Expandable Dual 4Gb FC RAID by Sans Digital

Sans Digital is introducing an expandable dual 4Gbps Fibre Channel hardware RAID storage for video editing and enterprise data center use. The EliteRAID ER316FD+B is a 3U rackmount with 16 SAS / SATA hard drives slots. Utilizing the latest SAS expander technology, the ER316FD+B acts as a head RAID unit and could be expanded by adding up to 7 more EliteSTOR SAS-expander JBOD units, such as ES208X+BE, ES316X+B or ES424X+B, to a maximum of 122 drives.

With the use of Fibre Channel switch, Fibre Channel storages are often used to address the needs for high performance storage device sharing among computer servers or workstations in Storage Area Network (SAN) environment. Fibre Channel is also capable of connecting directly to a computer as a Direct Attached Storage (DAS), providing high performance storage for video editing applications. In addition to SAN and DAS benefits, the EliteRAID ER316FD+B also utilizes SAS expander technology to enhance its scalability, allowing the attachment of additional EliteSTOR SAS expander units. This feature lowers the cost of ownership, where administrators no longer need to purchase additional expansive RAID hardware when more capacity is needed. Simply connect a less expansive EliteSTOR SAS expander model to the ER316FD+B to expand the storage capacity to a maximum of 122 hard drives, up to a total of 244TB of storage in a single RAID solution. Expansion could be done without data access downtime due to the built-in online expansion and RAID migration features.

The ER316FD+B supports additional enterprise features, including the compatibility with both SATA and SAS hard drives. Dual Fibre Channel supports clustering applications, including SCSI-3 persistent target. Hardware RAID calculation is offloaded to a 1200MHz dedicated RAID processor and supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50 and 60, providing over 400MB/s of performance per channel.

The built-in hardware RAID eliminates OS compatibility issues, while supporting virtualization applications such as VMware ESX server and Microsoft Hyper-V server. Redundant power supplies and rackmount rails are built-in. Unit status is displayed via the front LEDs and alarm. Web-based management console is embedded into the firmware, where no additional software is required. Serial port and a LCD are also included as alternative management methods.

"Fibre Channel products are generally expensive investments that are accessible only to larger size businesses," said Grandy Chen, President of Sans Digital. "The ER316FD+B is an affordable Fibre Channel solution for $4995 with expansion capabilities to increase the return of investment."