Dell looks to buy clustered storage vendor Exanet

According to a Dell spokesman, the company has submitted an offer to purchase Israel-based Exanet's assets, primarily patents and other intellectual property with court approval through a Chapter 7 liquidation in Israel.

"The transaction has not yet been approved by the Israel court, so we won't speculate on its completion or timing," the spokesman said in an e-mail response to a Computerworld inquiry.

Exanet sells a Linux-based clustered network-attached storage management software called the ExaStore.

Dell has had a long-standing reseller and manufacturing relationship with EMC Corp., selling its Clariion line of mid-range storage arrays. More recently, Dell began selling its own line of iSCSI-based low-end and midrange storage arrays after it purchased EqualLogic Corp. in 2007 .

Exanet's U.S. headquarters is located in New York and the company also has offices in Europe and Japan. Exanet filed for bankruptcy last month under Chapter 11.