Iomega Announce StorCenter ix12-300r 12 Drive Rackmount Storage Array

Iomega delivers EMC Enterprise Storage Solutions to SMB's and Distributed Enterprises

• 12 Drive Rackmount Network Storage Array
• Expandable up to12 drives 24TB
• Flexible Storage Provisioning
• Network Capabilities for Performance, Windows DFS and Applicant Support
• No Dedicated IT Staff Required

Iomega, an EMC company and the world’s fastest growing provider of network storage to small and medium business, today announced the most advanced entry in its lineup of easy-to-use network storage products with the worldwide launch of the new Iomega® StorCenter™ ix12-300r Network Storage array. Incorporating industry-leading enterprise-class EMC® storage technologies, the StorCenter ix12-300r is the ideal rackmount storage device for small and medium businesses, as well as small enterprise locations such as workgroups, departments and distributed/branch offices that require expandability, reliability and advanced capability features without the need for a dedicated IT staff.

Easily supporting groups of up to 250 users, the StorCenter ix12-300r Network Storage array provides up to 24TB* of networked storage in a 2-rack unit (2U) form factor. The StorCenter ix 12-300r has sophisticated configuration and networking features often only available in larger enterprise installations, and is ideal for production file (NAS) and block (SAN) data storage, backup to disk (B2D) of critical business data, shared storage for virtualized environments including Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and VMware vSphere™, and application-specific storage such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

The StorCenter ix12-300r mounts in an EIA-310 standard equipment rack and starts with 4TB and 8TB base configurations that can be expanded in four-drive increments of 4TB or 8TB, up to a total of 24TB.

“The new StorCenter ix12-300r is an exciting network storage array that delivers EMC’s world class enterprise storage technologies to small businesses and distributed enterprises in the market segment between the current Iomega and EMC network storage offerings,” said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega and the Consumer and Small Business Products Division of EMC. “From capacity, expandability and reliability to network flexibility to support for applications like Microsoft Exchange 2010, the ix12-300r retains Iomega’s signature ease-of-use with key features business users expect and need, including testing and list on EMC’s own EMC Storage Matrix (ESM). The software capabilities, testing and certification set the ix12-300r apart from anything else in its category.”

Astrid McClean, senior technical product manager of the Exchange Product Group at Microsoft Corp., said, “Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 enables customers to implement large, low-cost mailboxes, performs well on less expensive disks and supports a range of storage options across SAN, DAS or even JBOD configurations. The flexibility, iSCSI connectivity and JBOD capabilities of the new Iomega StorCenter ix12-300r make it another cost-effective storage option that complements Exchange 2010 features in many smaller environments.”

“Small and medium-sized businesses share the challenge of managing the enormous growth of data with large enterprises,” said David Tuhy, general manager, Intel Storage Group. “Meeting their needs requires easy-to-use and affordable storage solutions with advanced capabilities. The Intel(r) architecture dual core processor with Intel(r) Hyper-Threading Technology has the performance that enables Iomega to deliver data management features suited for this class of users.”

Bogomil Balkansky, vice president, product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platforms, VMware, said, “With the Iomega ix12-300r, SMB customers can virtualize their entire infrastructure – including mission critical applications like Microsoft Exchange 2010 and SQL – and take full advantage of VMware’s industry-leading capabilities just like their larger counterparts. The VMware vSphere™ Essentials offering combined with the Iomega ix12-300r lowers cost, simplifies management, and allows for higher performance and better energy utilization – making it a great building block for deploying virtualization at SMBs.”

“In terms of features, capabilities and price point, the new Iomega StorCenter ix12-300r fits nicely into EMC’s low end network storage offerings,” said Benjamin S. Woo, Program Vice President of Worldwide Storage Systems Research, IDC. “The product brings advanced enterprises features to small enterprises that require more data management sophistication than what had previously been available at the top of Iomega’s NAS offerings. At the same time the ix12-300r tops out in features and benefits just below the EMC Clariion line. This is a cohesive product strategy to address today’s dynamic SMB marketplace.”

An Affordable Rackmount Array for Primary Storage, Backup and Application Data

The new StorCenter ix12-300r utilizes the acclaimed EMC LifeLine™ software, a fully-developed Linux operating environment and suite of applications that protects data and performs valuable business tasks above and beyond simple storage. EMC LifeLine software is designed for cross-platform support of Windows-, Mac-, Linux- and UNIX-based computers and is HCL certified for the leading virtualized environments, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

The StorCenter ix12-300r features new advances in the EMC LifeLine software’s provisioning and storage management capabilities. The ix12 can be configured with different levels of RAID support: RAID 5 (pre-configured), RAID 6, RAID1 and RAID 10 (all with automatic RAID rebuild), as well as JBOD (a single volume of storage). RAID 6 provides dual parity drives for each group of data drives, further ensuring data integrity should two drives fail. The ix12 supports storage pools, which enables the drives inside the array to be grouped together by similar size and data protection mechanism. The ix12 also supports multiple storage pools – for example, an eight-drive RAID 6 group for file and database data and a four-drive RAID10 group for log data. Additionally, the ix12 supports online RAID type migration from RAID 1 to RAID 5 to RAID 6 to let users tune data protection on the fly. Finally, the ix12 supports online capacity expansion so users can expand their ix12 unit without impacting online operations.

New StorCenter ix12-300r Features Bring Advanced Storage Capability to Millions of SMBs

With the launch of the StorCenter ix12-300r, Iomega continues its foundation of making sophisticated storage features from EMC’s enterprise heritage available to millions of customers worldwide. IDC estimates that there are over 70 million businesses worldwide with fewer than 100 employees and another 700,000 businesses with 100 and 500 employees. (IDC, Worldwide SMB Taxonomy 2009: Company Size Categories, Industries, and Technology Sources, Doc # 219332, July 2009. The StorCenter ix12-300r’s new system and software functionality features enable SMBs to count on reliability, performance and data protection features with the deployment simplicity and flexibility they need at a price they can afford.

With four Gigabit Ethernet connections and a high-performance Intel Core2Duo CPU, the StorCenter ix12-300r can serve as the only shared storage device a small enterprise or remote workgroup needs in today’s data-intensive marketplace. The ix12-300r also has three USB 2.0 ports to support an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to ensure data integrity in the event of a power failure or to connect external storage capacity with USB drives for loading and unloading data. Two other new features debuting on the ix12-300r are 2GB of main memory to support both I/O workloads and software functionality, and user replaceable redundant hot-swap fans and power supplies to maximize system availability.

Key Features of the EMC LifeLine Software

The new StorCenter ix12-300r Network Storage array supports the entire LifeLine feature set that makes the ix12 one of the most advanced, innovative and easy-to-use network storage device for small businesses and distributed enterprises today. Additional new EMC LifeLine software capabilities announced with the StorCenter ix12-300r include:

• 64 bit EMC LifeLine software. In addition to the SMP support noted above, the ix12 features the first true 64-bit operating system in its class. LifeLine’s internal expanded addressing capability supports the ix12’s increased performance and storage capacity.
• High performance Ethernet network port bonding. The LifeLine software supports link aggregation between its 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports for high I/O workloads.
• Virtual LAN (VLAN) capability. The ix12 delivers the management simplicity of virtual LANs over a shared network infrastructure.
• Windows DFS (Distributed File System). The ix12 supports Microsoft’s DFS single file name space capability across multiple arrays. DFS simplifies both capacity expansion and management with a single file name as additional arrays are added.
• WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) enables applications to manipulate files directly on the ix12.
• Panasonic video surveillance camera compatibility with the ix12’s internal video surveillance application, which includes scheduling recordings, encoding and archiving video.

Major Use Cases for the StorCenter ix12-300r Network Storage Array

The StorCenter ix12-300r excels at providing high function shared storage for the most important IT functions found in small enterprises including production data repository, backup target and application data store.

• Production Storage. The ix12 provides high performance, easy to use, reliable shared block and file production storage. The ix12 can simultaneously store, retrieve and manage data for Windows-, Mac- and Linux-based desktop machines and Windows, Mac, Linux and UNIX servers as a NAS device using CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, http/s, and webDAV and as a SAN or DAS device using iSCSI.
• Backup to Disk (B2D) target. The ix12 is a perfect backup target for small businesses looking to improve performance and reliability of regular backups while simplifying the hands-on handling required by tape backup solutions. The ix12 has been tested and certified with popular backup applications for small and medium businesses including Symantec Backup Exec, EMC Retrospect and Acronis TrueImage and Backup and Recovery 10.
• Storage for server virtualization. All of today’s popular virtualization platforms and hypervisors take advantage of the capabilities of shared storage to provide data and application resiliency. The ix12 is certified for VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. The ix12 enables users to build scale-out environments taking advantage of Exchange 2010 features. The ix12 has completed testing for the Microsoft ESRP initiative and should be listed under the program later in Q2.
• Video Surveillance. With up to 24TB of raw capacity, and availability features like redundant hardware and RAID 6, the ix12 can do dual duty in a SMB with one unit storing data and a companion unit storing video surveillance images for that business. Compatibility with select Panasonic cameras increases the ix12’s flexibility as a video surveillance storage application.

Compatibility

The StorCenter ix12-300r Network Storage array is compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux and most UNIX operating systems.

The StorCenter ix12-300r is certified with industry leading virtualization and backup software, including VMware vSphere, Windows Server 2008 R2, Citrix XenServer, Symantec Backup Exec, EMC Retrospect, and Acronis TrueImage and Backup Server 10. Additionally, the ix12-300r is the first Iomega product to be listed on the EMC Support Matrix (ESM). Listing on the ESM ensures customers that EMC has tested a product against its own set of real-world test cases so that product will operate in the most demanding of IT environments.