NEXSAN SATABEAST PROVES TO BE AN EVEN BIGGER, BADDER STORAGE ARRAY

Nexsan Technologies, the leader in innovative storage solutions, today introduced SATABeast, the companys latest enterprise-class storage array built around Serial ATA disk drives and designed to deliver the highest performance and utmost cost effectiveness in a single, scalable solution ideal for data intense storage applications such as online archiving and disk-based backup.

With SATABeast, Nexsan has developed the industrys most complete and cost-effective high-capacity storage system. SATABeasts advanced mechanical design provides superior cooling for optimal thermal operation, reduces drive vibration and delivers outstanding energy efficiency in an extreme density 21 terabytes of storage capacity in just 4U of rack space form factor. SATABeasts unique design extends individual drive life and provides significant savings year over year.

SATABeast employs Nexsans revolutionary AutoMAID energy saving technology that automatically and transparently places the arrays disk drives in an idle yet active state to reduce power consumption and operational costs. AutoMAID delivers the cost-saving benefits of MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) without the limitation of slow access times and special host software. Nexsans AutoMAID is granular to the individual drive level and enables users to determine access times and the level of energy savings desired. AutoMAID automatically monitors and performs regular integrity checks of all idle drives in the array.

"Customers are embracing Nexsan storage systems and the SATABeast is the natural evolution of the companys product line," said Tony Asaro, senior analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. "The SATABeast brings a more efficient design with its new AutoMAID technology, which reduces power consumption and heat generation on idle drives. The Nexsan team has thought ahead addressing the issues of power and cooling for the future as drive capacities continue to grow upwards of 500 GB. Customers looking at storage systems that support high density drives should consider this as a major issue."

With unparalleled density, security and energy efficiency, the SATABeast is ideally suited for primary and near-line storage, disk-to-disk backup, secondary storage and fixed content archive applications. Using Nexsans award-winning Performance SATA design, the arrays dual controllers provide blistering wire-speed throughput with 42 drive spindles that can be segmented into multiple RAID sets or a single large storage pool.

The enormous capacity of the SATABeast enables companies to easily store and access their important information on a single system that provides high availability in a compact enclosure at a cost-effective price, said Diamond Lauffin, Senior Executive Vice President at Nexsan. The combination of price, performance and built-in safety features makes the SATABeast a force to be reckoned with.

Nexsans SATABeast is engineered to meet necessary enterprise-class availability requirements with the inclusion of fully redundant components that are individually online hot swappable, including drives, controllers and power supplies. This advanced design provides increased ROI by eliminating the need to replace an entire multi-drive blade should a single drive fail. Each RAID controller is configured with dual high-performance 2 Gigabit Fibre Channel SFP LC host ports powering the SATABeast to sustained reads speeds of over 700 MB/s. The advanced architecture of the SATABeast features an innovative horizontal midplane design that promotes superior airflow and alleviates insertion stress points. Triple intake fans along paired with two redundant 760-watt power supplies with tachometer-monitored blowers provide maximum power and cooling. The systems Anti-Accumulative Rotational Vibration (ARV) design enables maximum performance and long term reliability.

The SATABeasts NexScan management interface is built into the SATABeast controller, alleviating the need to have a separate server or application manage the storage array. This sophisticated management utility monitors and reports the status of all subsystems over a 10/100/1000-network port. Included in NexScan are Tele-Guard, Nexsans phone-home feature for user notification of errors or prediction of error, and WorldView, the companys multi-box management feature.