Infortrend First-To-Market With SAS RAID Array
RAID storage expert Infortrend today unveiled the EonStor (ES) S12F-R1420 4Gigabit (4Gb) Fibre Channel to SAS subsystem, the market's first RAID subsystem to employ Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) technology which provides improved reliability, scalability, and availability compared with Ultra320 SCSI and SATA. The ES S12F achieves system throughput greater than 1000MB per second and offers full-featured redundant controller architecture. For additional data storage, Infortrend also announced the EonStor S12S-J1000, a SAS to SAS JBOD with redundant SAS expander boards for no single point of failure. These two new products are available now.
SAS marks the transition from parallel SCSI to Serial SCSI. While parallel SCSI has reached a maximum throughput of 320MB per second (MBps), SAS uses this rate as its starting point with a multi-lane specification that delivers four times the speed of parallel SCSI. Initial offerings are at 3Gbps and will progress geometrically over the next few years. SAS uses a point-to-point topology which eliminates the overhead of shared bus arbitration mechanisms. It is also compatible with SATA, allowing specific market segments to continue to take advantage of the significant cost benefits of SATA technology.
"The growth projections for SAS and SATA disk arrays are truly exceptional," said John Webster, Senior Analyst and Founder of Data Mobility Group. "Infortrend has positioned itself well to take advantage of this opportunity by offering 4Gb Fibre Channel along with SAS."
Built around Infortrend's proprietary ASIC266 dual PCI-X architecture, the subsystem features dual-redundant RAID controllers for the highest levels of redundancy and performance, dual 4Gb Fibre Channels per controller, dedicated point-to-point drive channels, DDR266 cache memory, two dual-fan cooling modules, redundant power supplies, and an optional hot-swappable battery backup unit.
"The Infortrend ES S12F-R1420 signals the start of SAS technology availability and the continued ramp-up of industry-wide SAS adoption," said Greg Schulz, Senior Analyst at Evaluator Group (Greenwood Village, CO). "The introduction of a 4Gb Fibre Channel array with SAS-based disk drives is an indicator that SAS is ready for primetime. Combining the co-existence capabilities of SAS and SATA with the robust RAS features of SAS make it an ideal disk interface for storage arrays moving forward. This should enable vendors to bring to market cost- and performance-effective storage solutions for mainstream and specialized vertical markets."
"From pioneering SATA RAID subsystems to releasing the first SAS array, Infortrend constantly strives to develop products that incorporate the latest evolutions in data storage technology," stated Tony Chu, president of Infortrend Corporation. "As the technology matures, we will continue to explore the performance and reliability advantages of SAS for both the vertical and enterprise markets."
EonStor S12F-R1420 Highlights
- Dual controller, 4Gb Fibre Channel-to-SAS subsystem
- System throughput greater than 1000MBps
- Multi-lane, industry-standard SAS expansion channel connects to ES S12S-J1000 JBODs for additional data storage; up to 64 drives supported
- Twelve dedicated point-to-point drive channels for high performance and reliability
- Ease of maintenance with hot-swappable redundant FRUs including
- Two power supplies
- Two dual-speed cooling fans
- Optional battery backup unit (BBU)
- Single DDR RAM DIMM module with up to 2GB capacity
- UPS support
Infortrend Smart Technologies
Derived from more than ten years of experience in RAID storage design, Infortrend's subsystems are based on their own proprietary firmware codes that help safeguard disk array storage and provide a clearly defined, high performance standard in terms of maximum protection against failures and fast I/O transmission speeds. These intelligent firmware functions, IOSmart, DrvSmart, and SysSmart, are designed to strike a balance between system performance and data availability.
Target Markets and Uses
The EonStor S12F is ideal for direct-attached storage, clustered servers, disk-to-disk backup, and database and archive applications in industries such as medical imaging, multimedia/video on demand, stream editing, and more.
About Infortrend
Infortrend is a leading provider of cost-effective, high performance storage networking solutions. The company's products include EonStor storage systems, EonRAID controllers, and RAIDWatch software for virtually all storage interfaces including SAS, SCSI, iSCSI, SATA and Fibre Channel. With exceptional expertise in firmware, driver, and ASIC design, Infortrend manufactures and markets feature-rich products through a worldwide network of OEMs, distributors, and storage integrators for high availability storage applications. Founded in 1993, Infortrend is traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (Taiex), ticker number 2495. For more information, visit www.infortrend.com.