Storing The Next Generation.

New NAS appliance offers users more options

Advanced Digital Information Corporation announced the introduction of StorNext, a family of Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances that extends NAS technology to applications increasing its capacity and, at the same time, slashing its cost by twenty to thirty times. With a capacity range of 950GB to 24TB and a cost of 1 cent per megabyte, the NAS appliance offers network administrators a tool for managing e-mail, CAD drawings, graphics archives, software versions, and other data.

"[The appliance] extends the convenience and familiarity of NAS appliances to provide a way to manage the accessed data that clogs networks today," said Bill Britts, ADIC's executive VP of sales and marketing. "For network managers faced with the choice of adding disk, deleting data, or vaulting users' data in storage, [the new product] adds a new choice."

The NAS appliance connects to any port on a network switch or hub in minutes without any system downtime.

"Beyond providing general storage, [it] offers a way of solving the problem of the backup window," explains Jonathan Otis, ADIC vice president of product management.

The StorNext appliance's capacity and economy advances, achieved by combining NAS technology with automated tape storage, mean that IT departments can improve enterprise productivity and reduce the cost and complexity of data management by keeping accessed files automatically available to users while removing them from active disk resources. The family of products expands the options that Windows, Unix, and networks can use to streamline storage management in the face of growing data.

"We all know that the growth of data is creating problems and opportunities for IT departments in every industry," commented Britts. "NAS appliances have provided storage management benefits for active data, but they have been expensive to help IT departments solve the problem of managing the majority of enterprise-wide data."

Data can be written or read from the NAS appliances from any Windows, Unix, or web client with administrative permissions. The appliances scale to support systems--they support up to 236 network volumes or file systems and can manage up to 25 million files. Users have access to data in the new product using the file system interface (e.g., Windows Explorer) that they use for accessing files in storage or they can use an archiving interface provided by ADIC.

"With [it], users can solve the problem by moving inactive data--it can be as much as 70% to 80%--off disks onto StorNext appliances," says Otis.

Three NAS appliance models being introduced bring with them a range of capacities: the appliance's workgroup appliance offers from 950GB to 1900GB; the enterprise solution from 3.95TB to 7.9TB; and the data center storage system supplies from 11.8TB to 23.6TB of capacity. ADIC NAS appliance plans include a range of capacities and user interfaces.

According to Otis, "Most networks back up all the files on their disks regularly--sometimes daily--even if files haven't changed. As data grows and operations become 7x24, there is time to protect data. The backup load is reduced without changing the backup system; all the data remains available to end users and administrative overhead is reduced."

Street prices are expected to begin under $35,000. StorNext appliances are now available.