Zzyzx Announces the Addition of RocketSTOR 500 to Its Powerful RAID Storage Solution Line; Company Offering Demonstrations at USENIX, June 21-22.Business Editors and High-Tech Writers USENIX Booth 35/36 SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 21, 2000 Zzyzx Peripherals Inc., a leading manufacturer and distributor of innovative disk and tape storage solutions, workstations, and peripherals for 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 environments, today announced the expansion of its cutting-edge Fibre Channel storage product line with the immediate availability of the RocketSTOR 500. Zzyzx is debuting the system here at USENIX, where visitors can see full demonstrations of the product integrated into a SAN environment. The RocketSTOR 500 is a powerful new midrange class Fibre Channel interfaced SAN-attached RAID array designed for high-performance computing High-speed computing, which typically refers to supercomputers used in scientific research. applications requiring up to 1.6 TB of usable disk storage and mission-critical data availability Refers to the degree to which data can be instantly accessed. The term is mostly associated with service levels that are set up either by the internal IT organization or that may be guaranteed by a third party datacenter or storage provider. . System features include hot swap To pull out a component from a system and plug in a new one while the main power is still on. Also called "hot plug" and "hot insertion," hot swap is a feature of USB devices, allowing an external drive, network adapter or other peripheral to be plugged in without having to power down the , active/active, dual redundant RAID controllers with two 100 MB/sec Fibre Channel host interfaces. It is designed for Storage Area Network (SAN) implementations, and is another key component to the company's highly scalable SAN solutions featuring centrally managed high-availability data clusters, data sharing The ability to share the same data resource with multiple applications or users. It implies that the data are stored in one or more servers in the network and that there is some software locking mechanism that prevents the same set of data from being changed by two people at the same time. , server-less back-up and LAN-free back-up. Complementing Zzyzx' data center class RocketSTOR 2000, the RocketSTOR 500 is the second product offering of Zzyzx' industry-leading RocketSTOR line of Fibre Channel RAID systems. With the RocketSTOR 500, Zzyzx now offers its customers fault tolerant The ability to continue non-stop when a hardware failure occurs. A fault-tolerant system is designed from the ground up for reliability by building multiples of all critical components, such as CPUs, memories, disks and power supplies into the same computer. SAN-ready RAID solutions for capacity requirements ranging from 18GB to 5TB. "We're excited to share this introduction here at USENIX," said Steve Rosoff, president of Zzyzx. "There's no question that SAN is becoming more pervasive as a preferred solution in many environments, and we know our customers will appreciate the enormous benefits of high-capacity, scalability, and flexibility they provide." Enterprise Class Performance at a Midrange System Price The RocketSTOR 500 uses the same new high-performance RS-62 core RAID controller architecture used in Zzyzx' data center class RocketSTOR 2000 RAID arrays. The RS-62 RAID controller architecture features a Strong ARM SA-110 RISC processor RISC processor [Reduced Instruction Set Computer], computer arithmetic-logic unit that uses a minimal instruction set, emphasizing the instructions used most often and optimizing them for the fastest possible execution. , 1 GB of cache memory (with an advanced set of caching algorithms), internal 32-bit and 64-bit PCI (1) (Payment Card Industry) See PCI DSS. (2) (Peripheral Component Interconnect) The most widely used I/O bus (peripheral bus). busses and an advanced multi-tasking controller operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. . With this architecture, the RocketSTOR 500 has introduced enterprise-class performance and RAID management feature sets to workgroup and departmental computing Processing a department's data with its own computer system. See distributed computing. environments at a midrange system price. Comprehensive and Advanced Feature Set The RocketSTOR 500 offers a comprehensive set of advanced features not usually found in a midrange class RAID solution that offer users more flexibility, ease-of-use and uptime. Zzyzx' Mission Control RAID management GUI (Graphical User Interface) A graphics-based user interface that incorporates movable windows, icons and a mouse. The ability to resize application windows and change style and size of fonts are the significant advantages of a GUI vs. a character-based interface. offers the following: RAID setup and configuration; monitoring the operational status of the RAID controllers, disk drives, enclosure cooling fans, power supplies and temperature; and offering system problem diagnosis and corrective action. The system also offers SANmask LUN masking for secure disk access in shared storage environments, Ethernet connectivity for remote configuration and monitoring, RAID set expansion for flexibility, online firmware updates for maximum availability, and nearly instant RAID set creation to produce immediately usable data storage. Business Critical Data Availability and Fault Tolerance The RocketSTOR 500 is designed to provide exceptional performance for 7 x 24 mission-critical applications, offering extreme fault tolerance supporting no single point of failure. All field-replaceable units are redundant and hot swappable, including the RAID controllers, disk drives, power supplies and cooling fans. The RocketSTOR 500 offers the standard features found in all of Zzyzx' high availability data systems, with support for RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, 3 and 5 as well as mirrored cache, host transparent automatic fail-over, global hot spares with automatic disk drive rebuilds, and redundant power cords. Fault tolerance is also featured with SAF-TE SAF-TE SCSI Access Fault-Tolerant Enclosure for monitoring and communication of the status of enclosure power supplies, cooling fans and temperature as well as SMART ability performing near-term failure prediction of disk drives. Availability and Support The RocketSTOR 500 is currently available directly through Zzyzx. These rack mount systems can be configured from 18 GB to 1.6 TB utilizing 9 GB, 18 GB, 36 GB, and 73 GB in both 7,200 and 10,000 RPM. Future support for 15,000 RPM disk drives will also be offered. Contact Zzyzx for a free technical consultation and for pricing on a custom built-to-order RocketSTOR RAID solution. Customers can also check out product specifications at www.zzyzx.com. The RocketSTOR 500 is backed by Zzyzx' award-winning technical support with a three-year return to manufacturer warranty on the controllers and enclosure, and five years on the disk drives. Optional lifetime 7x24 technical support, on-site installation and training are available with each system. About Zzyzx Zzyzx Peripherals Inc., headquarted in San Diego, manufactures and distributes innovative disk and tape storage solutions, workstations, and peripherals for UNIX and NT environments. The company's extensive product line includes leading-edge storage solutions such as RAID arrays, customized Storage Area Networks (SAN) using Fibre Channel and 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. technologies, Sun compatible SPARC (Scalable Performance ARChitecture) A family of RISC CPUs from Sun that runs mostly under Sun's Solaris, but also under Linux and BSD operating systems. After development began in the mid-1980s by David Patterson of the University of California at Berkeley and Bill workstations, and other storage related peripherals and products. To learn more about Zzyzx' products, custom storage solutions and outstanding service and support, access Zzyzx Peripherals Inc. at www.zzyzx.com and www.zcommerce.net All trademarks are the property of their respective holders. |
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