Jonathan Brooks Chairman, Xyratex

Xyratex Ltd announced
that its Chairman, Andrew Sukawaty, will be retiring from his position on the
Board of Directors on December 1, 2011.

Jonathan Brooks will assume the
position of Chairman of the Board on this date.

Mr. Brooks has been a director of Xyratex since 2004. He is also a director of
Aveva Group plc and IP Group plc.

"Jonathan has been a tremendous
contributor to the Company and I am delighted that he has now agreed to take on
the role of Chairman," said Steve Barber, CEO of Xyratex. "I would like to thank Andy for his many
years of dedicated service and invaluable contribution to the Company."

Announcing his retirement from the Board, Andrew Sukawaty said: "It has been a privilege and honor to work
with the world class management team and Board of Directors of Xyratex since
2004. During my tenure as Chairman, the Company has continued to stay in the
forefront of the rapidly changing storage industry and has established a strong
balance sheet, which has enabled the recently announced dividend and share buy
backs. Since the IPO in 2004, it has seen a fourfold increase in annual
revenues, an expansion and diversification of its product lines, and a global
expansion of its operations making it the leading OEM provider of external disk
based storage."

"I am very excited to be taking on
the role of Chairman at this important stage in the Company’s development,"
said Jonathan Brooks. "With the
emergence of the Cloud, the storage industry is undergoing a period of great
change, and this is providing Xyratex with new opportunities to meet the
challenges faced by its customers. In addition, our recent entry into the high
performance computing storage market with the introduction of the ClusterStor
3000 product demonstrates the Company’s commitment to technical innovation,
a key factor in its continued success."