QLogic and Imperial Technology Introduce Affordable SAN Solution

Imperial Technology announced today it is working with QLogic Corporation to make Storage Area Networks (SANs) more affordable. Using the QLogic SAN Connectivity Kit 1000 and an Imperial file cache accelerator, small and medium businesses can set up an entry-level application accelerator for applications such as Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, for less than $35,000.

Imperial’s SANaccelerator(R) is a storage-centric architectural component where critical “hot files” are locked into a dedicated cache to ensure they are instantly available 100% of the time. In transaction-intensive database and OLTP applications, Imperial’s accelerators quickly eliminate I/O bottlenecks and improve system throughput, thereby reducing the need for additional servers and increasing productivity.

“Companies with large databases or transaction-oriented applications can save significant hardware dollars by architecting-in the SANaccelerator from the beginning,” said Robert David, president and CEO of Imperial Technology. “In many cases, substantial savings occur from reduced CPU-based licensing fees, server hardware, and storage array requirements. In fact, some of our clients have freed up more than 60% of their servers after the installation of our accelerators.”

The QLogic SAN Connectivity Kit 1000, a turn-key SAN infrastructure, is comprised of 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(R) 2200 Series host bus adapters (HBAs), fiber optic cables and GBIC connectors, device driver software, documentation and computer based training CD. Combined with Imperial’s SANaccelerator the system provides a total performance package. The QLogic SAN Connectivity Kit is fully certified for interoperability with the MegaRam and SANaccelerator products.

“This is a perfect example of a SAN solution that a small or medium business can use to accelerate application performance while reducing hardware and management costs,” said Frank Berry, vice president of corporate marketing for QLogic. “Enterprises can also use a configuration to get their feet wet in Fibre Channel storage networking and scale up to larger more sophisticated configurations as their needs grow.”

MegaRam and SANaccelerator systems are very scalable, offering from 1 to 8 Fibre Channel ports and from 1 to 51 GB of file-caching capacity.

QLogic and Imperial are among more than 35 key members of the Affordable SAN Initiative. Members of the initiative intend to dispel the notion that 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.