San Diego-based blade storage manufacturer Astute Networks said Monday that it has added John C. Shoemaker to the firm's board of directors. Shoemaker is currently chairman of the board of SonicWALL, and serves on the boards of Altera and Extreme Networks. Shoemaker has previously served at Sun Microsystems, where he was EVP Computer Systems until 2004, when he retired. Shoemaker also has served at Xerox. Asute Networks develops blade storage and is backed by Tallwood Venture Capital, Sevin Rosen Funds, Scale Venture Partners, KeyNote Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners and Narra Venture Capital.