Finisar Introduces "SAN Health Check" Program to Monitor and Measure the Effectiveness of Storage Area Network Performance

SUNNYVALE, CA, Jun. 24, 2004 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Finisar Corp., (NASDAQ: FNSR), a leading provider of network performance tools and fiber optic subsystems, announced today the introduction of a "SAN Health Check" program and other professional services offerings to monitor and measure the effectiveness of Storage Area Network performance and provide users with the ability to maximize their SAN investments and avoid outages and downtime.

"Companies build SANs to improve throughput and increase manageability, and yet few IT departments understand how well optimized their networked storage really is. Even those that know they are not running at line speed levels typically still can't pinpoint the location of any chokepoints on their SANs and lack an ability to anticipate future threatening conditions," said Mike Karp, Senior Storage Analyst, Enterprise Management Associates.

Finisar's "SAN Health Check" and other professional services offerings are based around their industry leading monitoring and analysis products, NetWisdom and Xgig respectively. NetWisdom monitors the entire SAN fabric in real-time and at levels no other products can view -- complete transaction monitoring from server to storage and back again. Finisar's Xgig Analyzer with its special "Expert" software finds and pinpoints all Fibre Channel, iSCSI and FCIP errors and bottlenecks, providing SAN Managers with root cause analysis of their SAN infrastructure. Finisar is very well respected in the Fibre Channel SAN Analysis and monitoring industry, recently receiving Frost and Sullivan's 2004 Market Leadership Award for Fibre Channel Test. Finisar's new Professional Services offerings stem from their expertise in this marketplace.

"Finisar's Professional Services offerings provide non-disruptive drop-in Fibre Channel and SAN expertise," Added Karp from Enterprise Management Associates. "They provide IT managers with executive level reports and metrics to help them both clearly escalate issues to senior executives and identify and implement the needed fixes in an efficient manner. Any manager who has the experience of watching his network come down while he is trying to understand a problem will find this to be an extremely useful way to improve his department's reaction time."

Product Overview
Finisar's "SAN Health Check" program allows users to monitor the performance of their SAN and make sure there are no outlying or hidden conditions that could lead to a disastrous SAN outage or brownouts in the near future. The program helps users determine how to deliver faster response times to their corporate users without investing in expensive new equipment. Finisar's "SAN Health Check" professional services offering includes the following:

Product:
One copy of Finisar NetWisdom Portal and Views software
(customer to provide Windows or Solaris server)
Two NetWisdom Probes and two 1x1 fiber taps

Services:
-- Review the block diagram of your SAN
-- Determine probe/tap placement and the number of probes
-- Install product
-- Run initial SAN analysis using NetWisdom
-- Create custom baseline report using NetWisdom
-- Provide necessary product training for end users
-- Set up NetWisdom to collect data
-- Return to your site after agreed upon period (up to 30 days)
-- Evaluate collected data for any important trends or issues
-- Generate a series of NetWisdom reports that characterize the "Health of the SAN" for your environment
-- Remove Finisar equipment, unless the users wishes to purchase, in
which case Finisar will invoice for the equipment less a special $10,000 discount from list price leaving users with the tools and the knowledge to monitor the performance of their SAN in perpetuity (Note: After the first year, maintenance will be charged at 12% of the list price of the configuration)

About Finisar
Finisar Corporation (NASDAQ: FNSR) is a technology leader for fiber optic subsystems and network test and monitoring systems. These products enable high-speed data communications for networking and storage applications over Gigabit Ethernet Local Area Networks (LANs), Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs), and Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) using Fibre Channel, IP and SONET/SDH protocols.

Pricing and Availability
Gillaspy Associates solutions are currently shipping to leading-edge customers. Register on our website for a demonstration

For more detailed information, product configurations and pricing please contact Gillaspy Associates at 805-386-0700 and on the Internet

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Since 1997, Gillaspy Associates has built a solid reputation for developing strong relationships with our customers by providing quality solutions and ongoing support.

Related Pages

NetWisdom
SAN Performance monitoring tool that helps ensure SAN health & uptime

Training
SAS, SATA, Fibre Channel, iSCSI & FCIP Training Classes for SAN technologies provided by Finisar's Medusa Labs

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