EMC's Iomega launches NAS storage line for smaller businesses
- — 05 May, 2011 03:41
The Iomega StorCenter px4-300d. Image credit: Iomega.
EMC subsidiary Iomega today unveiled a new series of simple disk storage arrays aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses and remote offices.
Known for its small office and home office products, Iomega is trying to sell upstream with its new StorCenter PX Series of network storage products. The company said the new arrays are its most advanced series of desktop and rackmount NAS devices.
The StorCenter PX Series features four-bay and six-bay desktop models and a four-bay rackmount model, each available in scalable configurations. Prices for the NAS range from US$799 for a diskless, four-bay StorCenter desktop version to $3,999.99 for a six-bay, 18TB StorCenter px6-300d model.
The NAS arrays are optimized for 3.5-in., 7,200rpm, serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drives, but they can also use 2.5-in drives. The devices are also the first for Iomega that can use solid-state drives (SSDs).
Another first for Iomega: the StorCenter PX series arrays can replicate data between each other for business continuity and disaster recovery purposes, according to Marc Tanguay, Iomega's general manager of network storage products.
Tanguay said Iomega plans to demonstrate streaming multiple virtual desktop image files from SSDs in a StorCenter PX box next week at EMC World. "Virtualization is a real target application for these products," he said. "They have great performance for things like call centers with boot storms in the morning and for streaming video."
A StorCenter PX series NAS box with a drive removed
The StorCenter PX series features hot-swappable drives and several levels of RAID disk protection. Iomega also included an iSCSI port for block-level data transfers.
he arrays are certified for VMware vSphere 4.0, Citrix XenServer, and Windows Server 2003/2008/2008 R2 HyperV environments.
"With new software features, we think this will help us expand into the remote office of larger enterprise customers," Tanguay said. For example, the NAS boxes offer Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services for distributed networks, allowing the boxes to replicate back and forth to a main corporate data center.
Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.
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Ivan
Thu 16/06/2011 - 12:48
While this new range sounds very good it's impossible to get any information from Iomega about their support and backup in Australia. Questions posted on their support website 9 days ago remain unanswered and similarly, despite the efforts of an Iomega moderator on the Iomega Facebook page, the following queries remain in the ether:
1. In Australia, if the unit fails, to where does it have to be returned? The retailer? The distributor? An authorised repairer? Where are these located in Australia?
2. Is the Iomega® Rapid Response Service available in Australia? (On this, the Australian press release suggests that this service IS available, yet the website seems to suggest it is only available OS. And there's no mention of how it all works, if it exists.)
Finally, if this is an enterprise class unit, wouldn't it be logical for it to accept the Hitachi enterprise level HDD (Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB, Model HUA723030ALA640 (7200 RPM) as well as the lower class HDD (Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB, Model HDS723030ALA640 (7200 RPM)?
I'd like to seriously consider this product but the lack of feedback from the manufacturer doesn't bode well for any thought of after-sale support.