INFORTREND UNVEILS THE WORLD’S FIRST EXTERNAL iSCSI-TO-SAS/SATA RAID ARRAYS WITH FOUR PORTS ON EACH CONTROLLER
Infortrend Innovation Enables High-Speed, Easy-to-Manage, Low-Cost IP SANs

Santa Clara, Calif., April 15, 2008 – Building on the success of its iSCSI-to-SATA RAID subsystems, networked storage expert Infortrend® today announced the world’s first external iSCSI to SAS/SATA RAID arrays with four Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports on each controller: the EonStor® (ES) S16E-G1130 single-controller and S16E-R1130 redundant-controller subsystems. With these 3U, 16-bay arrays, organizations can achieve best-in-class performance while benefiting from the affordability and straightforward management of IP SANs.

Faced with the continuing need for greater storage capacity and the complexity that traditionally accompanies such growth, many organizations decide to implement a SAN built on a Fibre Channel or iSCSI infrastructure in order to consolidate data for improved manageability and data accessibility. Budget-conscious companies tend to choose iSCSI as it leverages the existing investment in an Ethernet network, and does not require complicated maintenance or high-priced peripheral devices. Among available iSCSI RAID devices, Infortrend’s EonStor S16E subsystems stand out for three main advantages:

• Performance: combining multiple host channels into a portal group increases the applicable bandwidth of each iSCSI session. In an end-to-end RAID5 configuration with two host channels combined into a portal group, the S16E can achieve 215MBps reads and 201MBps writes; when four host channels are combined, the performance can be further improved to 380MBps reads and 250MBps writes.
• Scalability: the S16E allows users to start with the storage capacity they currently need and scale up to a massive 80TB as more capacity is required.
• Flexibility: users have the flexibility to populate the S16E with a mix of SAS and SATA drives in order to build a tiered storage environment: SAS drives for often-accessed, business-critical data and SATA drives for backup or archives.

"The S16E RAID array is an ideal choice for both SMB and enterprise environments,” said Thomas Kao, director of global product planning at Infortrend Technology Inc. “The S16E is an easy entry point for companies looking to transition from Direct Attached Storage to a Storage Area Network, while enterprise users can utilize its enhanced performance to implement an IP SAN for add-on or second-tier storage. With its high performance, ease of management, flexibility, simplicity and affordability, the S16E embodies a powerful new force in the iSCSI RAID market."

Target Markets and Uses

The S16E-G1130 and S16E-R1130 are well-suited for organizations of any size. The iSCSI protocol makes them ideal for block-based applications such as email, data centers, security/surveillance, backup, broadcasting, and video editing.

EonStor S16E-G1130 and S16E-R1130 Highlights

3U, 16-bay, redundant or single-controller, iSCSI-to-SAS/SATA RAID subsystem

• Four GbE host ports on each controller enable high performance for enterprise applications
• One SAS expansion port on each controller connects to ES S16S-J1000 JBODs
• Connecting to up to four S16S-J1000-S JBODs, the S16E-G1130 can support up to 80 drives for 80TB of data storage when using 1TB SATA hard disk drives
• Connecting to up to three S16S-J1000-R JBODs, the S16E-R1130 can support up to 64 drives for 64TB of data storage when using 1TB SATA hard disk drives
• Supports both SAS and SATA drives to enable tiered data storage
• Supports hardware RAID5 and RAID6 to ensure data integrity in the event of drive failure
• Comes with the Infortrend SANWatch® software suite, which allows users to manage the SAN locally or remotely and provides data protection features such as snapshot and multi-pathing (EonPath)

Availability

The EonStor S16E-G1130 is available through Infortrend’s worldwide network of ODMs, distributors, storage integrators, and the S16E-R1130 will follow soon after.  

About Infortrend

Infortrend, the RAID storage expert, is a pioneer in cost-effective, high performance networked storage. The company's products include EonStor® storage systems and SANWatch® software for virtually all storage interfaces including SAS, SCSI, iSCSI, SATA and Fibre Channel.  For over a decade, Infortrend has provided reliable, fault-tolerant technology to prominent OEMs, distributors, and storage integrators worldwide. The company's core competency includes performance optimized RAID ASICs, feature-rich firmware, and redundant, high availability RAID subsystems.  Founded in 1993, Infortrend is traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (Taiex), ticker number 2495.  For more information, visit www.infortrend.com.

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Infortrend, EonStor, SANWatch, and EonPath are trademarks or registered trademarks of Infortrend Technology, Inc. Tiger Technology, metaSAN and metaLAN are trademarks of Tiger Technology Sarl. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.