DataDirect Networks Showcases the Industry's Highest Performance Most Dense Storage System at SIGGRAPH 2006


S2A9550 Empowers High Performance Graphics, Animation and HD Post Production With Up to 3GB/s and 560TB in a Single Storage System

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 1 /-- DataDirect Networks, Inc. will unveil its new S2A9550 Storage System at SIGGRAPH 2006, the 33rd annual international conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, in Booth 2620 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The S2A9550 empowers content creators, animators and editors with the ability to perform true real-time post production collaboration in HD post production, CGI, animation and digital intermediate service applications.

"The S2A9550 provides creative personnel with an open architected storage system that allows for independent and simultaneous access to native HD, 2K (2048x1080) and 4K (4096x2160) high resolution content as well as hundreds of SD streams -- all in real-time," explains Paul Bloch, President of DataDirect Networks. Delivering up to 3 GB/s, with enhanced and automated data protection, and 560TB in a single storage system, this 7th generation product provides optimal block level and file system performance for highly scalable, open system computing environments. "The S2A9550 delivers the industry's best price per performance solution and can easily scale to handle the bandwidth and capacity intensive needs of high performance, high capacity network storage applications requiring full bandwidth HD, 2K and 4K rates, significantly improving project workflow from ingest to digital post-production."

The S2A9550 storage platform is based on DataDirect's industry proven Silicon Storage Appliance (S2A) technology which fully integrates a parallel, non-blocking architecture with SAN functionality in one simple, easy to use, easy to scale intelligent device. The S2A's unique open architecture and consolidated functionality removes the complexity, congestion, latency and contention of generic RAID systems, and with its hardware based RAID 6 and double parity protection capability, can maintain peak sustained performance, even in the event of drive rebuilds or multiple drive failures. This optimal block level and file system performance design supports a broad range of NAS and SAN solutions powering some of the video, graphics and animation industry's most notable suppliers including Autodesk, IBM, Dell, Sony SGI, Thomson, Matrox and others.

"We've designed the S2A9550 to conquer the performance, availability, scalability and management challenges associated with parallel or shared file systems and storage, while providing the highest levels of Quality of Service for consistent, predictable data delivery to real-time application environments," continued Bloch. "The S2A9550 can scale as fast and large the application demands, enabling true real-time collaboration that empowers production teams with multiple digital processes to accomplish more in less time with added time to explore greater creative potential."

DataDirect Networks S2A9550 Highlights:

o Real-time Sustained Performance -- Up to five times faster than generic
SAN RAID systems, the disk-based S2A9550 delivers sustained real-time
performance of up to 3GB/s.

o Maximum Flexibility, Massively Scalable -- The S2A9550 is purpose built to
offer maximum flexibility and scalability -- providing storage flexibility
with support for up to 1,120 Fibre Channel (FC) and SATA disk drives.
With its modular design, the S2A9550 can support the mixing and matching
of FC-4 (4Gb/s) and InfiniBand-4X (10Gb/s) front end server connectivity.

o Enterprise Class Protection and Availability -- The S2A9550 incorporates
enterprise-class data protection like on-the-fly parity checking of all
read I/Os, and hardware RAID 6. The S2A9550's pioneering hardware RAID 6
controller protects data in the event of a double disk failure in the same
redundancy group, without adversely affecting data availability or system
performance.

o Easy to Install, Manage and Support -- The S2A9550 offers a rich set of
management tools that make it easy-to-install, scale and manage a high
performance, high capacity storage system. Its consolidated functionality
includes block level "real-time any-to-any virtualization" for very easy
deployment and ongoing system management of very large storage pools.

About DataDirect Networks

DataDirect Networks is the world's leading provider of high performance, high capacity network storage solutions. Focused on driving customer-centric innovation, DataDirect Networks has created the Silicon Storage Appliance as the essential building block for High Performance Computing, Internet-based Services and Rich Media storage solutions. DataDirect Networks' award winning Silicon Storage Appliance enables the creation of differentiated high performance, high capacity NAS and SAN storage, parallel and shared file system storage, primary and nearline storage, and virtual tape library storage solutions. Each solution offers unsurpassed performance, high availability, cost effective scalability and simplified management delivering the industry's best price per performance and best per capacity per square foot solutions.

Launched in 1998 and headquartered in California, DataDirect Networks has an established global presence with research and development, and operations in the United States, Europe and Asia. For more information, contact DataDirect Networks at (818) 700-7600 or visit www.datadirectnet.com.

Contact:
Jay Martin
DataDirect Networks Inc.
Tel: 714-447-4993
martin@datadirectnet.com

Curtis Chan
Chan & Associates, Inc.
Tel: 818-700-7600
cj_chan@chanandassoc.comj

Source: DataDirect Networks, Inc.
Web site: www.datadirectnet.com/

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