Features - Storage Innovations:

DIGI-DATA TAKES FIBRE-SATA STORAGE TO NEW HEIGHTS

Digi-Data Corporation, a prominent manufacturer of enterprise RAID storage systems, introduced a cost effective, highly scalable Fibre-to-Serial ATA RAID storage system for mid-sized businesses, enterprise workgroups and applications with large online storage requirements.

STORM Xata combines the performance of Fibre Channel host connectivity with the affordability of IDE drive technology into a highly reliable, easy to manage and economical RAID storage system. STORM Xata includes Digi-Data's advanced Fibre Channel RAID controller, specially designed 16-drive SATA enclosures, and industry leading 250GB (7,200 rpm) Serial ATA drives. STORM Xata can be directly attached to as many as 5 servers or SAN switches, or scale up to 240 drives 60TB without requiring any software or special drivers on the hosts or network.

According to Bill Tomeo, Digi-Data CEO, "Serial ATA technology brings a new dimension to storage environments. It enables storage managers to deploy storage solutions better matched to each application's performance, reliability and scalability requirements. With STORM Xata, we have integrated Serial ATA into our incomparable STORM RAID platform. The result is a system that is perfectly matched to SATA environments it's affordable, fast to deploy and super easy to maintain."

STORM Xata was designed to be more versatile and easier to maintain than any other system in its class. STORM Xata can be deployed in more environments such as DAS, SAN or NAS without requiring additional software or networking hardware. STORM Xata also includes an integrated browser-based RAID manager and full hot-swap architecture and component redundancy for simplified configuration, management and maintenance. This reduces both deployment and ongoing management costs, making STORM Xata a great value from the first day it is purchased.

Taking SATA To The Extreme

Digi-Data has concurrently announced the availability of SATA on its STORM Xtreme RAID storage system. STORM Xtreme is Digi-Data's enterprise Fibre-Fibre RAID storage system offering the highest performance, scalability and data availability in its class.

Tomeo comments, "With SATA available on STORM Xtreme, we provide storage managers with three key capabilities: first is the ability to have tiered storage (Fibre Channel for Tier 1 and SATA for Tier 2) within the same system, managed by the same software; second is the ability to more easily perform disk-to-disk backups from Fibre Channel to SATA; and third is the ability for storage managers to use both Fibre Channel and SATA within the same system to better match storage performance, scalability and meet the cost the needs of each application or server on the network."

STORM Xata and STORM Xtreme are available through Digi-Data authorized resellers. A complete STORM Xata system with 4TB of RAID protected, hot swappable storage carries a suggested list price of $48,000.