PARSIPPANY, N.J., Dec. 3 -- RELDATA, the leading supplier of a new generation of consolidated storage solutions, today announced that Harvey Mudd College (HMC), one of the premier math, science and engineering institutions in the United States, has chosen RELDATA 9240 Unified Storage Systems to satisfy the comprehensive storage needs of the school’s versatile IT infrastructure.

“RELDATA was the first vendor capable of delivering exactly what we were looking for,” said Andy Davenport, systems and networks group leader at HMC. “For a long time, we were almost certainly an appropriate candidate for a medium-sized Fibre Channel SAN, but we were put off by the overall price and the per-gigabyte licensing policy of the large SAN vendors. Everything favors iSCSI in the long run, and with the emergence of 10 Gb IP (Ethernet), we have enough headroom to scale. RELDATA has delivered a genuinely innovative product at an extremely competitive price.”

The RELDATA 9240 Unified Storage Systems at HMC include 9240 controllers in an active-active failover configuration, RELvos 2.1 virtualization software for enterprise-class unified storage services, 10GbE network connectivity, and RELDATA SAS disk. RELvos delivers enterprise-class iSCSI SAN, NAS (CIFS/NFS), and a comprehensive set of backup and replication features from a single high-availability platform.

“One of the things that has impressed me most about the system is that RELDATA really does deliver a fully comprehensive feature set without extra cost add-ons,” said Davenport. “The 9240/RELvos product has a lot of features, but thanks to the logical layout of the management interface, we were able to complete the installation without on-site support from RELDATA, even though it was enthusiastically offered.”

The college was also attracted to the openness of the system. Even as part of a complete solution, the RELDATA systems offer open back-end connectivity to third party disks. This provides complete freedom from vendor lock-in for future capacity upgrades, as well as the opportunity to redeploy existing storage investments as part of a new system.

“RELDATA clearly understands the needs of the market and provides my customers with the flexibility to choose the storage solution that meets their needs,” said Reid Hymes, president of RJ Sales Co. “In this case, a turnkey 9240 SAS/SATA Unified Storage System met HMC needs the best, and additionally, they were able to add other disks they own and seamlessly deliver IP SAN, NAS and WAN replication from one virtualized storage pool, all with 10 GbE performance.”

HMC has capitalized on the openness and versatility of the RELDATA solution, even using the system to test storage arrays built by the students as a part of their studies. RELDATA’s open storage connectivity allows HMC to connect to a variety of third-party arrays and to use inexpensive JBODs in conjunction with the 9240’s built-in software RAID functionality. All storage is virtualized into a single pool from which administrators can carve out and resize virtual storage volumes or LUNs as required to meet user application requirements. With blisteringly fast 10 Gb Ethernet connectivity, the 9240 system delivers storage exactly as it is needed to all applications and users across the organization.

“RELDATA’s technology is consistent with our views on the likely future direction of IT strategy. The focus on connectivity, interoperability and open standards makes the RELDATA Unified Storage Solution a relatively safe, future-proof investment, free from the hidden costs of vendor lock-in,” concludes Davenport. “And by leveraging a number of very potent open-source technologies rather than depending entirely on in-house proprietary development, RELDATA has delivered an unbeatable product.”

“RELDATA delivers unrivaled price/performance and lowest total cost of ownership,” said David Hubbard, CEO of RELDATA. “Storage costs represent more than just the cost of disks. We urge customers to evaluate all the costs -- the cost of proprietary disks and license fees as they scale storage; the cost of hardware/software as they scale performance; the impact to business applications without non-disruptive data migration; and the cost of personnel due to system complexity. When they look at price/performance and TCO, RELDATA is the clear choice.”

About RELDATA

RELDATA is the leader of a new generation of consolidated storage solutions that deliver unified iSCSI SAN, NAS and WAN replication functions on a single virtualized platform. The solutions are easy to implement, operate and manage, yet deliver enterprise-class functionality. Customers can independently scale disk storage capacity, storage services and network performance without any application disruption. This “pay-as-you-grow” design eliminates the need for forklift box upgrades and liberates customers from vendor lock-in. With unrivaled price/performance and low total cost of ownership, users can easily and significantly reduce their storage costs. RELDATA products are designed to embrace third-party disk drives and to co-exist with more expensive storage solutions from vendors such as Network Appliance and EMC. RELDATA is headquartered in New Jersey. RELDATA products are available worldwide through authorized value-added resellers and system integrators. More information is available at www.RELDATA.com.