News

posted on 02 June 2008 12:23

Nexsan has added a SAS-based drive array to its SATAbeast and SATAboy AutoMAID nearline stoage products. It provides faster access to fixed content stored on such arrays. 

Nexsan storage aims to bridge the gap between tape and fast online storage with a line of serial ATA (SATA) hard drive arrays featuring AutoMAID, a 3-step series of drive spin speed reductions that save a lot of power.

The products are targeted at the storage of less active data that doesn't need constant high-speed access and for which tape storage would provide impractically slow access.

According Bob Woolery, Nexsan's SVP for marketing, customers have requested a faster version of the SATA-based products and the SASboy, using serial-attached SCSO (SAS) drives, is the result. It responds to a need for higher-performance access to relatively fixed content data with an active-idle-active-idle access pattern.

The SASboy product packages 14 300GB, 15,000rpm SAS drives in a 3U enclosure offering 4.2TB of capacity. It can have two controllers with each having two 4Gbit/s Fibre Channel ports and two iSCSI ports.

The range of SASboy, SATAboy and SATAbeast products can be managed through a single pane of glass (management GUI).

Woolery said Nexsan: "is not going into primary storage. The design point is fixed content. We're a pure play in this area."

He would not comment on whether or not Nexsan might bring out a product combining SAS and SATA drives in a single product but acknowledged it was a reasonable question to ask.

The SASboy starting price is $6,800/TB.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}