Winchester Systems Delivers Ruggedized RAID For Military Applications at `COTS' Prices.Business/Technology Editors BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2001 Winchester Systems has introduced a newly developed ruggedized version of its high performance FlashDisk OpenRAID disk array suitable and qualified for use in mobile military applications and other harsh environments requiring ruggedized hardware or experiencing unusual temperatures. "Winchester Systems designed this product to meet the military's need for Mil-Spec hardware priced in Commercial Off-the-Shelf Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) is a term for software or hardware, generally technology or computer products, that are ready-made and available for sale, lease, or license to the general public. (COTS) price ranges," according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Mike Roberts, the company's vice president for government sales. Ruggedized Mil-Spec Requirements The FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID disk array was developed for the US Army under contract and meets a variety of military specifications including: -- MIL-STD-810E Environmental Compliance specifications for temperature range and rate of change, altitude, humidity, rain, inclination, dust, vibration, shock and fungus. -- MIL-STD-461D for EMI (Electro-Magnetic Interference) Compliance including CE102, CS101, CS114, RE102 and RE103. -- MIL-STD-2169B for HEMP (High Energy Magnetic Pulse) Compliance. -- Military AC Power Connector. It also includes a military-style secure AC power receptacle and power cable with circular, threaded connector. A separate threaded protective cover is included to protect the AC receptacle when not in use. FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID meets and exceeds all the specifications and is ready for use in any other military or demanding commercial application within the published and lab verified specifications. Ruggedized Construction The FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID disk array is constructed of solid seam-welded aluminum throughout to provide significant mechanical strength while minimizing total weight. A fully loaded system with 73 GB disk drives weighs only 75 pounds. Cooling/Heating FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID is designed to operate in temperatures ranging from 0 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It is equipped with a heater and unique temperature control circuitry that turns off the fans and turns on the internal heating element Noun 1. heating element - the component of a heater or range that transforms fuel or electricity into heat bar - a heating element in an electric fire; "an electric fire with three bars" at low temperatures. The unit is also equipped with two powerful, six-inch, 215 cfm, variable-speed fans that provide superior cooling capacity so that it can operate in high temperatures. The enclosure and disk drives are all metal so that excess heat is conducted away from the disk drives and other heat sensitive components. Shock and Vibration To enable the disk drives to withstand shock and vibration, each disk drive is equipped with a lock-down thumbscrew to secure the disk carrier to the chassis to minimize the shock and vibration transmitted to the disk heads. Connectivity FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID currently offers industry standard dual LVD See LVDS. LVD - Low Voltage Differential SCSI SCSI in full Small Computer System Interface Once common standard for connecting peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, etc.) to small and medium-sized computers. SCSI has given way to faster standards, such as Firewire and USB. connections and is slated to offer Fibre Channel and Ultra 160 SCSI connections in future versions. Capacity The unit holds up to 8 half-height disk drives of up to 73.4 GB each for a total current system capacity of 582.2 GB. The FlashDisk Ruggedized enclosure was designed to accept 181 GB drives as they become available. This increases total system capacity to 1.45 TB using 8 disk drives of 181 GB each. Performance FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID delivers the same ultra-high performance as the company's mission-critical commercial units. This includes 9,779 random disk operations per second for transaction-oriented applications such as database and OLTP (OnLine Transaction Processing) See transaction processing and OLCP. OLTP - On-Line Transaction Processing and 70 MB per second data throughput for sequential applications such as streaming audio A one-way audio transmission over a data network. It is widely used on the Web as well as company networks to play audio clips and Internet radio. Computers in home networks stream audio (mostly music) to digital media hubs connected to home theaters. and video, file copying File copying is creation of a new file which has the same content as an existing file. All operating systems include file copying in the user interface, like "cp" in Unix and "copy" in MS-DOS; operating systems with GUIs usually provide copy-and-paste or drag-and-drop and backup. "Open" Architecture FlashDisk OpenRAID is a true hardware, plug-and-play storage solution, which emulates standard SCSI disks --eliminating proprietary host software, RAID managers and the need for software drivers or agents of any kind. It supports hardware RAID 1, 3, 5, 1+0 and RAID 15 for data protection. FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID attaches via industry standard SCSI interfaces to host servers including SUN, HP, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) and NT. Price and Delivery FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID models are available in rackmount configurations. A unit with 8 disk drives with 73.4 GB each stores 587.2 GB and is list priced at $49,995 and are available for quantity delivery 30 to 60 days ARO. About Winchester Systems Winchester Systems provides SAN and NAS (1) See network access server. (2) (Network Attached Storage) A specialized file server that connects to the network. A NAS device contains a slimmed-down operating system and a file system and processes only I/O requests by supporting the popular capable enterprise storage solutions including high performance SCSI and fibre channel RAID disk arrays, solid-state disks, tape backup Using magnetic tape for storing duplicate copies of hard disk files. Users can add an internal or external tape drive to their desktop computers for backup purposes, and files are typically copied to the tapes using a backup utility that updates on a periodic schedule. devices and other high performance commercial and military grade storage for mid-range servers including UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). and NT. Winchester Systems provides products that support today's most demanding industrial, government and commercial applications. For more information, contact Winchester Systems Inc., 149 Middlesex Turnpike The following roads have been called Middlesex Turnpike:
e-mail address - electronic mail address : info@winsys.com, web site: www.winsys.com. Caption for available photos FlashDisk Ruggedized OpenRAID is designed for mobile use and other harsh environmental requirements. It stores up to 587.2 GB per enclosure and offers dual SCSI host ports. On-line photos available for Ruggedized FlashDisk OpenRAID http://www.winsys.com/news/rfdshot.html Note to Editors Winchester Systems, FlashDisk, FlashConsole and OpenRAID are trademarks or registered trademarks of Winchester Systems Inc. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. |
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