Adaptec FileArray Evaluation Kits Shipping; Breakthrough in Storage I/O Results in Increased Performance and No Downtime.MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 30, 1998--Adaptec, Inc. announced the availability of its FileArray OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) The rebranding of equipment and selling it. The term initially referred to the company that made the products (the "original" manufacturer), but eventually became widely used to refer to the organization that buys the products and evaluation kit today. The technology was announced November 12, 1997. FileArray offers customers benefits beyond those found in conventional RAID solutions. It delivers scaleable input/output (I/O (Input/Output) The transfer of data between the CPU and a peripheral device. Every transfer is an output from one device and an input to another. See PC input/output. I/O - Input/Output ) performance, enhanced fault tolerance See fault tolerant. (architecture) fault tolerance - 1. The ability of a system or component to continue normal operation despite the presence of hardware or software faults. This often involves some degree of redundancy. 2. , and the ability to manage storage resources online, significantly reducing planned system and information downtime. The technology is designed for mission- and business-critical enterprise applications, such as databases that require high performance and data availability. FileArray's capabilities enable IS departments and LAN administrators to save valuable time and money as they upgrade, expand, and maintain their data storage investments. FileArray technology will be an integral component of future Adaptec RAID solutions; the kit provides OEMs with a platform they can use to begin evaluating this technology. Three "components" make up the kit: -0-
-- PCI-to-SCSI FileArray controller card
-- Adaptec FileArray software, which includes FileArray file system,
RAID software, and drivers for Windows NT Server
-- Adaptec FileArray Storage Tool (FAST) software for online storage
configuration and management.
-0- "Today's Information Age enterprise demands fast, continuous, and reliable access to data," said Steve Marchesano, marketing manager of Adaptec's File Array Solutions product group. "Information bottlenecks impair an organization's ability to compete effectively. Adaptec's no-downtime approach to storage management keeps vital data moving and enables online storage creation, expansion, transformation, and snapshot backup without interrupting user access to data." Market trends driving the need for Adaptec FileArray Two market trends drive the need for Adaptec's new FileArray technology: the migration of mission-critical enterprise applications away from mainframes to PC servers running Windows NT, and the growing emphasis in corporate IS departments on information availability. As PC servers running NT assume more of the mission-critical computing workload, customers are looking to those servers to provide the same levels of data availability and redundancy that their mainframe predecessors provided. IS departments are not just concerned with higher data throughput. They are also focused on sustaining enterprise computing performance over time, which means the ability to efficiently grow I/O capacity, while providing users with uninterrupted access to data. The cost of downtime, planned or unplanned, is simply too high. The FileArray advantage Conventional RAID controllers operate at the "block level" and rely on the host server to process file I/O requests. Adaptec FileArray takes a fundamentally different approach to the challenge. By interacting with storage at the "file system" level (the level at which users and applications routinely interact with data), Adaptec FileArray enables a much more intuitive and efficient approach to storage I/O that increases performance and offloads the host CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. . FileArray's file system approach also enables users to easily create, reconfigure, and backup storage resources while systems remain online. This allows IS departments to manipulate their storage arrays during normal business hours BUSINESS HOURS. The time of the day during which business is transacted. In respect to the time of presentment and demand of bills and notes, business hours generally range through the whole day down to the hours of rest in the evening, except when the paper is payable it a bank or by a , saving valuable IS time, and maintaining mission-critical storage availability to users. About the evaluation kit The PCI-to-SCSI FileArray controller card is a 32-bit PCI bus master DMA (1) (Digital Media Adapter) See digital media hub. (2) (Document Management Alliance) A specification that provides a common interface for accessing and searching document databases. adapter with 4MB ECC-protected, non-volatile DRAM (NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM) May refer to dynamic RAM (DRAM) and static RAM (SRAM) chips that are backed up by a battery or to non-volatile chips such as flash memory. See non-volatile memory, dynamic RAM, static RAM and solid state disk. ) and 4MB or 16MB parity protected data cache. The SCSI SCSI in full Small Computer System Interface Once common standard for connecting peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, etc.) to small and medium-sized computers. SCSI has given way to faster standards, such as Firewire and USB. synchronous data Synchronous data Information available at the same time. To test option-pricing models, the price of the option and of the underlying should be synchronous and reflect the same moment in the market. rate is up to 80MB/sec (40MB/sec per channel) provided by two independent PCI-to-SCSI channels each of which can support up to 15 disk drives. SCSI protocols supported are Ultra, Fast, and Wide (both 8- and 16-bit). RAID support is provided for RAID levels 0, 1, 0/1, and 5. Adaptec's FileArray Storage Tool (FAST) provides a graphical user interface graphical user interface (GUI) Computer display format that allows the user to select commands, call up files, start programs, and do other routine tasks by using a mouse to point to pictorial symbols (icons) or lists of menu choices on the screen as opposed to having to and easy-to-use wizards that simplify the creation and management of storage resources. Features includes single-step RAID array creation, dynamic online capacity expansion and RAID reconfiguration without reboot To reload the operating system, which restarts the computer. See boot. (operating system) reboot - (From boot) A boot with the implication that the computer has not been down for long, or that the boot is a bounce intended to clear some state of wedgitude. See warm boot. , online snapshot backup, hot-spare and hot-swap drive support, and management for SAF-TE SAF-TE SCSI Access Fault-Tolerant Enclosure storage enclosures. Pricing and availability The Adaptec FileArray evaluation kit is aimed at OEMs designing RAID and enterprise storage management capabilities into mid-range and high-end servers running the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. OEM pricing is available to OEMs upon request. Future products that support FileArray technology will be available to resellers, integrators, and others in the distribution channel in the second half of 1998. About Adaptec Adaptec provides bandwidth management technologies for organizations building the global information infrastructure. Its high-performance I/O, connectivity, and network products are incorporated into the systems and products of major computer and peripheral manufacturers. Founded in 1981 and headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., Adaptec (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :ADPT ADPT Automated Data Processing/Telecommunications ADPT Adaptec Corporation (stock symbol) ADPT Adaptive Prediction ADPT Auger Depth Profiling Technique ADPT Automated Data Processing Telecommunications ADPT Adapter ) employs 3500 people worldwide in design, manufacturing, sales, service and distribution. Adaptec's home page is http://www.adaptec.com. CONTACT: Adaptec Eric Brown, 408/957-6645 ebrown@corp.adaptec.com |
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