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StorCase Technology, a Kingston Technology company, is partnering with RAID specialist ICP vortex (an Intel Company) to market its InfoStation II rack mount or tower-version disk enclosure for RAID or JBOD applications as a cluster-ready solution. This combination is geared towards customers looking to avoid the relative high cost of a SAN implementation to achieve a high availability, consolidated disk storage solution.
“Typical high priced SAN solutions, implemented within the small to medium-sized company space, connect up to four host-servers to the SAN,” said Deborah Hartson, Director of Marketing, StorCase Technology. “StorCase offers the InfoStation II as a simple, reliable and cost-effective configuration for four host cluster-pairs to have their own physical disk space within a single 19″ sub-system. This lower-cost, high availability storage framework can also be upgraded to attach to a SAN environment later on (if required) with a ‘field plug-in’ 2GB Fibre to SCSI controller. We are very pleased to partner with ICP vortex in messaging this potential,” added Hartson. InfoStation makes it possible to build a one, two, three or four heterogeneous disk sets or to accommodate up to four cluster-pairs on a single InfoStation unit giving a consolidated/shared data storage solution of up to 2 Terabytes (TB), scalable up to nearly 9TB. With currently available hard disk capacities, each server can start from 18 Gigabytes (GB) up to 0.5TB and scale up to its own useable 2TB with great ease.
The InfoStation I/O Card design allows the solution to be very cost effective because less cabling is necessary which also, in turn, minimizes points of failure. Also, the installation and configuration has been simplified so that no extras such as external SCSI Bus splitters or added cabling are necessary. This means that in the event of a server failing, its appointed back-up server seamlessly connects to its disk set whilst the failed server can be ‘hot-swapped’ with a working server for reconnection. This in turn means minimal down time at a very low capital cost.
“Thoroughly carried out tests convinced us of the ruggedness and stability of InfoStation with our PCI RAID for clustering products. We were especially impressed by the compatibility of our controllers with the enclosure,” said Rudiger Grund, of ICP vortex channel marketing. “StorCase enclosures certainly provide an environment which should extend the lifetime of a disk and which is key in enhancing the overall performance of the RAID/clustering system.”
