Promicro ‘Raises Price/Performance Bar’ with New Multi-Terabyte RAID Solution

today introduced a low priced, high capacity RAID storage system based on technology from leading industry manufacturers. Positioned as a cost-effective alternative to Fibre Channel or SCSI arrays, the ProStore is aimed at organizations that require large amounts of storage capacity and solid performance at affordable prices. The ProStore is available immediately in configurations of 1 TB (2U chassis), 2.5 TB (4U chassis), or 5 TB (10U chassis). Prices start at $4,800, $9,500 and $17,000, respectively, based on dual Intel Xeon 2.2 GHz processors.

The ProStore uses 160GB Ultra ATA/133 drives from Maxtor. The ProStore also accommodates up to four Escalade 7500 Series ATA/133 IDE RAID controllers from 3ware. The controllers use a patented switched architecture and provide sequential read/write speeds of 41MB/sec and 196 MB/sec, respectively. The ProStore is packaged with 3ware’s 3DM Disk Management software, a browser-based utility that enables local and remote management and monitoring of arrays.

“The integration of our Escalade controllers and the ProStore enables very high levels of reliability and performance scalability,” said Mike Wentz, senior director of product marketing for 3ware. “The ProStore also makes storage management simple with our 3DM software, with features such as immediate e-mail notification of disk array events. We are pleased to be working with Promicro to offer a storage system that addresses IT managers’ needs for significant capacity, lowered management costs and greater reliability.”

The ProStore supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 10. To ensure reliability and redundancy, the ProStore utilizes hot-swappable hard drives and power supplies. Both Linux and Windows platforms are supported.