New Panasas storage platform ships featuring FocalPoint 10GbE switch family

CALABASAS, Calif., Nov. 19 -- SC08 -- Storage industry leader Panasas is now shipping a new 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch platform as the latest member of its ActiveStor family of clustered storage switching platforms based on silicon from Fulcrum Microsystems. Panasas now has hundreds of systems installed and running at its largest customer sites and is seeing very high interest in FocalPoint-based storage systems across their customer base.

With the low latency and high scalability necessary to provide the interconnect for clustered applications, the FocalPoint FM2112 10GbE switch chip from Fulcrum Microsystems provides the high-bandwidth switching for the newest ActiveStor parallel storage clustering platform. Panasas provides the most comprehensive family of parallel storage solutions available today for both primary and secondary storage applications. Every ActiveStor Parallel Storage Cluster is based on the leading PanFS Parallel File System and delivers exceptional performance, scalability and manageability.

"Having a storage industry leader like Panasas choose our silicon for the latest in its family of clustered storage products shows the market need for the low latency and rich features built into our FocalPoint chip family," said Mike Zeile, president and chief operating officer for Fulcrum Microsystems.

"Using the Fulcrum FocalPoint chip has allowed us to almost double the performance of the ActiveStor product line," said Jack Kister, director of product development. "We reviewed all of the Ethernet silicon solutions available on the market, and the cutting edge features of the Fulcrum device made it the only one which allowed us this 2x performance improvement and gave us a first-mover advantage in the field of 10GbE storage networks."

Both the low latency and the congestion management features in FocalPoint are important in storage networks. Since storage networks require a high rate of random access in applications such as database processing, storage network latency can impact storage system performance. In the past, Ethernet could only satisfy 1Gbps storage requirements, but FocalPoint opens the full range of data rates to storage system designers up to 10Gbps per port. In addition, FocalPoint-based designs are able to mix data rates on a per port basis allowing the development of low-cost storage aggregation systems.

Panasas parallel storage clusters incorporate features that deliver the best large-scale reliability and availability for high-end networked storage. The systems are architected to avoid a single point of failure and contain the software features to provide automated failover for maximizing uptime. In addition, Panasas' unique tiered parity architecture delivers a comprehensive and scalable solution for data reliability and integrity that is unmatched by any other storage vendor.

The FocalPoint FM2112 is a fully-integrated, highly scalable single-chip wire-speed 10GbE switch that offers the same level of high performance and low latency that can be found in all members of the FM2000 family. The device leads the market in low-latency intelligent switching, delivering cut-through latency as low as 200ns. With its robust layer-two switching capabilities and the ubiquity of Ethernet, the FM2112 fits comfortably into the clustered storage platform from Panasas.

About Fulcrum Microsystems

Fulcrum Microsystems Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company that has developed the FocalPoint family of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) switch/router chips for next-generation datacenter fabric designs. FocalPoint devices offer the industry's lowest latency combined with the fine-grained flow control and high throughput required for converged datacenter fabrics. With its ControlPoint network OS, Fulcrum offers a complete solution along with a worldwide ecosystem of partners from which storage and clustering system designers can drive adoption of 10GE as the fabric of choice for a fully converged datacenter. More information can be found at www.fulcrummicro.com.

About Panasas

Panasas, Inc., the global leader in parallel storage solutions, helps commercial, government and academic organizations accelerate their time to results leading to faster breakthroughs in solving real world problems that improve people's lives. Panasas' high-performance storage systems enable customers to maximize the benefits of clusters by eliminating the storage bottleneck created by legacy network storage technologies. Panasas ActiveStor Parallel Storage Solutions, in conjunction with the ActiveScale Operating Environment and PanFS parallel file system, offer the most comprehensive platform of parallel storage solutions for data intensive environments. Panasas is headquartered in Fremont, Calif. For more information, visit www.panasas.com.

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Source: Fulcrum Microsystems