MTI and QLogic Team Up to Offer Affordable SAN Solution

MTI Technology Corp. announced today it is working with QLogic Corp. to make storage area networks (SANs) more affordable. For less than $50,000, small and medium businesses can set up an entry-level SAN solution for applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL, using the QLogic SAN Connectivity Kit 1000 and the MTI Vivant(TM) D100.

“With QLogic’s SAN Connectivity Kit, our Vivant D100 is ideal for department-level customers who want an affordable SAN storage solution that’s highly-available and designed to improve performance for servers running data- intensive applications,” said Paul Emery, MTI’s chief operating officer. “Although well within the $50,000 price range, the D100 can scale into a large SAN.”

The Vivant D100 is a multi terabyte direct-attached storage solution that brings enterprise-class storage capabilities to departmental, workgroup and storage-intensive specialized applications environments. Its flexible design allows users to connect the unit to a single host via dual high-speed Fibre Channel connections, creating redundant data paths between the host and local storage — or to two independent hosts via independent 100 MB/sec Fibre Channel connections — to maximize performance and local storage access. Local storage capacity is as much 1.7 terabytes.

The QLogic SAN Connectivity Kit 1000, a turn-key SAN infrastructure, comprises everything a small- to medium-sized business needs to get started in connecting their first storage network, including QLogic SANbox(TM) 8 port switch, four SANblade(TM) 2200 Series host bus adapters (HBAs), fiber optic cables and GBIC connectors, device driver software, documentation and computer based training CD.

“This is a perfect example of a SAN storage solution that a small or medium business can use to gain non-stop access to its data,” said Frank Berry, vice president of corporate marketing for QLogic. “A configuration using the MTI Vivant D100 and the QLogic SAN Connectivity Kit 1000 is also a very viable starter SAN for enterprises that want to test drive the technology before committing more IT dollars to large-scale storage networks.”

MTI and QLogic are among more than 35 key members of the Affordable SAN Initiative. Members of the initiative intend to dispel the notion that storage area networks (SANs) are unaffordable for small and medium businesses by redefining and promoting SAN solutions for these customers with end-user pricing of $50,000 or less, a significant reduction in the typical $250,000 entry point to enterprise-class SANs.