Compellent Announces Another Method of Modular Growth For Its Storage Area Network.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Compellent's Storage Center utilizes 300GB Fibre Channel disk drives without traditional cost or capacity penalties

Compellent Technologies, a provider of modular, affordable storage solutions distributed exclusively through a select national network of business partners, today announced the availability of 300GB Fibre Channel disk drives for its Storage Area Network (SAN) solution, Storage Center.

Compellent's open-systems hardware architecture enables the use of both SATA and Fibre Channel disk drives within the same system - optimizing the balance between performance and cost while delivering unlimited scalability and long term investment protection. Other systems restrict the number of drives and overall capacity, cannot fully utilize the capacity of different size drives, or are limited to a single drive interface technology.

"The addition of 300GB drives to our roster of available disk technologies is just another example of our modular growth philosophy," said Phil Soran, chief executive officer, Compellent. "We refuse to impose a penalty on companies wanting to integrate the latest drive technologies as they become available."

Within Storage Center, disk drives having a higher density than others are utilized to their full capacity. Storage Center facilitates using 73GB, 146GB and 300GB disk drives simultaneously, all within the same enclosure, without any capacity or performance penalties. Many systems limit the available capacity of disks to the lowest common denominator, reducing the amount of available storage and wasting a company's IT budget.

"The plug-and-play capability of Compellent provides us with unlimited options without having to make difficult technology choices," said Al Williams, vice president of information technology for MRO Software. "We easily added 300GB drives to an existing enclosure, delivering more capacity for less cost while continuing to maximize every dollar of our initial disk drive investment. The freedom to grow without limits was one reason we selected Compellent."

Common Storage Restrictions

Compellent's Storage Center frees users from common SAN limitations, providing companies the capability to leverage new technologies as they are introduced and add drives and enclosures to match their storage needs. Common restrictions in other storage products include:

--Limiting the available capacity of disk drives in an enclosure to the size of the smallest drive

--Requiring disks be added in fixed increments

--Restricting total drive and enclosure capacity

--Limiting systems to a single spindle rate

--Limiting systems to a single drive technology

About Storage Center

Storage Center builds on its Dynamic Block Architecture(TM) to deliver a scalable, open-systems hardware platform allowing businesses to mix and match any number of drives, controllers and enclosures; an integrated foundation of core storage capabilities providing functionality previously available only in high-end systems; a powerful suite of software applications optimizing utilization, automating replication and speeding data recovery; and a single, intuitive, centralized management interface streamlining all storage administration.

About Compellent

Compellent delivers affordable, modular storage solutions exclusively through business partners that provide companies of all sizes enterprise-level storage capabilities without big system costs or complexities. Designed by network storage and virtualization pioneers, Compellent enables any business to cut storage expenditures in half, recover from data hazards within minutes, scale to any capacity across any technology and easily manage its storage without adding staff. Headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minn., Compellent has raised more than $23 million in financing from leading investors including Cargill Ventures, Crescendo Ventures and El Dorado Ventures. For more information, visit www.compellent.com.