RAIDCore Unveils RAID Controllers, Nabs Funding

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RAIDCore has unveiled its first products – low-cost, high-performance RAID controllers – and announced a $5 million funding round.

Based on Serial ATA (SATA) technology, the RC4000 Series RAID Controllers provide enterprise-class RAID storage solutions for about 30% less than competing models, according to RAIDCore marketing VP Mark Taylor.

“We are about 30% lower than similar controllers, but we have much better performance and features that others don’t have,” says Taylor.

RAIDCore claims its eight-channel, low-profile (2U) RAID controller is an industry first, and is powered by 64-bit, 133MHz PCI-X technology.

Live, online RAID array transformation and expansion reduce downtime for maintenance and upgrades, according to the company, and host-based processing
results in high performance at low cost.

The RC4000 series also offers hot sparing for automatic failover after drive failure, distributed sparing for improved disk usage and reliability, and
mirror splitting and hiding for an alternative to tape backups.

The controllers offer ample scalability, accommodating up to 32 drives and storage sizes of more than two terabytes. They also support common RAID levels, including RAID1, 10, 1n, 10n, 5, and 50.

“Sophisticated storage management functions like on-line expansion and split mirroring have traditionally been available only on relatively high-priced storage arrays built on SCSI and Fibre Channel drive technologies,” says John Webster, Data Mobility Group senior analyst and founder.

RAIDCore’s Fulcrum Architecture “has the potential to be a game-changer by offering an advanced RAID technology with high-end management functions that
also takes advantage of Serial ATA price points,” Webster continues.

“RAID solutions have been engineered around decade-old technology, and current high-end, enterprise-level RAID has been hard to use and costly to maintain,” claims RAIDCore CEO Tom Marmen. “With the emerging Serial ATA technology, we saw an opportunity to offer the high performance and high reliability of RAID to an entirely new class of users.”

RAIDCore also announced that Egan-Managed Capital and Longworth Venture Partners have committed $5 million in venture funding to the company.

“Getting enterprise RAID features at a much lower price point is, by itself, compelling, but we see more to it than that,” says Frank Andrasco, a partner with Egan-Managed Capital. “We believe RAIDCore’s innovative software will catalyze a move in the market to commoditize the hardware components of RAID.”

Pricing for the controllers ranges from $160-$362, depending on the functionality level and number of channels (4 or 8).

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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