[0] nStor Introduces Storage Consolidation SAN Solution; SANStor Provides Maximum Availability and Fail-Safe Operation.

Business Editors

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 31, 2000

nStor Technologies (AMEX:NSO) today announced SANStor, the first in a series of Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions designed for specific SAN opportunities. This SANStor solution consists of nStor storage technology, Ancor Fibre Channel switches, HP SAN Manager software and QLogic Fibre Channel host bus adapters, all tuned to address the storage consolidation market.

"In today's highly fragmented SAN market, a customer's data center can too easily be turned into a test site as vendors try to get different components to work together to solve a particular need," commented Larry Hemmerich, nStor President and CEO. "SANStor addresses that problem by combining our innovative storage capabilities, professional services that include assessment, design, installation and support, and tested and certified third-party products into a complete, seamless SAN solution with a single point of contact for support."

"Our partners have all agreed to test their components for interoperability, but we've added a critical second tier of testing," Hemmerich added. "We actually build storage consolidation scenarios that reflect the market toward which our solutions are targeted, and then make sure our solution works in that environment. If we say it's designed to operate with up to ten nodes, you can believe we've operated it with 10 nodes in our labs first. We also believe this lets us better serve as the knowledgeable single point of contact that so many customers want."

The Storage Consolidation Market

NT- and Sun-based servers have become the dominant players in server-centric enterprise networks. Typically, an enterprise computing environment consists of multiple servers, each with large, and often redundant, disk storage systems attached, often utilizing older SCSI technology. Adding more storage capacity in this environment is a tedious, often difficult job that consumes an inordinate amount of expensive technician's time. Additionally, the requirement to facilitate campus-wide disaster protection has all but obsoleted SCSI as a go-forward enterprise storage medium. What is needed is a way to more easily consolidate storage, facilitate the addition of new capacity and provide for storing redundant data real-time in locations on the corporate campus removed from the data center to add disaster protection.

As the market has moved toward a storage-centric model, SANs and Fibre Channel technology provides a way to solve these issues. Fibre Channel allows users to easily access storage that is up to 2 kilometers from the servers. At the same time, SANs can easily allow storage to be snapped into a common data pool accessible by all servers. However, a lack of firm standards has meant that SANs have not been easy to install and individual components have not always worked together well. As a result, SANs have most often been deployed only in larger enterprises, typically by providers who sell closed, very expensive systems. SANStor is designed to address these needs for the open systems market.

SANStor for Storage Consolidation

This release of SANStor is designed to address the needs of storage consolidation environments, and consists of nStor Fibre Channel storage technology combined with Ancor SANBox high availability Fibre Channel switches, Q-Logic 2200 Fibre Channel host bus adapters, and HP SAN Manager software. The SAN Manager software suite provides a single interface between multiple hosts and all storage devices within the SAN. SAN Manager supports LUN mapping, provides storage access security and allows storage reconfiguration without system reboots.

"We have already installed this solution in Beta sites and end-users have seen first-hand the benefits of our approach," added Hemmerich. "As we move ahead, we will offer other solutions designed to address particular needs in today's open systems market. These additional solutions will include some that work in conjunction with our storage consolidation solution, as well as others that are designed to go after entirely different computing environments."

nStor has already taken orders for the SANStor storage consolidation solution, Hemmerich added, and plans its first customer shipment in late May.

nStor's SAN-Certain Program

A key component of nStor's SAN strategy is its SAN-Certain program. nStor has selected a small group of partners who supply components for the various SAN solutions nStor builds. Each partner participates in interoperability testing to ensure all components work together. nStor then takes a particular set of components needed for one of its SAN solutions and adds another layer of testing to ensure the collective set of products work together, perform as anticipated, and meet the specifications of the solution. nStor then acts as a single point of contact for the entire solution rather than having customers seek support from individual component manufacturers.

"In the case of SANStor for storage consolidation," Hemmerich said, "we've tuned and tested it for specifically defined storage consolidation environments and will take responsibility for its seamless integration into our customer's data center. By the time we install a SANStor storage consolidation solution at a customer site, we'll have a lot of experience using it just the way they're going to use it. We believe SAN-Certain makes SANStor a winning solution that the market will wholeheartedly endorse."

About nStor

Headquartered in San Diego, California, nStor Technologies is a leading provider of highly integrated, enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions for computing operations that include Windows NT, Unix and Linux platforms. Designed for storage-intensive environments such as the Internet or other mission-critical applications, nStor's full range of products include the NexStor 802F and the NexStor 18F, the highest density Fibre Channel storage enclosures in the industry, as well as a complete set of SCSI, Tape and storage management solutions. nStor trades on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol NSO, and markets its products through a direct sales force and a global network of reseller and OEM partners. Additional information about nStor can be found by visiting the company's web site at www.nstor.com.

This press release includes statements that may constitute "forward-looking" statement, usually containing the words "believe," "estimated," "project," "expect," "anticipate," or similar expressions. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause of contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, continued acceptance of the Company's products in the marketplace, competitive factors, dependence upon third-party, vendors and other risks detailed in the Company's periodic report filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By making these forward-looking statements, the Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release. nStor is a registered trademark of nStor Technologies, Inc.