More NAS Storage Options from Iomega

We last covered Iomega’s NAS products back in June when the company announced its economical 200d series for SMBS. Iomega’s back at it again, but this time, the company’s gone a slightly more upscale, designing a box for medium-sized businesses looking for high-speed, high-bandwidth performance.

The NAS 400r series comes in three different capacity configurations &#151 640GB, 1 Terabyte (TB) and 1.6 TB. According to Wayne Arvidson, Iomega’s general manager for professional storage solutions, the 400r series is 30 percent faster than Iomega’s NAS 400m series.

Arvidson said companies that handle lots of big files need big throughput, and that any company dealing with financials &#151 like banks or credit unions &#151 needs the security of knowing the system will stay online.

“We designed this series for companies that require speed and performance,” said Arvidson. “And we eliminated as many failure points as possible. The 400r series offers high fault tolerance and frame stability to keep mission critical data safe.”

A Whole ‘Lotta Hardware
The three products within the 400r series range in price, capacity and capability. Here’s how the hardware configuration breaks down:

  • 4 Hot Swap Serial ATA Hard Drives &#151 The advantage here, according to Arvidson, is that should a drive fail &#151 even the drive that contains the operating system &#151 you simply pull out the drive, replace it with a new one, and the system automatically mounts, configures and rebuilds itself. All this gets done without shutting down the system &#151 no down time.
  • 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 Processor &#151 Available in the 1TB and 1.6TB models
  • 2.8 GHz Celeron Processor &#151 In the 640GB model
  • Dual 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet &#151 Arvidson said the Gigabit Ethernet capability makes the Internet connection faster and helps to increase throughput.
  • 1GB Memory &#151 In the 1TB and 1.6TB models
  • 512MB Memory &#151 In the 640GB model
  • SCSI 320 Connector &#151 This feature lets you backup your NAS storage to tape.
  • 2 USB 2.0 Port &#151 Standard for all three configurations

The Softer Side of Ware
Iomega’s standardized the use of Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 across the 400r line, which the company said makes it easy for SMBs to “integrate more seamlessly into Windows-based networks.”

The 1.6TB version of the NASr also comes with Microsoft Print Server for managing your network-based printing and Microsoft Exchange database support so that you can improve your Exchange server performance by off-loading Exchange databases onto the roomier NAS box.

All three configurations also include Iomega’s Automatic Backup software and Computer Associate’s eTrust Antivirus software.


Iomega NAS 400r
Aiming for the “M” &#151 Iomega designed the NAS 400r series for medium-sized businesses looking for high-speed, high-bandwidth performance.

NAS Installation for Dummies
Iomega, like just about every other hardware vendor, claims its NAS device is easy to install. Since most SMBs don’t have an IT person, we don’t take these claims lightly. When asked for details, Arvidson said that they use wizard-based software to walk you through the process. “It’s designed to let non-technical people install the box,” he said. “Even our sales people can install this box in less than 10 minutes.” Now that’s something we’d like to see.

Availability, Pricing And Support
All three models will be available through resellers and at Iomega’s Web site starting December 9. The suggested price is:

  • NAS 400r 640GB &#151 $4,499
  • NAS 400r 1TB &#151 $5,999
  • NAS 400r 1.6TB &#151 $7,499

All three models come with one-year, next-business-day. on-site support. You can pay an additional $999 to upgrade to Iomega’s Gold Plus plan, which extends the support to three years.

Lauren Simonds is the managing editor of SmallBusinessComputing.com

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