Netapp, Brocade team up for enterprise data centres

BANGALORE, August 10, 2006 ? Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), a leader in advanced networked storage solutions, today announced worldwide availability of the 4 Gb/sec Brocade® SilkWorm® 48000 Director. This offering meets the needs of demanding storage area network (SAN) deployments and strengthens and extends the overall NetApp SAN portfolio.

The NetApp SAN portfolio also includes the Brocade SilkWorm 200E 16-port switch, the SilkWorm 4100 32-port switch, and the recently announced SilkWorm 4900 64-port switch. The SilkWorm 48000, combined with the NetApp FAS6000 series, provides massive data center scalability (up to 500 TB in a single system), making the solution highly desirable for customers managing mission-critical enterprise applications for large-scale data consolidation projects.

The Brocade SilkWorm 48000 Director scales nondisruptively from 32 to as many as 256 concurrently active 4 Gb/sec full-duplex ports in a single domain. This is the same footprint as previous-generation Brocade directors, enabling customers to achieve tremendous scalability and performance, making the SilkWorm 48000 highly attractive for the largest SAN environments that require the highest levels of availability and performance. The SilkWorm 48000 is also well suited for data backup and consolidation projects, and provides an architecture that supports impressive price/performance for a wide range of enterprise applications.

"NetApp continues to raise the bar in SAN environments by providing massive data center consolidation and performance," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Products and Partners at Network Appliance. "The Brocade SilkWorm 48000 Director is a strong complement to our new FAS6000, as well as our FAS3000 series of storage systems, and expands our broad 4 Gb/sec portfolio of SAN solutions for the data center."

"Brocade has a strong working relationship with NetApp to provide networked storage solutions that help customers simplify and streamline their data management and consolidation initiatives," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "The massive scalability and modularity of the NetApp FAS6000 complements the high port density and 4 Gb/sec performance of the SilkWorm 48000."

By deploying a flexible NetApp SAN infrastructure of hardware, software, and services, organizations can easily move and share storage resources across the enterprise without adding administrative overhead. NetApp enterprise software enables a host of cost-effective storage solutions such as disaster recovery, compliance, archival, content management, and data security.

NetApp SAN design and implementation services are also available and can assist customers in developing a well-documented design and detailed implementation plan when integrating NetApp FC SAN or IP SAN storage systems into existing IT environments. The service allows customers to achieve a smooth and efficient deployment, increases overall utilization, and in most cases provides near-zero downtime during integration. For more information on NetApp services, visit www.netapp.com/support.

About Network Appliance: Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992, Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner firsts that simplify data management. Information about Network Appliance solutions and services is available at www.netapp.com.