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17th Fastest Growing County in the Nation Leverages EqualLogic and VMware Virtual Infrastructure to Achieve Critical Organizational Needs

Nashua, N.H., June 6, 2006 - EqualLogic®, the leading provider of enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced it is providing the Kane County, Illinois, data center with consolidated virtual storage for its VMware-based virtual server infrastructure. Kane County is deploying EqualLogic's PS Series storage arrays with VMware's new native-iSCSI-enabled VMware Infrastructure 3 software to create a cost-effective and disaster-proof virtual desktop environment. EqualLogic's PS Series SAN serves as the critical foundation for a growing set of Kane County initiatives, including server consolidation, virtualized desktops and centralized document management.

Kane County provides comprehensive government services - from general administration, public health and education to law enforcement, judicial system and tax collection - for the fourth largest county in Illinois and the seventeenth fastest growing county in the nation with over 480,000 residents and 1,452 employees. Kane County's technology department has completely overhauled the county's IT environment in the last four years by using progressive technology to turn around aging equipment while addressing its constrained budget cycle, limited data space and significant staffing cost concerns. Needing an easy-to-use, cost-effective way to support its services, Kane County took a creative approach with the implementation of a virtual desktop infrastructure.

"In overhauling our technology department, Kane County needed a storage solution that would seamlessly integrate with VMware ESX Server to give us hardware consolidation and better resource management across our virtual enterprise," said David Siles, chief technology officer for Kane County. "Our vision was to 'do more with less' by using self-managing technology that would take the pressure off of our IT staff and our limited budget. The EqualLogic iSCSI SAN allowed us to do that by eliminating hours from our storage management processes with its built in intelligence and automation - while providing a consolidated storage platform with all the enterprise features we need at a fraction of the cost of a Fibre Channel SAN."

Kane County chose VMware ESX Server, which is part of the new VMware Infrastructure 3 product suite, with native iSCSI support along with EqualLogic's iSCSI-based SAN to minimize cost and management complexity and maximize administration flexibility in their consolidated server environment. The implementation of EqualLogic's storage solution into Kane County's virtual environment has enabled it to consolidate 56 Intel servers running Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows 2003, SQL Server, Terminal Services and Exchange onto four IBM xSeries systems - all of which are connected to three EqualLogic PS300E arrays. With the virtual storage and server solutions in place, Kane County has far exceeded its business goals by eliminating hardware purchasing requirements in excess of $120,000 in the first year of implementation; reducing space, power, and HVAC requirements by over 50 percent; and cutting annual downtime to only an hour and nine minutes.

"EqualLogic's iSCSI-based storage solution in combination with VMware Infrastructure 3 gives enterprises like Kane County the opportunity to create a flexible and cost-effective virtual environment," said John Joseph, vice president of marketing at EqualLogic. "The enhanced efficiency and simplicity that EqualLogic's dynamic virtual storage solution enables in leading-edge virtualized computing environments is second to none."

A growing number of companies from multiple industries worldwide are embracing EqualLogic storage and VMware virtual infrastructure software together, as virtual servers require an easy-to-use and cost-effective virtual storage solution. These companies range from non-profit organizations such as the LifeLink Foundation to global companies such as SDC Udviklking and Intermec.

"In the past if you wanted to create a highly available virtual environment with VMware, you had to have a Fiber Channel infrastructure," said Siles. "That option was not affordable for most small and mid-size businesses, school districts and government branches. EqualLogic and VMware's iSCSI-based solution eliminates this hurdle by making virtual desktop infrastructure and disaster recovery available to organizations of all sizes."

EqualLogic's award-winning and data-center-proven PS Series is the only native iSCSI SAN solution to offer a comprehensive and fully integrated standard feature set at no additional cost. The PS Series provides seamless scalability for on-demand growth, automatic workload balancing within and across arrays, snapshots for instant data recovery and built in auto-replication for disaster recover in a resilient enterprise-class IP SAN infrastructure. Each PS Series storage array comes with fully redundant, fault-tolerant hardware and includes automatic storage-management software in a self-contained chassis.