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Infortrend rolls out 8G Fibre Channel for Data Centers
March 2009 by Marc Jacob
Networked storage expert Infortrend introduced the next-generation EonStor® RAID subsystem with an 8Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) feature at CeBIT 2009. A major breakthrough in the storage industry, the new 8Gb/s FC storage system, with the S16F-R1840 and S16F-G1840 models, is an ideal companion of enterprise-class storage area network (SAN) for mission-critical applications. This new RAID storage subsystem is among the first of Infortrend’s products to come with an exclusive ASIC667 (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) and easy-to-maintain modular design.
Industry trends show that the adoption of 8Gb/s fibre channel will continue to increase this year due to the significant drop of desktop storage cost from dollars per megabyte to cents per gigabyte, as well as the high correlation between server virtualization and SANs. It is expected to become the dominant protocol for future enterprise SAN. Infortrend has long anticipated this trend which culminated in the development of the next-generation 8Gb/s FC storage subsystem S16F-R/G1840.
Next-Generation Array to Drive Performance and Scalability
Based on the next-generation RAID engine, the 16-drive S16F-R/G1840 subsystem is highly scalable up to 112-drive installation through expansion closures, allowing enterprises to expand their business as their data grows. It has two 8G FC host ports on each controller and has the capability to deliver as high as 2,800 MB/s read and 870MB/s write which is very ideal for processing of large amount of data often required by data centers. Also, based on a High Availability (HA) modular hardware design, all redundant modules including controllers, power supplies, cooling fans and BBUs [Battery Backup Unit] are hot-swappable to achieve high fault-tolerance capability.
Moreover, green technology is one of the priories of Infortrend hence its 8G FC S16F-R/G1840 subsystem is designed with intelligent drive spin-down, dynamic cooling mechanisms and power supplies that deliver more than 80% energy efficiency thereby reducing energy consumption.
Most enterprises are in search of storage subsystem solution that will not require any additional headcount to manage the system. The S16F-R/G1840 is equipped with SANWatch®, Infortrend’s full-functioned, Java-based storage management tool. With SANWatch, enterprises can centrally manage multiple EonStor subsystems locally or remotely over LAN/WAN. It has user-friendly GUI and supports script-based configuration of multiple subsystems at a time.
