Winchester Systems RAIDs With On-Board Storage Services

Winchester Systems, Inc. announced that their FlashDisk VX-3400 Series SAS/SATA disk arrays now provide a collection of storage services built into the on-board RAID controllers.

These services include virtualized storage pools of SAS and SATA storage up to 224 TB that support snapshots, mirroring and volume copy operations – plus FlashD2D scheduled disk-to-disk backup from primary to secondary storage. The FlashDisk VX-3400 is targeted to compete with very popular storage arrays by providing the most useful storage services at a substantially better value point.

Storage services included in the FlashDisk VX-3400:

• Virtual Storage Pools: Create, expand and delete volumes to maximize utilization
• Snapshots: Schedule up to 1024 snapshots as often as every 10 minutes
• Mirroring: Create, split and fast resync for redundancy and data mining
• Volume Copy: Simplify data migration and reconstitute full volumes for reporting and analysis and to avoid overloading production systems
• Automated Backup: Scheduled zero-downtime tiered primary to secondary disk-to-disk backup
• Global Management Storage Wizard: Manage several petabytes from a single browser-based GUI
• Quick and simple setup of virtual volumes, snapshots and mirrors
• On-Board Services: All data services embedded — no external appliance needed
• Low Cost: Tremendous value at a fraction of the price of competitive products

The FlashDisk VX-3400 supports a base unit with single or redundant controllers with automatic failover and failback and up to six expansion shelves. Each 3U high shelf supports 16 SAS or SATA disks with a maximum capacity of 224 TB. FlashDisk Global Storage Manager supports multiple FlashDisk VX-3400 systems from a single browser-based GUI and thus can support virtual storage pools of several petabytes.

As a flexible tiered storage solution, FlashDisk VX-3400 supports SAS disks with 15k, 10k and 7.2k rpm in capacities to 1 TB and SATA disks to 2 TB with 7.2k rpm. Capacity and performance can be matched to the needs of individual applications. The powerful combination of tiered storage with virtualized volumes yields great flexibility and high storage utilization to maximize return on investment. Compared to higher priced alternatives, FlashDisk VX-3400 is a designed to do "more with less" which is especially relevant in the current economy.

According to the company’s chief executive officer, Mr. Joel Leider, "People have always loved the price/performance value of FlashDisk. They have also always liked the storage services offered elsewhere but hated the price tag. The VX-3400 now delivers it all – at very attractive price points."

For added protection of today’s very large RAID disk arrays, the company includes high-speed, ASIC-driven RAID 6 dual-parity that protects data in the event of two drive failures as well as rebuild failures. According to the company’s white paper, High Speed RAID 6, RAID 6 dual parity offers 500 to 30,000 times longer MTDL (Mean Time To Data Loss) than RAID 5.

The FlashDisk VX-3400 Series models are available now and start from under $20,000. Delivery is 2-3 weeks ARO.