Monday,
June 17, 2002 — San Diego, Calif.—June 17,
2002—StoneFly Networks™, the innovator of the first
simple, affordable, end-to-end IP SAN appliances, today
announced that its new class of Storage Concentrators™
which combine the functionality of an iSCSI (Internet small
computer system interface)-based storage router, bridge and
an extensible logical volume manager, is providing its
customer base with an end-to-end storage provisioning
solution that installs in minutes to enable easy-to-manage,
centralized pools of storage. Using the prolific Ethernet
network infrastructure, Storage Concentrators consolidate
SAN block data to move intelligence to the network core to
allow easy management of storage assets, as well as
interoperability and scalability, to substantially reduce
the complexity and total cost of ownership of storage area
networks (SANs).
“StoneFly’s Storage Concentrators are the first storage
provisioning solutions to deliver the benefits of
traditional SANs through inexpensive, easy-to-maintain IP
SAN appliances, to provide our customers with a simplified
way to manage storage assets, increase administrative
productivity and reduce network complexity,” said Jeffrey
Schnabel, vice president of marketing, StoneFly Networks,
Inc. “Storage Concentrators deliver a much simpler, and
more cost effective SAN solution than traditional methods,
and priced at under $10,000, they provide an incredible
return on investment for any company. Storage Concentrators
are very easy to install and manage, and with software
upgrades available via the Internet, they significantly
reduce on-going support costs and overall total cost of
ownership.”
Storage Concentrators Deliver Unprecedented Customer
Benefits
For the first time, customers can implement powerful,
simple-to-use IP SANs. In less than 15 minutes, Storage
Concentrators turn standard IP networks into intelligent IP
storage networks that support existing applications and
traffic to provide customers with the ability to optimize
storage resources as well as the scalability to handle
growing storage requirements.
“We're running multiple application servers using Computer
Associates for backup and needed a way to easily consolidate
our tape and disk backups,” said Gary Davis, system
analyst, HME Electronics. “StoneFly's Storage
Concentrators are truly plug-and-play. We had a full
functioning IP SAN in minutes utilizing the graphical user
interface. We've been able to reduce our backup and restore
times using disk-to-disk technology, and extend the life and
productivity of our servers.”
Unlike other offerings on the market today, Storage
Concentrators provide in-band iSCSI block-level storage
pooling to enable customers to access storage without the
need to know where the devices are located on the network,
or how they are configured. Through effective storage
pooling, Storage Concentrators deliver virtual volumes to
hosts connected over industry-standard Ethernet networks,
without the need for host-based agents or a separate
metadata out-of-band storage management device.
“StoneFly's Storage Concentrators were very easy to
install and we’ve found that its logical volume manager
and easy to use GUI has enabled us to quickly reconfigure
our storage assets to enable better performance without
having to move drives around,” said Scott Brehm, manager,
Information Technology, Jaycor. “We're also seeing faster
backup and restore times by being able to back up to a
virtual iSCSI disk. It is clear that StoneFly’s Storage
Concentrator will increase our administrative productivity
by allowing us to efficiently manage our storage and will
allow us to maintain our current network infrastructure-in
short, Storage
Concentrators will provide us with a far simpler alternative
to traditional SAN solutions.”
About Storage Concentrators
Storage Concentrators are ideally suited for small and
mid-tier enterprises, and workgroups and departments within
larger enterprises. By using the emerging iSCSI standard,
TCP/IP and Gigabit Ethernet, StoneFly’s new i1000 and
i1500 Storage Concentrators add intelligent block-level
logical volume management to existing IP networks to pool
existing and new storage assets, thus providing more
efficient utilization, streamlined management, rapid
deployment and reconfiguration of storage, and reduced
SAN-based backup and restore times. Storage Concentrators
feature an easy-to-use HTML-based GUI to allow
administrators to easily manage storage operations,
including controlling distributed Storage Concentrators,
centrally and securely from anywhere on the Internet. The
Storage Concentrator i1500 adds high availability features
including dual hot-swappable power supplies, and RAID
mirroring of the OS and metadata.
Availability
StoneFly’s feature-rich i1000 and i1500 Storage
Concentrators are highly cost-effective at a MSRP of $7,995
and $9,995 respectively, and are now available through the
company’s channel distribution partners and select
resellers. For future releases, i1000 and i1500 customers
will have a clear upgrade path via the Internet. StoneFly is
committed to providing unparalleled customer support through
its advanced call center, customer-accessible knowledge base
and 24X7X365 four-hour onsite parts and labor support.
About StoneFly Networks, Inc.
StoneFly Networks™, Inc. is based in San Diego, California
and was founded in April 2000 to develop simple, affordable
IP SAN appliances that add intelligent storage management to
IP networks transforming them into IP storage area networks
(SANs). The company’s complete line of Storage
Concentrators™ combine the functionality of an iSCSI-based
storage router, bridge and provisioning manager to provide
an end-to-end storage provisioning solution that reduces the
cost and complexity of managing storage assets. Storage
Concentrators are based on StoneFly’s patent-pending
StoneFusion™ storage networking architecture to
consolidate and optimize data storage to reduce total cost
of ownership (TCO) and increase return on investment (ROI).
StoneFly Networks is a member of the Storage Networking
Association (SNIA) and the founding member of the IP Storage
Institute (IPSI). For more information, please visit the
company’s Web site at
www.stonefly.com.
iSCSI SAN Appliance
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