News

posted on 02 April 2008 07:44

OEM drive array manufacturer Xyratex has announced the SP1224s, a 24 drive 2U enclosure utilising small form factor 2.5-inch drives, a first for mainstream drive array manufacturers.

This is the second product line in Xyratex' OneStor ESP (Extensible Storage platform). The first product, the 1424s, also provides 24 drives, but standard 3.5-inch ones and in a 4U enclosure. The product line adheres to Storage Bay Bridge standards meaning that field replaceable modules are used. There is a common management API across the line and 'personality' modules can be added such as a server blade, a RAID controller and NAS capability.

The SP1224s plays to the green gallery with an 85 percent efficient power converter. The multiple spindles in the 2U space make this product better suited to I/O intensive applications than 2U full of 3.5-inch drives.

Atrato has very recently introduced its 2.5-inch box, the Velocity1000, and we will now probably see all the main drive array nmanufacturers introduce 2.5-inch products targetted at I/O-bound applications. This is going to be tier one technology, not used for virtual tape libraries or disk-to-disk backup.

Xyratex has existing OEM supply deals with BluArc, Data Direct, NetApp, OnStor and Overland Storage. We can expect a high probability that the first three of these will introduce 2.5-inch drive-based arrays within the next three to six months.

Taiwan-based Infortrend introduced its EonStor B12S and B12F SAS and Fibre Channel 2.5-inch arrays in October last year.

Xyratex is also involved in developing potential solid state disk arrays.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}