Hammer Z-Series Network Storage Line Now Shipping
Hammer Storage, a division of Bell Microproducts, Inc., today announced that its new line of network storage, the Hammer Z-Series, is now shipping. Ideal for small to medium businesses, Bell Microproducts expanded the Hammer line to fill a disparity in the market by adding Zetera Corporation's widely-acclaimed Z-SAN Storage-over-IP (SoIP) technology to create the Hammer Z-Series.
"We are taking advantage of a great opportunity to fill an enormous gap in the storage industry by solving real business issues for smaller companies that now have storage requirements similar to large enterprises," said Jerry Kagele, Executive Vice President, Computer Products at Bell Microproducts. "Today's businesses need storage solutions that are faster, more scalable, easier to manage and less expensive. Z-SAN is the only storage architecture that delivers on all of these demands at the same time, allowing Hammer to be the first to provide exactly what the market needs."
The Z-Series product family is enabled by Zetera's Z-SAN technology, the only technology available that delivers on the vision of SoIP. SoIP uses Internetworking Protocol (IP) as the only storage fabric, eliminating the need for costly controllers, dedicated switches and RAID controllers that also serve as performance bottlenecks.
"Our storage architecture is one of those rare technology breakthroughs that is superior in every dimension to its predecessors," said Zetera CEO Chuck Cortright. "SoIP is a seamless extension of the network itself, eliminating the need for much of the costly and complex hardware and software associated with conventional storage architectures. Thanks to its simplicity and elegance, Z-SAN enables Hammer to provide storage that is simultaneously less expensive, higher performance, more scalable, and easier to manage."
The first Hammer Z-Series solutions include the Z-Box desktop and the Z-Rack 1U rackmount solutions with capacities of up to two terabytes per device. The desktop delivers a superior price/performance advantage over competing desktop 4-bay NAS products. The 1U rackmount competes with rackmount NAS and entry-level SAN solutions by providing better performance, scalability and reliability at a very attractive price point.
"Building on the retail success of the Hammer Storage brand, the Z-Series moves Hammer Storage solidly into the business network storage space," added Kagele. "This line delivers game-changing storage solutions that greatly improve the way IT managers purchase and implement network storage."
For example, Hammer Z-Rack and Zetera's Z-SAN technology were recently selected by MIT's Media Lab as key components in the construction of one of the largest and highest performance data storage arrays in the world. The storage array, which will grow to 1.4 petabytes over three years, will be used to collect and analyze video and audio data for a research project designed to better understand early childhood cognitive development.
The Hammer Z-Series offers several exclusive features unavailable through competing products:
- Eliminates need for and cost of specialized hardware like Fibre Channel switches, host-bus adapters, TCP offload engines and RAID controllers
- Aggregates for capacity up to 128 PB per volume across multiple enclosures
- Aggregates for performance of 10+ GB/sec across multiple enclosures
- Distributed RAID delivers hardware RAID functionality and the ability to extend RAID volumes across physical enclosures
- Multi-initiator file system delivers NAS-like file and volume sharing on a block-based device
- Z-SAN technology from Zetera simultaneously optimizes on performance, scalability, reliability and cost
- Support for up to four (4) SATA-1 or SATA-2 disk drives
- Support for capacities up to 2 terabytes, configured to order
- Gigabit Ethernet network interface
- Optimized performance up to 80 MB/sec per enclosure
- Compact Z-Box desktop or industry-standard Z-Rack 1U rackmount form factors
- Compatibility with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 and Redhat Linux 4 (available Q2)
- Hammer Personal Storage Manager software suite
The Hammer Z-Series will include solutions offering greater than 9TB capacity per enclosure later in 2006. For more information on the Hammer Z-Series solutions, visit www.Hammer-Storage.com.
About Bell Microproducts, Inc.
Bell Microproducts is an international, value-added provider of a wide range of high-technology products, solutions, and services to the industrial and commercial markets. The company's offering includes semiconductors, computer platforms, peripherals, and storage products of various types including desktop, high-end computer and storage subsystems, fibre channel connectivity products, RAID, NAS and SAN storage systems, back-up products, storage management software, and extensive support, integration and installation services. Bell Microproducts is an industry-recognized specialist in storage products and is one of the world's largest storage-centric value-added distributors.
The company's products are available at any level of integration, from components to subsystem assemblies and fully-integrated, tested and certified system solutions. The company adds value with a broad range of services including testing, software loading, kitting, mass storage system integration, and computer system integration. Trained and certified technical personnel complete each of these processes at Bell Microproducts' ISO 9001:2000 facilities. Bell Microproducts markets and distributes more than 125 brand name product lines, as well as its own Rorke Data and Hammer Storage brands, to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), contract electronic manufacturing services (EMS) customers, value-added resellers (VARs) and system integrators in the Americas and Europe. More information can be found in the company's SEC filings, or by visiting the Bell Microproducts Web site at www.bellmicro.com.
About Zetera Corporation
Zetera Corporation is the developer of Z-SAN, a SoIP (Storage over Internetworking Protocol) technology that enables networked storage to be realized at unprecedented price-performance levels. The technology was invented by the creators of the IDE and ATAPI disk drive standards, which have shipped in billions of disk drives. Leveraging the latest IP advances, Zetera has created a new class of network storage technology that is superior in performance, cost, scalability and compatibility to all other types of network storage. Based in Irvine, California, Zetera licenses its technology to leading storage, computer, peripheral and device manufacturers worldwide, including NETGEAR and Bell Microproducts. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.zetera.com.