DoSTOR July9, 2008--Hifn (NASDAQ: HIFN), the catalyst behind storage and networking innovation, today announced that its award-winning Swarm Series has been certified with VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware ESX 3i, expanding the customer options for iSCSI SAN storage in a VMware virtual environment.

Hifn's Swarm Series Software  is now listed in the VMware "Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i", highlighting the Swarm's functionality and support for three VMware environments: ESX 3.5, ESX 3i Embedded and ESX 3i Server Installable. The VMware Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide enables VMware users to quickly determine which storage solutions have passed the company's stringent requirements for iSCSI SAN connectivity and compatibility with hosts running VMware ESX 3.x environments.

"Hifn's certification gives customers an officially sanctioned option for creating a fully virtualized infrastructure under VMware without the complexity and cost of a Fibre Channel SAN," said John Matze, Vice President Business Development at Hifn. "iSCSI SAN technology, combined with the full-featured data protection suite built into every Swarm system, have made it affordable for small and medium businesses to take full advantage of a VMware virtualized server and storage environment. We expect VMware deployments to play an increasingly important role for us and our customers."

Amcom Software, the leader in mission-critical communications, is one of the first Hifn customers to deploy the Swarm appliance in a VMware Infrastructure environment. The company selected a Hifn Swarm system as part of a data center server and storage consolidation project implemented with VMware Infrastructure 3. Amcom chose the Hifn Swarm to meet its stringent data center requirements for assured data availability and reliability based on the high-availability design with standard RAID 6 and RAID 61 data protection with active/active failover, multiple data paths to the storage, and the integrated remote data replication feature. 

About Swarm Software from Hifn

Hifn's simple-to-implement and easy-to-use iSCSI software delivers a robust feature set that continues the company's mission to protect sensitive data in the mid market.  The solution offers a unique feature providing support for both iSCSI and NAS storage protocols within Microsoft Windows environments.  Setting itself apart from typical iSCSI software products, Hifn includes a rich feature set of storage management and data availability services designed to simplify and reduce storage management overhead and improve data security and availability for SMB/SME customers.  All iSCSI management - including administration of multiple deployed appliances -- is handled via an intuitive web-based GUI. The solution provides broad volume management features with support for on-the-fly volume and capacity expansion and enhanced data availability with Multi-Path I/O support, providing dual data paths for active/active access to storage.  Advanced data protection is included by enabling VSS-consistent snapshots and volume-based remote replication to facilitate disaster recovery and business continuity operations.  Hifn's innovative iSCSI software also includes integrated backup, enabling users to backup directly from SAN-based storage, greatly reducing the backup window and eliminating backup traffic from the production Ethernet LAN. 
      

About Hifn

Hifn (NASDAQ:HIFN) delivers the key channel and OEM ingredients for 21^st century storage and networking environments. Leveraging over a decade of leadership and expertise in the development of purpose-built Applied Services Processors (ASPs), we are a trusted partner to industry leaders for whom infrastructure innovation in storage and networking is critical to success. With the majority of secure networked communications flowing through Hifn technology, the 21^st century convergence of storage and networking drives our product roadmap forward. For more information, please visit: http://www.hifn.com/.