Sun Microsystems Expands Leading Storage Portfolio with New World-Record Setting Modular Disk Low-Cost Array (LCA)

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced it has expanded its leading storage portfolio to include the Sun StorageTek ST2500 Low Cost Array (LCA), Sun's first serial-attached SCSI (SAS) storage array and newest member of the modular disk storage family that works with the Solaris Operating System (OS) and other heterogeneous data center environments. Sun also announced next-generation data management capabilities for its industry-standard storage portfolio that include the addition of partitioning functionality to its StorageTek SL8500 enterprise tape library and secure encryption to its Sun StorageTek T10000 FICON tape drive.


As more Web 2.0 companies and existing enterprises like Elektrofilm, Rhythm and Hues, and Thought Equity Motion move their growing core businesses to the Internet, the way the world manages data is changing to support this resulting data growth. Sun recently became the first major vendor to begin to open source its software stack through the OpenSolaris community (http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-04/sunflash.20070410.1.xml) and today's product portfolio enhancements reaffirm the company's commitment to deliver end-to-end open storage solutions that better protect, archive and retrieve customer data, their most important asset.

"Sun is using innovation and open standards to reach out to new customers in the explosive Web 2.0 market that require applications that work with low-cost storage and which horizontally scale," said Nigel Dessau, senior vice president of storage marketing and business operations, Sun Microsystems. "Starting at less than $10,000, the new ST2500 array line provides the perfect entry point for these customers to use industry standard platforms to support their growing businesses."

Sun's Entry Point SAS Storage Array: Three Times Better Performance at Less than One-Half the Cost

Sun continues to enhance its strong storage infrastructure portfolio with its first SAS storage array: the world-record-setting Sun StorageTek ST2500 Low Cost Array (LCA) that is priced under $10,000 and which was designed as a data access and protection tier for emerging and established mid-tier customers and enterprises. Setting a new world record for price/performance, the ST2500 demonstrated 3x better performance at less than 1/2 the cost of HP storage and other competing solutions.(1)

The 2500 series arrays join five other storage products that are available as Sun Systems Packs, which make it easier for Sun customers to acquire the right level of support with their hardware.

Product features include: Application-oriented provisioning using Sun's StorageTek Common Array Manager (CAM); support for either FC or SAS host interfaces; small footprint at six drives-per rack unit; reliable data protection with a fully redundant RAID; and remote connection to Sun Service. The iSCSI version of ST2500 is expected to be available later in CY'07. This Tier 2 storage product includes a common set of management tools that allows customers to simply scale their data requirements to Tier 1 (fast access) data devices - all under the same management module - and then scale to the ST6140 or ST6540.

Sun Announces Support for LTO 4 Generation Tape Drives to Address Growing Data Storage Needs

Sun is pleased to announce the addition of the fourth generation of LTO drive technology in its tape portfolio, an open standard LTO consortium that Sun has supported from the beginning. The LTO 4 FC Tape Drive delivers high capacity (800 GB/cartridge native) and increased performance (120MB/sec) for customers' open systems environments to improve storage density in new or existing libraries and allow for easy upgrades to newer technology in the same automation footprint. LTO 4 FC drives will initially be available in Sun's tape automation products, including the StorageTek SL8500, L1400 and SL500, later this quarter and additional interfaces and support are expected to follow in the next quarter.

Other Sun end-to-end storage product enhancements announced at Storage Networking World include:

• SL8500 partitioning – a new feature of the award winning SL8500 tape library to further enable secure data archiving: Partitioning will help allow customers to keep separate open systems and mainframe functions within the same library. The partitioning capability in the SL8500 enables seamless consolidation of both open systems and mainframe environments, further enhancing simplicity and cost savings in the data center;


• T10000 FICON tape drive is now available "crypto-ready": When purchased in conjunction with Sun StorageTek Crypto Key Management Station, this drive allows customers to implement Sun's encryption solution in the mainframe environment. The T10000 FICON Crypto-Ready tape drive is available behind VSM as well, enabling the premier mainframe virtual solution secure data protection capabilities. T10000 drives are supported with essential services like Encryption, Implementation, and Sun Migration Services for the ESCON to FICON Technology, which include three key steps that are tailored to customer requirements — the migration workshop, architecture assessment, and implementation service;


• The availability of the Sun StorageTek Storage Archive Manager 4.6 and Sun StorageTek QFS 4.6 software: Saves customers money by providing automated storage tiering and archiving. The 4.6 release significantly improves management and monitoring, availability, scalability, performance, and data validation;


• The availability of the Sun Virtual Tape Library Plus (VTL+): Bridges the gap between disk and tape – offering a performance and cost effective solution for business to create copies of their data for quick and simple access, while leveraging all the cost benefits of tiered tape storage behind disk;


• Serial attached-SCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) are also being announced to support the ST2500 array; includes both PCI-X and PCI-E SAS HBAs.

Pricing and Availability

The ST2500 Lost Cost Array (LCA) starts at less than $10,000 and is available immediately. The Sun T10000 FICON tape drive available crypto-ready starts at $44,000 and the Sun Virtual Tape Library Plus (VTL+) begins at $135,000 highly configured.

For more information for all product families can be found online at http://www.sun.com/storage



(1) New arrays deliver the first SPC-2 SAS results of RAID 5 at 735.62 SPC-2 MBPS @ $45.91 $/SPC-2 MBPS, ASU Capacity 2,177.548GB, Protection Level RAID 5, Total Price $33,772, Identifier# B00021and Mirroring at 730.04 SPC-2 MBPS @ $46.26 $/SPC-2 MBPS, ASU Capacity 1,282.048GB, Protection Level Mirroring, Total Price $33,772, Identifier# B00022 (www.storageperformance.org/results) with 2.5x better performance at almost half the price than HP's StorageWorks 1000 of Mirroring at 285.39 SPC-2 MBPS @ $73.12 $/SPC-2 MBPS, ASU Capacity 362.925, Protection Level Mirroring, Total Price $20,868 Identifier# B00020; Sun StorageTek 2540 array sets new world records for SPC-2 price/performance and delivers best SPC-2 throughput performance in its class.