This firmware upgrade boosts performance to 100 MB/s (megabytes-per-second) for Nexsan RAID (redundant array of independent disks) storage using a single iSCSI port, and 180 MB/s using dual ports, Nexsan of Woodland Hills, California said. Dual controller performance doubles these numbers, the company said. The upgrade will be standard for all SATABeast and SATABoy systems being shipped as of Monday, and is available as a free firmware update for existing customers, Nexsan added.
The SATABoy and SATABeast storage products offer dual Fibre Channel as well as dual iSCSI ports on each controller, Nexsan said. This multi-protocol approach allows the storage capacity of these products to be allocated to either Fibre Channel or iSCSI initiators, or to operate both protocols simultaneously, as needed, the company said. Smaller environments can also upgrade from iSCSI to Fibre Channel as and when they need the extra speed, Nexsan added.
With these enhancements, Nexsan’s SATABeast and SATABoy arrays will continue to provide ease of use, cost efficiency, flexibility and performance to its users, Nexsan said. Easily integrated into existing Ethernet or Fibre Channel networking environments, the dual-use SATABeast and SATABoy products are less complex and less costly than assembling a comparable multi-vendor system, Nexsan added.
The enhancements provide users the opportunity to deploy iSCSI storage in environments where performance may have been a factor previously, such as replication for business continuity and disaster recovery, or near-instantaneous online access to fixed-content data, Nexsan said. The advanced, multi-protocol disk storage solutions come at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions, and serve a range of storage applications, the company added.
SATABeast's combination of technologies delivers high capacity, performance, reliability and cost savings for primary and near-line storage, disk-to-disk (D2D) backup, secondary storage and fixed content archive applications, Nexsan said. The SATABeast's 42 drive design extends individual drive life and provides significant savings year over year, the company said.
SATABeast and SATABoy are multipurpose storage arrays that offer Nexsan’s AutoMAID (Autonomic Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology, Nexsan said. AutoMAID allows Nexsan systems to place their disk drives into an idle state to conserve energy, and provide near-instantaneous access to data, the company said. Nexsan's AutoMAID is granular to an individual drive or RAID set and offers multiple levels of energy savings which allows users to determine the right level of access speed and energy savings for their environment, Nexsan added.
Designed to meet the challenges of demanding computing environments, the 14-drive SATABoy delivers unparalleled availability and performance in a SATA (Serial-ATA) RAID system, Nexsan said. SATABoy's combination of high performance and capacity provides value that enhances all digital information storage applications, such as home directories, fixed content, tiered storage, disk-to-disk backup, broadcast and VOD (video on demand), and other business-critical applications, the company added.
