PHOENIX, Storage Networking World, Booth #P8; April 12, 2005 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced a comprehensive set of enhancements to the Sun StorEdge 6920 system that deliver high-end features and functionality -- such as heterogeneous virtualization -- at mid-tier prices. The Sun StorEdge 6920 system now helps customers easily consolidate existing storage assets, ensure data availability and protect their storage investments without breaking the bank. These new features underscore Sun's commitment to help customers drive down acquisition, deployment and management costs in the data center.

"The Sun StorEdge 6920 system is a next generation solution with scalability, reliability, and features and functions that eclipses other traditional storage systems that it competes with," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. "The Sun StorEdge 6920 system is an innovative and compelling storage solution that should impress even skeptics. It supports N-way scalability, advanced copy services, intelligent tiered storage, and can manage heterogeneous storage systems creating an intelligent storage network. Customers should take a serious look at the Sun StorEdge 6920 system because it really isn't the same old thing with a new coat of paint. It is a new way to do SAN from a major vendor."

With this significant upgrade, customers can integrate multivendor storage assets into a single, modular 6920 system, to simplify storage management and improve resource utilization. Customers also can deploy a tiered storage architecture from a single Sun StorEdge 6920 system and migrate data to lower-cost storage , without having to transition to a new system. When combined with Sun StorEdge SAM-FS software, data may be transparently and automatically migrated between storage classes as the data ages according to business policies. Also included in this release is a comprehensive set of high-availability software for business continuance �� from disk-based data recovery to remote data replication �� helping to ensure predictable and uninterrupted access to mission-critical data. When coupled with the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), customers have an even more powerful consolidation solution from the application to the server to the storage.

"The Sun StorEdge 6920 system is a key asset in our data center," said James Dobson, system architect, Dartmouth College. "We have recently been able to consolidate our boot disk environment onto the system with the addition of Solaris 10 technology and are now interested in expanding it to include heterogeneous storage. We already use Sun StorEdge 6120 arrays and would like to take advantage of lower-cost storage technology, such as SATA, utilizing the single storage virtualization capabilities on the Sun StorEdge 6920 system. The next-generation Sun StorEdge 6920 system will help us continue driving down cost and complexity, while keeping our data center up and running. We expect the system's enhanced snapshot capabilities and new replication features to reduce backup time and speed recovery."

New and enhanced features in this upgrade include:

• Sun StorEdge Pool Manager simplifies consolidation and capacity management by enabling customers to virtualize multi-vendor storage assets without disruption.
• Sun StorEdge Data Replicator helps improve business continuity by replicating data volumes to protect against data loss from a system, building, site or regional disaster.
• Sun StorEdge Data Mirror expedites important functions by providing the ability to create full copies of application data volumes, split them off for use by another application (like backup or testing), and then allow them to be rejoined as needed with rapid updating.
• Sun StorEdge Data Snapshot protects data with ability to create frequent and regular snapshots of application data to minimize the window for data loss caused by software errors, user errors and viruses.

"Concern for data protection and business continuity have reached an all-time high, and the increased spending on storage replication software is a direct result of this concern," said John McArthur, Group Vice President and General Manager of Information Infrastructure Research at IDC. "Though the cost for storage replication software running on high-end arrays has historically been quite high, customers can now enjoy the benefit of improved business continuity with more affordable solutions, such as Sun's StorEdge 6920, which bring data replication and heterogeneous storage virtualization capabilities to midrange storage solutions."

Solaris 10 and the Sun StorEdge 6920 system �� A winning match for consolidation

The StorEdge 6920 is a key element of Sun's vision to virtualize the data center into a single, flexible pool of resources that deliver a broad range of business services. Like Solaris 10 OS Containers, the Sun StorEdge 6920 enables customers to flexibly allocate and dedicate resources to specific applications. The Sun StorEdge 6920 running in Solaris environments provides customers with a unique opportunity to realize the benefits of end-to-end consolidation of their IT infrastructure. The result is increased resource utilization and significantly reduced management and infrastructure costs.

"The Sun StorEdge 6920 system is a new and compelling choice for businesses of any size that can benefit from enterprise-class features on a modular, scalable storage system," said Mark Canepa, executive vice president, network storage, Sun Microsystems. "This is another step in Sun's ongoing commitment to developing innovative solutions for customers who demand the greatest accessibility, availability and growth-ready architectures at the best prices."

The new features and system enhancements will be available by June 30, 2005.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, StorEdge, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.