Auspex Systems was a computer data storage company founded in 1987 by Larry Boucher, who was previously CEO of Adaptec. It was headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
Auspex introduced the first network-attached storage (NAS) devices. After an initial public offering in 1993, shares were traded on the NASDAQ 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, 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 storage in the mid-1990s but fell behind NetApp in the field.[1] 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.[2] Boucher left the company in 1997 to found Alacritech.[3]