StoneFly Networks Lowers Price Barrier With Entry-Level IP SAN While Delivering Affordable Enterprise-Class Features And Scalability
StoneFly Networks, Inc., the leading supplier of integrated data protection and management systems to value-oriented small and midsize enterprises (SME), today introduced StoneFly ValueSAN, the newest addition to the company's family of IP SAN-based solutions. StoneFly ValueSAN is designed to provide underserved or budget-constrained organizations with a low-cost yet powerful solution for advanced, enterprise-class storage networking that scales over time.
The new offering provides a network storage platform based upon the award-winning StoneFly Storage Concentrator i3000 for IP-based block-level provisioning, centralized storage management and monitoring of logical storage volumes. ValueSAN, which scales easily to 19.2 TB of storage in a single node, also includes StoneFly Reflection for local and campus synchronous mirroring as well as Snapshot capabilities for expediting the recovery of critical data.
According to Bob Peyser, vice president of marketing for StoneFly Networks, ValueSAN lowers entry barriers for companies wanting to leverage the immediate benefits of a full-featured IP SAN solution. "ValueSAN enables companies to quickly and easily deploy a highly cost-effective IP SAN foundation with advanced functionality," he says. "Additionally, the scalable platform offers the best value over time with a wide range of storage capacity and software add-ons for building a total data protection solution, one step at a time."
With a starting price of less than $10,000, StoneFly's ValueSAN increases storage utilization, streamlines administration and boosts business continuity. The modular foundation can be expanded to incorporate additional storage capacity as well as sophisticated data protection functionality. A seamless migration path to StoneFly's enterprise application suite eases integration with StoneFly Backup Advantage, a turnkey IP SAN with industry-leading backup and recovery software; StoneFly Replicator asynchronous mirroring and StoneFly Replicator CDP with application-aware continuous data protection (CDP) capabilities.
For Darin Soll, CIO of Ace Asphalt of Arizona, a Phoenix-based paving and maintenance contractor, an entry-level IP SAN offering such as StoneFly ValueSAN paves the way for enterprise-class storage functionality for the growing business.
"Many small-to-midsize businesses such as ours face the dilemma of rapidly expanding data storage requirements and growing server uptime expectations," said Soll, whose Windows 2003 environment includes a 1TB array and enterprise applications such as VoIP, Exchange and SQL. "Since implementing our StoneFly IP SAN, that dilemma is history. By moving all of our mission-critical data to the SAN, we can now expand volumes on the fly while also keeping our data safe with StoneFly's replication and snapshot features."
According to the recent Worldwide Disk Storage Systems 2005-2009 Forecast and Analysis: Virtualization, Regulatory Compliance, and Cost-Optimized Storage - Pillars for Future Growth (IDC #33477, June 2005) from leading IT market research and advisory firm IDC, iSCSI-based storage systems priced in the $5,000 to $15,000 range are forecasted to deliver worldwide revenues of $2.1 billion by 2009, up from $11.2 million in 2004. "This significant growth comes as SMBs face increasing data storage needs and challenges, leading them to turn to networked storage," said Natalya Yezhkova, senior research analyst, IDC Storage Systems. "For these companies, iSCSI-based solutions represent an affordable and viable alternative to traditional FC SANs."
StoneFly's robust data management and protection solutions already support more than one petabyte of storage in field-proven installations nationwide. The company's award-winning products are ideally suited for meeting the specialized storage demands of various vertical markets, including insurance, medical, manufacturing, financial services, retail, government and education.
Available now, StoneFly ValueSAN nodes start with one array populated with either six or twelve drives. Users can add a six-pack of drives or additional arrays one at a time or in groups to scale capacity. Storage arrays can support multiple drive capacities in a single array, so users can add higher capacity drives if needed. Once capacity in a single node is reached, additional nodes can be added to the ValueSAN.
In addition to the built-in Snapshot and synchronous mirroring, StoneFly ValueSAN provides high-reliability features such as hot-swappable drive tray mechanisms, power supplies and cooling fans; drive failure detection; online rebuild; and true RAID data protection built with the latest Serial ATA high-speed disk drives.
An entry-level StoneFly ValueSAN solution, priced at $8,995, includes StoneFly's i3000 Storage Concentrator; 960 GB of storage (expandable to 19.2 TB); StoneFly Snapshot and Reflection synchronous mirroring software; block-level virtualization; centralized storage management; and Version 4 of the StoneFusion Intelligent Network Storage Platform.
About StoneFly Networks, Inc.
StoneFly Networks, Inc., founded in April 2000 and based in San Diego, is the leading supplier of integrated data protection and management systems to value-oriented small and medium enterprises. StoneFly Networks pioneered low cost storage networks, actively participating in the development of the iSCSI (Internet small computer system interface) standard that enabled SANs to be deployed using low cost Ethernet. The award-winning StoneFly Business Advantage applications suite and StoneFly Network Storage Platform deliver the best value, scalability and total cost of ownership available. StoneFly Networks is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). The company is also an active, long-standing member of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which developed the iSCSI standard. For more information, please visit www.stonefly.com.