Auspex Systems was a

computer data storage Computer data storage is a technology consisting of computer components and Data storage, recording media that are used to retain digital data (computing), data. It is a core function and fundamental component of computers. The central pro ...

company founded in 1987 by Larry Boucher, who was previously CEO of

Adaptec Adaptec was a computer storage company and remains a brand for computer storage products. The company was an independent firm from 1981 to 2010, at which point it was acquired by PMC-Sierra, which itself was later acquired by Microsemi, which itse ...

. It was headquartered in

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...

. Auspex introduced the first

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...

(NAS) devices. After an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in 1993, shares were traded on the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

exchange under symbol ASPX. One of the unique features of their systems was the ease with which volumes could be transparently mirrored and migrated between physical disks. Auspex systems used Functional Multiprocessing, essentially

Asymmetric multiprocessing An asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP or ASMP) system is a multiprocessor computer system where not all of the multiple interconnected central processing units (CPUs) are treated equally. For example, a system might allow (either at the hardware or ope ...

, that allowed the systems to scale functions independently -- such as networking, file processing, or storage processing. There was a Host Processor running Unix that controlled the whole system. This 'system within a system' could even be rebooted without interrupting file servicing. They became a leading provider of

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...

storage in the mid-1990s but fell behind

NetApp NetApp, Inc. is an American hybrid cloud data services and data management company headquartered in San Jose, California. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012–2021. Founded in 1992 with an IPO in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data services ...

in the field. Early cabinet rack models held sets of 3-4gb disks the size of small shoeboxes. Bruce N. Moore joined in 1995 as president and chief executive officer. Boucher left the company in 1997 to found Alacritech. Their 4Front or NS2000 model, initially offered in 1999 as a stackable system, held drawers of disks and was plagued by Mylex RAID controller issues which contributed to their bankruptcy in June 2003. Their last product, the NSc3000, was the first multi-vendor SAN-NAS gateway and essentially kept the same NAS front-end but could connect via

Fibre Channel Fibre Channel (FC) is a high-speed data transfer protocol providing in-order, lossless delivery of raw block data. Fibre Channel is primarily used to connect computer data storage to servers in storage area networks (SAN) in commercial data cen ...

to any SAN disk array. After the burst of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

, in February, 2000, the company worked with Regent Pacific to select Gary J. Sbona as interim chief executive. When the company was liquidated in 2003, its

patent portfolio A patent portfolio is a collection of patents owned by a single entity, such as an individual or corporation. The patents may be related or unrelated. Patent applications may also be regarded as included in a patent portfolio. The monetary benefit ...

was acquired by NetApp and its services business went to GlassHouse Technologies for about $280,000.

References

{{tech-company-stub American companies established in 1987 American companies disestablished in 2003 Companies based in Santa Clara, California Computer companies established in 1987 Computer companies disestablished in 2003 Defunct computer companies of the United States