Bridgeworks has launched the world’s first 40Gb iSCSI to Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) protocol bridge, the Potomac ESAS402800.

According to a recent IBM survey, every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. Managing the ever growing quantity of data requires a completely new approach. The launch of Potomac ESAS402800 continues Bridgeworks’ development of the world's fastest iSCSI to SAS bridges, raising disk and tape connectivity to a completely new level of performance, and heralding the first steps towards a new generation of peripheral devices that will be needed to cope with the “Big Data explosion”. For the first time, users will be able to take advantage of 40 Gb/sec speeds in the data centre.

The Potomac ESAS402800, packaged in a 1U enclosure, and available from March 2013, continues Bridgeworks’ unique approach with its adaptive write and read ahead caching techniques. This makes it highly suitable for those users who want to connect and share their storage in a virtualised computing environment, such as VMWARE or HyperV. This announcement now extends the applicability of the current range of Potomac Bridges from the desktop all the way to the largest enterprise.

The Potomac ESAS402800 is ideal for connecting to the latest SAS devices such as Disk Arrays, LTO6 Tape Drives and Tape Libraries through its two 2 6Gb SAS ports which support 4 SAS channels each; the connection to the iSCSI SAN infrastructure is via Dual 40Gbe ports that use QSFP sockets.

David Trossell, CEO of Bridgeworks states “The Bridgeworks Potomac ESAS402800 builds on our vast experience and leadership in the bridging market. We expect that the adoption of 40Gbe iSCSI into the enterprise will be rapid and widespread. This release demonstrates Bridgeworks’ continued commitment to develop unique and innovative solutions for connecting the latest advances in storage protocols and storage devices.

By providing 40GbE connectivity for iSCSI and SAS devices, users will now be able to exploit new peripheral devices to their fullest, and more importantly, to manage the explosion of data that we are seeing across all organisations. With the announcement of the Potomac ESAS402800, Bridgeworks has once again demonstrated its leadership of the bridging market.”