Here is another MCDT piece with good backing for the director concept. Bring on the directors....
McDATA Unveils New Galaxy-Class SAN Director Defining the Ultimate Enterprise-to-Edge SAN Platform
The Industry's Only Single-Stage 64-port Director Represents the Fifth Generation of McDATA's World-Class Backbone Architecture
BROOMFIELD, Colo., April 9 /PRNewswire/ -- McDATA® Corporation (Nasdaq: MCDT - news, MCDTA - news), a global leader in open storage networking solutions, announced today the release of its newest enterprise-class Fibre Channel Galaxy-Class Director, the ED-6064. Positioned as the essential SAN building block for the future, McDATA's ED-6064 represents the foundation for the company's enterprise-to-edge SAN platform. With business needs evolving on a daily basis and data exploding exponentially, the new Director fulfills the market need for flawless reliability and uninterrupted network availability to critical information. The ED-6064 Director is a SAN backbone that offers scalability, flexibility and provides guaranteed 99.999 percent data availability (less than five minutes of downtime each year).
McDATA's fifth generation Director product, the ED-6064 Galaxy-Class Director, provides a compelling combination of performance, high availability, non-blocking, protocol-independent architecture, unrivaled security, speed and extensibility. As the SAN industry's only single stage 64-port Director, the ED-6064 provides customers with unprecedented access to their data coupled with unparalleled centralized management from McDATA's Enterprise Fabric Connectivity (EFC) manager software. The result is a SAN solution that is easy to deploy and manage across an entire enterprise.
``With our new ED-6064 McDATA has raised the bar for our industry again,'' said Jack McDonnell, CEO. ``McDATA invented the Director class. Today we've introduced the Galaxy-Class Director that defines the basis SAN platforms are built upon. The ED-6064 is the core of McDATA's advanced SAN architecture and delivers a previously unobtainable level of flexibility. When our customers consolidate their servers and storage they also consolidate their access -- the ED-6064 Director provides bullet-proof access and allows for a truly complete, open SAN.''
``Large users desire scalable, manageable and available director class switches for their SAN backbones,'' said Carl Greiner, Vice President and Service Director, Enterprise Data Center Strategies at META Group. ``Fewer is always better and easier to manage.''
The ED-6064 Director scales to large fabrics without compromising performance or available ports. With up to 2.5 gigabytes of protocol independent switching bandwidth per path, McDATA Directors are capable of supporting next generation technologies and protocols. This provides customers with a high degree of investment protection well into the future of storage area networking.
``Implementing McDATA's ED-6064 Director into the eOnline SAN environment provides us with a higher port density and lower price per port that makes it a highly desirable footprint for our business,'' said Bill Augustadt, Chief Architect, eOnline Inc. ``eOnline has earned a long list of satisfied customers by providing real economic value through dependable, secure, high performance and guaranteed solutions. Having a more efficient SAN internally helps us to continue providing unparalleled attention to the customer.''
``Our customers look to EMC to deliver the world's most flexible, scalable and open storage networking solutions available,'' said Don Swatik, EMC's Vice President of Global Alliances. ``McDATA's advanced SAN architecture demonstrates the critical role connectivity plays in a true core-to-edge networked storage approach and in delivering value to the customer.''
``Hewlett Packard has incorporated the best-of-breed components into its SAN product offerings, which are considered by many experts to be the most comprehensive, open portfolio in the industry,'' said Don Kleinschnitz, General Manager of Storage Network Solutions at Hewlett-Packard. ``We're excited to offer Hewlett-Packard's Surestore Director FC-64, based on the McDATA ED-6064 Director, which allows us to better offer our customers performance and value that's greater than the sum of the individual parts in an enterprise-class storage solution.''
``IBM is committed to open industry standards and interoperability that is required to implement IBM Enterprise Storage Area Networks,'' said Barry Rudolph, IBM Vice President, Disk Storage and Storage Area Networking. ``The McDATA ED-6064 Director provides exciting new opportunities for our customers who plan to integrate their departmental and data center SANs into an enterprise-wide SAN infrastructure under a common management system.''
``Having seen the proven reliability of McDATA's original Director products for enterprise-wide SANs, Hitachi Data Systems is planning to offer McDATA's new Director,'' said Marlene Woodworth, Vice President, Enterprise Product and Solutions, Hitachi Data Systems. ``The proven track record of McDATA, the tested reliability of the Director and the flexibility of the new ED-6064 all factored into our decision to resell the new Director and continue our successful relationship with McDATA.''
The ED-6064 Galaxy-Class Director features hot-plug redundant power supplies, hot-plug redundant fans, hot-plug optics, hot-plug redundant processors (CTP), hot-plug redundant single stage switching modules (SBAR) and hot-plug port modules (FPM). It also offers on-line diagnostics, on-line non-disruptive firmware load, activation and fault isolation tools for network-wide activity and hot code activation technology.
``McDATA's top European partner for system integration, COMPAREX, will utilize the new Director in the building of large fabric SANs,'' according to Rupert Auer, Business Development Manager Enterprise Storage, COMPAREX. ``McDATA's architecture is unique and its reliability is proven. Together with its redundancy and the guarantee of virtually no down time we will incorporate the new ED-6064 Director for our SAN clients in Europe with great confidence.''
``Greater port count with McDATA reliability makes the new ED-6064 Director an exceptional offering as we continue to develop optimal SANs for our end-users,'' said Phil Sauvageau, Vice President Storage, MSI (Omaha, Neb.). ``We see the potential for large fabric development utilizing the new Director as a great advantage of a this new product.''
``McDATA clearly provides the best-in-class Director products offering our customers the highest level of availability and scalability,'' said John Flores, Director of Marketing, Sirius, IBM's top SAN reseller. ``Our customers know we offer them the best-in-class products when we provide McDATA's product line. The scalability of McDATA's newest Director is key. We will be able to utilize it to build large fabric SANs without clustering numerous fabric switches of lower port count.''
The addition of the ED-6064 Galaxy-Class Director increases the SAN solutions and comprehensive family of products that are offered by McDATA and include its ED-5000 Director, the recently announced 32-port ES-3032 Fabric Switch, the ES-3016 Fabric Switch released last year, the ES-1000 Fabric Switch for work group level SANs and its management software and solutions. All McDATA products are tested for reliability and interoperability in its multi-million dollar Systems Integration Lab (SIL).
The ED-6064 Galaxy-Class Director will be available in limited quantities beginning in April 2001 from all authorized McDATA Elite Solutions Partners and OEM partners. For a complete list of McDATA resellers, please visit mcdata.com.
About McDATA (www.mcdata.com)
McDATA (Nasdaq: MCDT/MCDTA) is a global leader in open storage networking solutions. Recognized for its highly available, scalable and centrally managed SANs, McDATA's family of solutions represent the backbone of the SAN industry and address enterprise-storage problems. The company's enterprise- to-edge SAN solutions improve the reliability and availability of data to simplify SAN management and reduce the total cost of ownership. Committed to the highest level of service in the industry, McDATA extensively pre-tests SAN solutions to provide IT organizations with the comprehensive tools, methodologies and support essential to robust and timely SAN implementations. McDATA distributes its products through its OEMs, network of resellers and Elite Solution Partners. McDATA is a registered trademark. The McDATA logo and McDATA tagline are trademarks of McDATA Corporation.
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