Infortrend Rolls Out 8Gb FC RAID

Infortrend Technology, Inc. introduced the next-generation EonStor RAID subsystem with an 8Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) feature at CeBIT 2009. A major breakthrough in the storage industry, the new 8Gb/s FC storage system, with the S16F-R1840 and S16F-G1840 models, is an ideal companion of enterprise-class storage area network (SAN) for mission-critical applications. This new RAID storage subsystem is among the first of Infortrend’s products to come with an exclusive ASIC667 (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) and easy-to-maintain modular design. These advanced features further strengthen Infortrend’s leading position and firm hold of the enterprise storage market.

Industry trends show that the adoption of 8Gb/s fibre channel will continue to increase this year due to the significant drop of desktop storage cost from dollars per megabyte to cents per gigabyte, as well as the high correlation between server virtualization and SANs. It is expected to become the dominant protocol for future enterprise SAN. Infortrend has long anticipated this trend which culminated in the development of the next-generation 8Gb/s FC storage subsystem S16F-R/G1840.

"As the deployment of 8Gb/s Fibre Channel solutions continue to increase, QLogic and Infortrend are uniquely positioned to deliver interoperable storage solutions for performance-driven data center environments," said Joseph Kimpler, director of alliances, QLogic Corp. "The Infortrend RAID subsystems are fully compatible with QLogic’s industry-leading 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters and switches, and provide the robustness and performance that are critical for today’s virtualized data centers."  

"The joint efforts between Infortrend and ATTO bring customers the most value as they implement 8Gb Fibre Channel technology. We are doing more strict tests to provide optimized solutions for easy adoption and integration of ATTO 8Gb HBAs with Infortrend’s newly launched 8Gb storage," said Christopher M. Gauvin, partner marketing specialist at ATTO Technology. "With Infortrend’s newly launched 8Gb storage and ATTO’s Celerity HBAs, customers can experience all of the impressive performance benefits 8Gb technology has to offer."

Next-Generation Array
to Drive Performance and Scalability
Based on the next-generation RAID engine, the 16-drive S16F-R/G1840 subsystem is highly scalable up to 112-drive installation through expansion enclosures, allowing enterprises to expand their business as their data grows. It has two 8G FC host ports on each controller and has the capability to deliver as high as 2,800 MB/s read and 870MB/s write which is very ideal for processing of large amount of data often required by data centers. Also, based on a High Availability (HA) modular hardware design, all redundant modules including controllers, power supplies, cooling fans and BBUs [Battery Backup Unit] are hot-swappable to achieve high fault-tolerance capability.

Moreover, green technology is one of the priorties of Infortrend hence its 8G FC S16F-R/G1840 subsystem is designed with intelligent drive spin-down, dynamic cooling mechanisms and power supplies that deliver more than 80% energy efficiency thereby reducing energy consumption.

"Over the years, Infortrend has successfully developed full capabilities in the design and manufacturing of storage solutions, including ASICs, RAID controllers, complete subsystems, management software and storage applications. This is the reason why we can effectively dedicate our resources to the latest technologies and trends, and shorten the time to market for new storage solutions," said Danny Chang, senior director of global marketing at Infortrend Technology Inc. "As a storage expert, we always try to address the ‘pain points’ of the industry to ensure our partners and customers get the best benefit and competitiveness. With the new EnoStor 8Gb/s FC subsystem, enterprises will have the ideal choice to support the demanding high performance and high availability required by their data centers."  

Most enterprises are in search of storage subsystem solution that will not require any additional headcount to manage the system. The S16F-R/G1840 is equipped with SANWatch, Infortrend’s full-functioned, Java-based storage management tool. With SANWatch, enterprises can centrally manage multiple EonStor subsystems locally or remotely over LAN/WAN. It has user-friendly GUI and supports script-based configuration of multiple subsystems at a time.