Extreme Networks and Scale Computing Jointly Market Storage and Networking Solution

Extreme Networks, Inc. is broadening its reach in the data center by working with Scale Computing, an emerging company specializing in enterprise-class scalable and clustered storage solutions using commodity-based hardware to drive down the costs of enterprise storage. The two companies will each draw from their product lines to help customers with the economic realities associated with increased reliance on data storage and decreased budgets.

"Roughly 40 percent of all storage spending is from SMBs and 30 percent of all data stored by 2011 will be from health care," said Peter Fuller, vice president of marketing and business development, Scale Computing. "This partnership offers true value to key industries that need to store more data and spend less money in order to maintain their competitive edge and compliance with pending regulations. With Scale and Extreme, customers get feature-rich budget relief for their storage and networking needs."

Extreme Networks will offer its BlackDiamond 8800extremenetworks modular switching family, featuring industry-leading 10 Gigabit network capacity, the Summit X650 and Summit X450 switches, supporting copper and fiber for cost-effective and scalable networks. Scale will offer its SN1000 and SN2000 storage nodes with TrueCluster architecture.

When purchased together, these products represent a complete data networking and IP storage solution that addresses back-up and replication of data by combining high performance Ethernet switching, from Fast Ethernet to 10 gigabits, with Scale’s TrueCluster architecture. Supporting iSCSI, NFS, and SAMBA/CIFS, TrueCluster has no single point of failure and costs only $15,000 for 6 usable TBs (12 TB Raw).

Extreme Networks complete portfolio of Ethernet switching solutions adds intelligence to the data center via the ExtremeXOS modular operating system and Universal Port software, a framework for detecting and responding to events on the network. To ensure seamless operation of the network and surrounding infrastructure, Extreme Networks Universal Port automatically detects attachment and detachment to the network by Scale Computing’s storage solutions, dynamically provisioning resources and appropriate levels of Quality of Service for the most intensive storage functions.

"Extreme Networks is driving higher performance of Ethernet at lower costs with the added intelligence of the event-driven network," said Paul Hooper, vice president and general manager, Volume Products Group, for Extreme Networks. "Together, Extreme Networks and Scale Computing address the market’s evolving networking and storage needs with cost-effective and open solutions."