PR Newswire
Sep 28, 2005 09:00 ET

McDATA 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel Switches Earn Compatibility Certification From Engenio

Sphereon 4400 and 4700 Switches Provide High-performance, Cost-effective SAN Alternatives for Customers

MILPITAS, Calif., Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Engenio Information Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of LSI Logic Corp. (NYSE:LSI) , today announced that it has certified the McDATA Sphereon 4400 and Sphereon 4700 4-Gigabit Fibre Channel switches for compatibility with the Engenio 6998 4-Gigabit per second (4 Gb/s) Fibre Channel storage system. Together the products offer enterprise customers high-performance, cost-effective 4 Gb/s solutions, which are fully backward compatible with existing 1 Gb/s and 2 Gb/s installations.

The McDATA Sphereon 4400 and 4700 Fabric Switches provide reliability, performance and scalability in storage area networking infrastructures. The Sphereon 4400 is a 16-port switch and is ideal for a range of entry-to-mid-range applications including entry level SANs. The Sphereon 4700 is a 32-port switch and supports medium-to-large SAN solutions.

"McDATA's Sphereon 4400 and 4700 switches strike a perfect balance between price and performance. The switches are fully backwards compatible with 1 Gb/s and 2 Gb/s Fibre Channel SAN devices, so customers have investment protection for their existing Engenio solutions," said Julie Ryan, Engenio Director of Alliances. "Certification of the Sphereon 4400 and 4700 Fabric Switches provides customers with the assurance that they are building high-performance 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel infrastructures to meet data storage and retrieval needs of companies today and into the future."

On February 8, 2005, Engenio announced the industry's first 4Gb/s Fibre Channel array. The 6998 system features sixth-generation technology and offers extensive capabilities and functionality, including broad support for operating systems and host types, extensive configuration flexibility and advanced replication services such as Snapshot, remote volume mirroring and volume copying. The 6998 controller combines faster processors, busses and memory to deliver the highest levels of performance. Based on Engenio's new XBB(TM) architecture, its innovative, flexible host interface module technology reduces time to market - enabling quicker adaptation to new technologies. The 6998-based systems include eight 4 Gb/s host-side and eight 4 Gb/s drive-side ports, doubling the connectivity of its predecessor and providing more interfaces into a SAN and to the drives.

"Compatibility certification with Engenio assures customers that the McDATA Sphereon 4400 and 4700 4 Gb/s switches will provide optimal performance when running in conjunction with Engenio storage arrays," said Wayne Morris, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for McDATA. "Together the products provide a highly reliable, next-generation, high-performance SAN solutions for customers."

About Engenio Information Technologies, Inc.

Engenio Information Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of LSI Logic Corp., designs and manufactures high performance modular enterprise storage platforms and storage management software that is delivered to end users through strategic partners. IBM, SGI, StorageTek and Teradata are among the partners who deliver total solutions with unique combinations of hardware, software and services for applications including transaction processing, e-mail, data warehousing and scientific research. Engenio is headquartered at 670 N. McCarthy Boulevard, Milpitas, CA 95035. For more information, please call 408-935-6300 or visit http://www.engenio.com/ .

Source: Engenio Information Technologies, Inc.

Web site: http://www.engenio.com/