MRV Coimmunications, Inc., provider of products and services for out-of-band networking, WDM and optical transport, metro Ethernet, fiber optic components, 10GE and other service aware networking products, announced its OptiSwitch products have been chosen by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to be the official interconnect for the "Hands-on Lab" (HOL).

Products from MRV's OptiSwitch line of Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet switches will interconnect various Hands-On Lab environments at the show. The education objectives with in the Hands-On Labs are the Configuring IP SANs, Establishing a Virtualized Storage Environment, Managing Storage and Data Resources, Securing and Protecting Your Environment, Server Virtualization and Zero to FC SAN and Beyond. MRV solutions will be on display in booth 1503 at the show.

This popular education program offered at SNW, the Hands-On Lab provides IT end-user attendees the opportunity to test-drive the latest technologies in a classroom setting led by engineers who create the technology. Organized in conjunction with the SNIA End User Council and SNIA Forums and Initiatives, the participating SNW HOL sponsors/exhibitors, lead IT managers through the rare opportunity to experience entire systems before they make a purchasing decision. During these two-hour sessions, attendees are led through a series of training exercises with subject matter experts from participating sponsor companies.

"Storage area networking has become an increasingly complex issue with the variety of protocol options available to IT managers," said Noam Lotan, president and CEO of MRV Communications. "MRV's OptiSwitch products offer network architects a variety of interface options with the versatility to interconnect multiple vendors' devices to put together the most efficient SAN environment possible."

"Our continuing relationship with MRV has been highly beneficial as the company continues to support our educational mission for the storage industry," said Rick Bauer, director of technology and education for the Storage Networking Industry Association. "The versatility of the switches MRV has provided for this fall's SNW Hands-on Lab has enabled us to put together six distinctly different storage networks to give show attendees a real-world experience with the state-of-the art solutions they may want to implement."