SCIENCE

PROMISE Technology has announced the release of the VTrakTM Ex30 series of high-performance enterprise-class storage solutions. This next generation of 8Gb Fibre Channel, 6Gb SAS, 1Gb iSCSI and 10G iSCSI solutions, incorporates the Intel Xeon C5500/C3500 processor, providing a dramatic increase in power and flexibility (up to 650K I/Ops). The new VTrak Ex30 series dramatically increases the performance up to 4x more than previous generations from 1500 MB/s to 6000 MB/s. It also reduces power consumption, requires less cooling and offers a smaller profile chassis for an easy fit in racks under twenty inches. For the entry - midrange markets looking to gain an edge, the VTrak Ex30 is the perfect solution when balancing performance, scalability, capacity and reliability providing enterprise-class features at an entry level price point. When combined with the recently announced PROMISE VTrak S3000, the Ex30 becomes a fully integrated, turn-key storage system providing full virtualisation capabilities with no additional charges for tiering or capacity, thereby reducing a user's total cost of acquisition.

"The Ex30 system from PROMISE delivers a number of functions that end users from midrange organisations to enterprise customers expect to see in storage systems including multi-tiering, storage virtualisation, data protection, and thin provisioning. While many of these functions are delivered by other storage products, the all-inclusive approach is not yet as common. At the same time, having all functionality included in the storage system offering, as it is done by PROMISE, is as important for end users," said Natalya Yezhkova, research director, Storage Systems Program, IDC.

"We are very excited about the new storage virtualisation platform from PROMISE. We are experiencing outstanding functionality and performance when we couple the new PROMISE VTrax Ex30 with the recently announced VTrak S3000," said Brian Smith, IT director, City and County of San Francisco. "As a major SharePoint user, the ability to easily provision our storage systems with a highly scalable solution that addresses our rapidly expanding data is key to our ability to provide the highest level of service to our clients. We find that this new platform from PROMISE delivers those features and more."

With rapidly growing demands on storage area networks (SAN), IT departments require the best performance, capacity and overall value from their storage investment. The VTrak Ex30 delivers on all fronts, with unparalleled storage processing power, efficient power usage and features an easy-to-use Web interface that simplifies storage setup and management.

Built upon Intel's next generation storage platform, the VTrak Ex30 comes standard with dual power supplies/cooling units for stellar uptime and reliability. The VTrak Ex30 is well suited for primary and secondary storage, especially for businesses utilising virtualisation, cloud storage, business continuity and disaster recovery applications. The fully integrated VTrak Ex30 series is available in configurations from 8TB to 384TB of storage, enabling customers to reap the benefits of the dramatically increased performance at a fraction of the current competitive costs.

"The introduction of our new VTrak Ex30 series is a significant milestone for PROMISE and represents our next generation of advancement in storage technology," said James Lee, chairman and CEO, PROMISE Technology. "PROMISE has a long history of being focused on delivering technology leadership, so we are extremely pleased to bring these strong products to our customers. The VTrak Ex30 Series represents a dramatic new direction as demand for low-latency, greater performance and high-compute capabilities take centre stage in the market. With the introduction of the VTrak Ex30 series, we are building on our 20-plus year legacy of excellence as we work to redefine the traditional approach to storage solutions."

"The high level of storage integration and energy-efficient performance of the Intel Xeon processor C5500/3500 provides a strong foundation for storage systems to manage the explosive growth of data," said David Tuhy, general manager, Intel Storage Group. "The performance and storage capabilities of this family of processors enables PROMISE to deliver faster processing and greater availability in a dense form factor."

PROMISE VTrak Ex30 Series Highlights:

Dramatically Increased Performance: The Ex30 series provides exponentially faster performance, processing power (1900 MB/s write and 5200 MB/s read with sustainable RAID 5) and internal bus architecture enabling users to compute data more quickly and run more and larger applications on the storage unit itself.

Faster Bandwidth: The 8Gb Fibre Channel System ships with 8Gb FC ports, providing much greater bandwidth (6 GB/s) driving exponentially larger loads.

Dramatic New Look & Feel: A newly developed management supports importing configuration scripts and an extensive array of health and performance monitoring tools. The software is localised in 10 languages.

Improved Power Usage & Efficiency: Supports advanced drive power management (MAID 2.0) to manage idle drives in an effort to conserve power usage. Offers up to 85% efficiency with 80Plus certified power supplies.

Scalability: Supports for larger configurations including up to 7 expansion chassis support for a total of 192 drives is included. The system is scalable up to 384TB.

Support: 24 X 7 world-class support is available for the Ex30 Series. The Ex30 Series comes with the standard PROMISE Technology three-year warranty and can be upgraded to include the extended PROMISE Service Plus featuring multiple on-site support options.

Availability and Pricing

The PROMISE VTrak Ex30 series is available now in selected quantities and will be generally available in Q1, 2011. Please contact your local PROMISE office for MSRP information.