Coraid announced the released of an ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) driver for the Solaris Operating System. The new Solaris driver is provided as both source code and a loadable binary and can be downloaded from Coraid's website (www.coraid.com) at no cost. The new driver works with 32-bit and 64-bit SPARC-based systems running Solaris 7, 8, 9 and 10.

"Coraid is a strong proponent of the open source movement and developed AoE as an open protocol," stated Coraid CEO James Kemp. "We offer all of our AoE drivers, which we develop in source code format, free of charge to our customers. We are also happy to work with third parties in developing additional AoE drivers, therefore expanding the market for AoE storage products. The new Solaris driver opens a new market segment to the benefits and saving that can be gained from the use of AoE storage"

"One of the chief benefits of the OpenSolaris community is that it is open to contribution from innovators of all kinds," said Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer at Sun Microsystems, Inc. "By extending the benefits of this simple and open storage protocol Coraid is making a welcome contribution that parallels our own efforts to reduce the cost and complexities associated with modern IT centres worldwide."

Coraid sells its AoE storage products under the brand name EtherDrive, which lowers the cost of a SAN to less than $0.93/GB. AoE is a non-routed protocol. By eliminating the overhead of TCP/IP, there is no need for expensive ToE (TCP/IP off-loan Engine) cards or HBAs (Host Bus Adapters). AoE delivers a scalable, low cost alternative to iSCSI and FibreChannel.