RACKABLE SYSTEMS LAUNCHES RAPIDSCALE™ STORAGE APPLIANCE FOR IMPROVED CLUSTERED STORAGE PERFORMANCE AND MANAGEMENT

Cluster File System Solution Delivers Industry Leading Scalability and Availability Needed
for Large Linux Data Center Deployments

Milpitas, Calif., November 14, 2006 – Rackable Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: RACK), a leading provider of servers and storage products for large-scale data centers, today announced the immediate availability of its new RapidScale™ SA3100 cluster file system storage appliance, optimized for data-rich, Linux computing environments.

RapidScale appliances eliminate the performance bottlenecks inherent with legacy Network Attached Storage (NAS) products, delivering a single file system solution that scales nearly linearly in both capacity and performance. A perfect match for large-scale Linux deployments often found in Internet and High Performance Computing (HPC) environments, RapidScale's global name space allows customers to realize improved manageability, storage utilization and availability over existing solutions in the market.

Surpassing competing technologies, RapidScale provides up to tens of Gigabytes per second of I/O throughput, ultimately reducing wait time and improving overall storage performance. Each RapidScale SA3100 appliance adds 8 TB of storage capacity and up to 200 MB/sec of performance. RapidScale systems leverage Rackable Systems’ proven storage server hardware platform and cluster file system software from its recent acquisition of Terrascale Technologies.

In addition to providing industry-leading clustered storage performance and efficiency, the RapidScale HA software option enables a novel, more comprehensive approach to data protection by delivering two independent levels of RAID—battery-backed hardware RAID inside each appliance along with storage cluster level RAID across appliances. With RapidScale HA, redundancy is quickly restored—even in the unlikely case of an appliance failure. RapidScale's dual-level RAID capabilities provide IT administrators with the high availability needed to protect mission-critical data.

"As data centers continue to scale their Rackable Systems Linux server deployments, RapidScale appliances provide an ideal storage complement," said Gautham Sastri, EVP of Storage Solutions at Rackable Systems. "In addition to eliminating the performance bottleneck inherent with legacy storage solutions, RapidScale clusters are managed using standard tools already familiar to Linux system administrators, resulting in a solution that is as easy to manage as it is revolutionary in its performance."

"With our RapidScale deployment, we realized a storage solution that sustained over 1.4 Gigabytes per second to disk and unleashed the true potential of our Rackable Systems InfiniBand cluster," said Craig Prescott, Senior Scientist for the University of Florida's High-Performance Computing Center.  "We are already in the process of expanding our RapidScale deployment to take advantage of the inherent scalability and satisfy our rapidly increasing demand for capacity and throughput."

Key Features and Benefits

• Scalability: The RapidScale file system is scalable to Petabytes of capacity. Unlike other file system architectures, RapidScale is unencumbered by metadata bottlenecks, allowing near-linear performance scaling as the number of appliances is increased. As digital content needs continue to accelerate, RapidScale meets those needs without having to divide content into tens or hundreds of separate islands of storage.
• High throughput: The solution provides tens of Gigabytes of throughput, delivering near-linear scaling.  Performance is only limited by the number of spindles deployed in the RapidScale storage cluster.
• High IOPs: RapidScale's patent pending architecture delivers equally impressive scaling of small file, random access performance, satisfying the requirements of a wider range of application needs. 
• Centralized management: The solution allows administrators to centrally manage all clustered storage servers from one file system.
• Easy deployment: RapidScale deploys quickly with familiar Linux administration tools. With no kernel or application modifications needed on accessing clients, administrators leverage tried and true Linux utilities to create and manage the RapidScale file system.
• Compatibility: Replication and backup software compatible with the XFS file system are compatible with the RapidScale solution for total compatibility.
• High availability and dual-level RAID protection:  Leveraging optional RapidScale HA technology, Rackable Systems' RapidScale clustered file system solution delivers two independent levels of RAID protection—hardware RAID with optional hot spare inside each appliance and storage cluster level RAID across appliances. In case of failure of an entire appliance, the 8 TB of capacity is quickly restored to a hot spare appliance in the same length of time for a single drive RAID rebuild.

"We feel that clustered storage is going to completely change the landscape of storage. But just because you put the word 'clustered' in your documentation doesn't mean you have what I am referring to.  So buyers beware," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.  "Rackable Systems actually has one of the most compelling clustered architectures and technologies in the industry. RapidScale has leading price/performance that uniquely provides extremely high performance in terms of throughput and IOPs.  Additionally, Rackable Systems has focused on ease of use and scalability.  We believe they can be a formidable player in the HPC storage arena."

Pricing and Availability

RapidScale is available immediately, with 8 TB Gigabit Ethernet configurations of the SA3100 appliance at list prices starting at $38,750, providing a cost-effective solution for under $5/GB.  InfiniBand and/or RapidScale HA configurations are also available to maximize performance and availability.

For further information, please contact Rackable Systems at 408-240-8300 or visit www.rackable.com.

About Rackable Systems

Rackable Systems, Inc. is a provider of servers and storage products for large-scale data center deployments. The company's products are designed to provide benefits in the areas of density, thermal efficiency, serviceability, power distribution and remote management. Founded in 1999 and based in Milpitas, California, Rackable Systems serves Internet, semiconductor design, enterprise software, federal government, entertainment, financial services, oil and gas exploration and biotechnology customers worldwide.

Contact Information:

Rackable Systems Colette LaForce 408-240-8324 claforce@rackable.com

Schwartz Communications, Inc. Dara Sklar 415-512-0770 rackablesystems@schwartz-pr.com

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