Go green with world's first array of 2.5 inch drives
More efficient than 3.5 inch drives claim.
By Mario Apicella, Infoworld | Published: 15:47, 25 January 2008
Infortrend has claimed a storage first by shipping the EonStor B12, the first enterprise-class array based on 2.5-inch drives.
The company said that the B12 could become the measuring stick for all storage arrays in its class, surpassing those that mount 3.5-inch drives in both efficiency and performance/space ratio.
The B12 comes equipped with two SAS (serial attached SCSI) or FC (Fibre Channel) host ports, which should appeal to both SAN and DAS customers. The company claimed that the B12 could pack 12 actuators in just 1U - revolutionary, given that 3.5-inch drive systems would require twice as much space, if not more, to host the same number of drives. Except for a few blade systems, no other storage array packs so much power in so little space. Users will also be able to buy a B12 with four FC ports and dual RAID controllers, each connected to its 12 dual-ported SAS drives. If one controller stops working, data is still available via an alternate path.
To expand beyond the first rack unit, the EonStor can connect four more 1U modules with 12 SAS drives each. If large capacity is the primary objective, the array can be expanded with 2U or 3U modules mounting 3.5-inch SATA drives.
