Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced a significant performance enhancement to the Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager 5 (VSM 5), its industry-leading mainframe virtual technology, that adds 53% more throughput from the initial VSM 5 release in mid-2006. The latest in mainframe storage innovation from Sun, today's announcement further demonstrates Sun's commitment to investing in and advancing its entire portfolio of storage and server solutions.

Sun has seen growth in its enterprise mainframe storage business, as evidenced by:
* Continued dominance of the enterprise tape automation market with more than 80% of customers in the 1,000-slot and higher class choosing the Sun StorageTek SL8500 Modular Library System (IDC Quarterly View Q2, 2007). The SL8500 seamlessly supports both mainframe and open systems within the same physical library.
* The industry's only access-centric tape drive, Sun's enterprise class T9840 tape drive product line has shipped more than 100,000 new tape drives since inception in 1998. Further development continues in the T9840 drive platform with a fourth generation utilizing the same physical media forthcoming.
* Recently enhanced VSM 5 technology that has improved its performance capabilities to 613 megabytes per second - over 50% faster than both competing storage offerings and earlier VSM release versions. The performance boost also enhances disaster recovery capabilities to mission critical data.

“Sun is a world leader in mainframe storage and our growth in the high-end mainframe storage business is a direct result of our continued investment in research and development that allows our customers the industry's best return on investment. This continued investment in mainframe technologies has yielded our strongest mainframe product line-up ever, which is a direct result of the integration with Sun and StorageTek,” said Jon Benson, senior vice president, Storage, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “Going forward, Sun will continue to aggressively invest in mainframe storage solutions that compliment lower-end storage offerings that leverage open, virtualization technologies like the Solaris Operating System.”

The VSM 5 architecture uses industry leading StorageTek SL8500 tape library and StorageTek T-series tape drives in its operation and optimizes tape resources while enhancing tape application performance. The management of this storage system happens off-load, saving the overworked customer time and money versus competing virtual storage systems.

KnowledgeBase Marketing (KBM) relies on the Sun StorageTek 9985 system to support its mainframe environment. Sun recently helped KBM complete a data center move from its Houston facility to a new corporate headquarters office in Dallas. As part of the move, KBM refreshed its mainframe environment. They continue to use the StorageTek 9985 and purchased the StorageTek SL8500 tape library, which is partitioned to support three backup environments and upgraded existing virtual storage manager systems.

"At KnowledgeBase Marketing, effectively supporting our mainframe environment is a key factor in allowing us to service our clients and adapt to the changing needs of our business," said Brian Camp, senior vice president, Infrastructure at KnowledgeBase Marketing. "We chose the Sun StorageTek 9985 to support our mainframe environment and our more than 150 TB of data based on Sun's demonstrated technology expertise in helping us to address our datacenter needs."

Using the Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager 5 along with Sun StorageTek T10000 tape drives and cartridges for backup management of its mainframe environment, TIVIT Terceirização de Tecnologia e Serviços SA, a Brazil-based service provider, was able to reduce the volume of data transmitted between sites significantly.

“By integrating the Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager System 5 into our datacenter, we have streamlined our storage infrastructure and improved the operating efficiency of our mainframe tape drives,” said Valdir da Mata Firmino, IT Manager, TIVIT Terceirização de Tecnologia e Serviços SA. “VSM enables us to optimize our storage resources in our mainframe environment and better manage the ever growing amount of data we need to process in order to run our business."

Sun Microsystems, Inc.

KnowledgeBase Marketing