Release Date: 04/19/2004

SNS Announces SANmp Upgrade at NAB 2004

LAS VEGAS, April 19, 2004 — Studio Network Solutions (SNS) will announce a feature-packed upgrade to SANmp™, its powerful and versatile software application, at NAB 2004. This multi-platform volume management software enables multiple workstations with different operating systems to concurrently access and share information on a workgroup Storage Area Network.

Faster than ever - In addition to an updated user interface, this latest version is packed with performance enhancements that optimize the way SANmp interacts with shared disks. Eric Newbauer, SNS director of operations, sees this upgrade as the most flexible release to date. “SANmp is a pertinent piece of software for all digital artists who work in a shared storage environment,” says Newbauer. “We have also added a new Command Line Interface (CLI), which enables almost complete automation of SANmp. This will be of greatest benefit for medium to large installations, as it provides the ability to automate SANmp by executing commands in script or batch modes from both Mac and Windows.”

SANmp also now has AutoSync, a feature that will refresh a read-only disk manually or automatically at an interval defined by the administrator. This feature forces the operating system’s kernel cache to be flushed and updated with the most current disk contents.

The new version of SANmp allows users to select multiple volumes and mount (or un-mount) them simultaneously. Also, a new “Exclusive” mode has been added, which enables a user to mount a disk/volume so that he/she is the only person that has access to it at any given time.

With the upgraded version of SANmp, Windows users will now have the choice between using standard “Drive letter mounts” or “NTFS mounts.” NTFS mounts enable Windows to mount a volume without being assigned a drive letter. Since a drive letter is not assigned to a mounted volume, the limitation that existed when more than twenty or so drives were mounted is gone.

As always, SNS focuses the majority of its development efforts on customer feedback. SNS had made it even easier for its customers to offer their enhancement requests with the inclusion of a menu item inside SANmp that takes the user directly to an online form where they can suggest new features.

Perhaps the most noteworthy enhancement to SANmp will be the inclusion of iSCSI support. iSCSI, an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard, enables rapid and efficient transport of block-level I/O data over a high-speed IP/Ethernet network. SNS says it plans to include iSCSI support within its standard SANmp for Fibre Channel package and that it will also announce the release of an iSCSI-only version of SANmp.

SANmp is quite easy to implement and maintain since it does not require a dedicated server. The Mac and Windows versions of SANmp still share a common user interface, so it is simple to learn and use on either platform. In addition, SNS has been giving SANmp presentations at various Apple locations around the world to Apple’s authorized resellers. The focus of these presentations has been to provide insight and offer guidance on the integration of SANmp with Apple’s popular Xserve RAID.

Among the many great features found in SANmp are the ability to configure, manage, share and access SAN resources, set user access privileges at the partition level and dynamically share one or more RAID sets. For most, the overwhelming benefit will be the ability to integrate Mac OS and Windows workstations, regardless of whether the systems are running Final Cut Pro, Avid, Pro Tools, Nuendo, Sonic HD, Pyramix, Photoshop, Illustrator or virtually any other software.

Studio Network Solutions, a storage technology company specializing in products and services for the audio and video production industries, was founded in 1998. Since then, SNS has forged strategic relationships with leading-edge developers and manufacturers in order to deliver the highest performance networking available to its customers. For more information, please visit www.studionetworksolutions.com.

All software names are trademarked and/or copyrighted by their respective manufacturers.

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