Sans Digital TR8IB and ER208IB RAID 60

Sans Digital is introducing 8-bay iSCSI storage solutions in both tower and rackmount formats: TR8I-B and ER208I+B. Both units utilize dedicated RAID engines to provide up to RAID 60 in redundancy. With dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, performance on both units could reach up to 190MB/s with multiple concurrent connections for various applications.

The TR8I-B and ER208I+B are designed with dedicated iSCSI and RAID engines to provide iSCSI storage with high performance, yet are affordable to small and medium sized businesses. These two entry level iSCSI units are designed to fulfill the growing demand of IP based storage. IP based features such as Storage Area Network (SAN), Virtual Machines (VM), and Network Video Recorder (NVR) are compatible with the TR8I-B and ER208I+B. Utilizing the widely available Gigabit Ethernet network, the TR8I-B and ER208I+B serve as the building blocks for a simple SAN, VM or NVR setup. Performance is guaranteed by hardware dedicated RAID and iSCSI engines, with up to 190MB/s of performance, using dual channel Gigabit Ethernet Channel. Stored data is protected by RAID configurations which allow up to 4 hard drive failures under RAID 60. The built-in hardware RAID eliminates OS compatibility issues and allows the support of virtualization applications such as VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V servers. The dual Gigabit Channel supports clustering applications such as SCSI-3 persistent target for Windows server 2008.

The TR8I-B and ER208I+B are designed with enterprise-level features. They support up to 8 SATA hard drives for up to 16TB of total storage capacity. Users may start off with few drives, and increase the number of hard drives later without downtime by utilizing the hot-swappable tray and built-in online RAID migration/expansion features. Setup and management are performed via the embedded web interface GUI where no additional software is needed. Serial port and SSH are included for alternative management methods. Redundant hot-swappable power supply option is available for the ER208I+B.

"Both the TR8I-B and ER208I+B are loaded with features usually seen in high-end iSCSI products," said Grandy Chen, President of Sans Digital. "With the price point of less than $1200 for the tower and $1600 for the rackmount, businesses could enjoy the benefits of iSCSI at a lower cost in comparison to Fibre Channel products."