Intel debuts new storage platforms

Posted on Friday, October 28 2005 @ 2:21 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Intel announced a new storage platform designed to make it easier and more affordable for small- and medium-sized businesses to deploy storage solutions that help ensure prompt disaster recovery and extend backup capabilities.

Businesses today are inundated with an increasing volume of data due to greater use of digital information, such as business reports, employee records, photos and videos. Combined with growing government regulatory requirements and corporate business continuity and disaster recovery plans, this has resulted in an increasing need for storage.

“Analysts show that data is doubling every 18 months** and businesses are struggling to keep up,” said Hans Geyer, vice president and general manager, Storage Group at Intel. “Yet today’s storage solutions are often too expensive or complex for an average business to use. They need a simple, affordable solution based on a flexible set of standards-based building blocks that has the power to scale with the growing mountains of data.”

The Intel Storage System SSR212MA is a hardware and software solution enabling small- and medium-sized businesses to build a full-featured Storage Area Network (SAN) based on IP networking standards as a low-cost, complement or alternative to fibre channel-based solutions. Using a single Intel Xeon processor, the platform supports up to 12 Serial ATA hard drives and iSCSI connectivity, which allows SANs to be built on existing network IP infrastructure.

The platform comes standard with a suite of software tools to manage geographically diverse storage resources and accommodate rapidly expanding storage growth. From a central console, a customer can configure and manage the SAN, configure and provision volumes quickly without system downtime, make incremental copies of data volumes, and authenticate users for improved data security.

Optional features allow customers to extend the capacity and performance of the Intel Storage System SSR212MA and provide business continuity by adding an additional layer of protection from natural disasters and outages affecting an entire site.

The Intel Storage System SSR212MA based on cost-effective IP networking standards is available today from participating Intel Channel members.

“Intel’s storage platform is a solid solution to add to our family of DataFRAME products," said Paul Petersen, vice president of product marketing for MPC Computers. “Our customers can continue receiving the benefits of affordable, scalable data storage – making these systems the smart way to keep up with the demands that coincide with growth.”

“Intel’s new IP networking standards-based storage platform provides customers with an entry point product into storage solutions for their businesses,” said David Schmidt, product marketing manager at Wortmann AG in Germany. “We have found that once the customers have understood the advantages of the GRID computing capabilities versus standard NAS or DAS, they get excited about the technology. And when they see the price points, they also get impressed.”


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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