/support .

IBM ServerProven(2) SAN and Storage Management Applications
To complement the five new enterprise SAN solutions, IBM is testing the following SAN and storage management applications for interoperability as part of the IBM ServerProven Program:

HP SureStore E SAN Manager LUN Management (LM) enables IT Professionals to manage a Fibre Channel SAN in a highly-efficient manner. SAN Manager LM allows heterogeneous or homogeneous systems to utilize a common pool of storage devices on a storage area network.
Legato NetWorker helps organizations easily protect vast amounts of critical distributed data by offering heterogeneous platform support, automated media handling, interoperable tape format, data stream parallelism, remote tape management, and automatic integration with the popular storage management frameworks in the network environment. Legato GEMS SmartMedia SAN technology enables applications to share tape libraries while enhancing the management of tracked media. Together, Legato NetWorker and Legato GEMS SmartMedia provide LAN-free backup and recovery for mission-critical SAN-based applications.
Mercury SANergy Control enables multiple Windows NT**, Macintosh, AIX and Solaris UNIX systems to concurrently share SAN-based storage devices, file systems and application data at full media speeds.
Tivoli Storage Manager enables SAN tape pooling across NT and UNIX, LAN-free backup and restore as well as server-free data movement. This enterprise storage management solution is completely scaleable and platform portable from MVS to UNIX to NT to PDA. It also provide patented technologies such as instant archive and network free recovery, restoring data at 100 time the speed of other traditional LAN-based recovery options. Tivoli Storage Management is compatible with over 35 platforms and 250 storage devices. Tivoli Data Protection for Workgroups delivers non-stop application availability and unmatched protection for e-commerce and web servers running Windows NT, Windows 2000***, and Novell. Simple recovery technology helps non-IT professionals to quickly and easily restore Intel servers with little software or hardware knowledge.
VERITAS Backup Exec provides database protection and storage management options designed for complex messaging and transactional intensive databases for Windows NT and NetWare environments. The VERITAS Backup Exec Shared Storage Option for Windows NT or NetWare allows multiple distributed backup servers to share common, centralized storage devices that are connected over a fibre channel storage area network for greater efficiency and fault tolerance, providing a LAN-free backup solution. VERITAS NetBackup, a heterogeneous, enterprise solution for Windows NT and UNIX environments,
automates backup operations for thousands of users across multiple servers, and consolidates management of storage devices, including those in SAN environments.

Today's announcements expand IBM's portfolio of enterprise SAN solutions using Netfinity Servers and storage options, as well as leading storage and SAN Management applications. Introduced this summer and currently available today, IBM SAN solutions include the following tested configurations:

Fibre Channel Attached Tape Storage -- a highly available and scaleable building block for external storage centralization offering centralized backup of remote sites while providing disaster tolerance.
Microsoft Cluster with Tape Pooling -- a two node, entry-level configuration that enables servers in diverse locations to share one or more tape drives or libraries, while maintaining a single point of control and management.
Server Consolidation with Tape Pooling -- a highly available and scaleable storage solution that can help to reduce the total cost of ownership by sharing one or more tape libraries.

Pricing is available upon request.

For additional information about Netfinity SAN enterprise storage solutions, visit: http://www.pc.ibm.com/ww/netfinity/san . For more information on IBM Global Services' testing centers, visit http://www.as.ibm.com/asus.svs2.html. For information about IBM's SAN initiative, visit our Web site at: http://www.ibm.com/san.

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* IBM and Netfinity are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation.

** Microsoft, Windows and Windows NT are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

All other product and/or company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

(1 ) One terabyte equals 1000 billion bytes; actual storage capacity may vary.

(2) IBM makes no warranties, expressed or implied, regarding non-IBM ServerProven products and services, including but not limited to Year 2000 readiness and the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.

IBM news releases are available on the Internet, via the IBM Home Page at:http://www.ibm.com/pc.

For general information about IBM and this or other IBM products, dial the IBM Personal Systems Group HelpCenter at 1-800-772-2227. For technical-related and customer support questions, end-users and customers may call the IBM HelpCenter at 1-800-772-2227 and enter the appropriate number for Options products.