Targeting small businesses with a need for a high-end network storage solution, or that simply want to operate their own datacenter, Iomega last week unveiled its new StorCenter px12-350r Network Storage Array.
“Small and mid-sized businesses face many of the same challenges as larger organizations, including rapid storage growth, infrastructure sprawl and even more severe budget constraints,” said David Vellante, cofounder of the Wikibon Project, a community of practitioners, technologists and consultants with the goal of improving the adoption of technology and business systems via open source sharing of free advisory knowledge.
“The problem is that smaller organizations don’t have the resources to manage increasing levels of data complexity. What they need are extensible products with rich feature sets and rock solid data assurance that are dead simple to operate,” said Vellante. “The new Iomega StorCenter px12-350r array is a leading example of an affordable solution for today’s SMB buyer that delivers turnkey business value without breaking the bank.”
Iomega, a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC (NYSE:EMC), focuses on consumer, prosumer and small business technologies. The px12-350r is its new top-tier product offering, intended for small businesses that are beginning to edge into the medium business range.
“This is the high-end of the Iomega product family,” explained Jay Krone, senior director of network storage product marketing at Iomega. “It is designed and outfitted to support up to 250 users.”
He added, “It’s got plenty of performance, so it can be both the storage and the datacenter for a small business.”
Leveraging storage and security technologies from its parent, EMC, which focuses on enterprise storage, the px12-350r is a rackmount network storage array that Iomega said is ideally suited for use in production data stores, server virtualization, backup-to-disk target and even video surveillance.
It features full Hyper-V Live migration support, multiple RAID levels and hot swap drives and certification for the most popular virtualization environments. Iomega said it is also the first SMB-focused network attached storage (NAS) solution to natively support Avamar deduplicating backup.
For databases, Krone said small businesses can boost performance by running small database applications entirely from a px12-350r using solid state disks (SSDs). They can also be used to enhance the performance of larger databases by running application files, log files and index files using SSDs, with traditional SATA HDD storage for the actual data.
Krone said the px12-350r also makes an ideal small business offsite backup solution. Simply install a px12-350r at the main location and a second unit (or even one of Iomega’s lower-end NAS devices) at a second location such as a warehouse, second office or home office. The devices can then use Iomega’s Personal Cloud technology to share data via the Internet.
Krone explained that a small business’s Personal Cloud is completely self-owned by the business that creates it, and that the content and accessibility is always under the user’s control. Every Iomega StorCenter device includes the technology. In addition to offsite backups, the Personal Cloud technology enables collaboration with others, large file sharing, archiving and other data-management and protection benefits to an organization.
NAS Configuration Options
The px12-350r is a 2U form factor rackmount NAS that comes with 12 slots for expansion. It is available in two base configurations:
Four 2TB 7,200 rpm SATA hard disk drives for a minimum of 8TB of network storage for $5,999.99
Four 3TB 7,200 rpm SATA hard disk drives for 12TB of network storage for $6,999.99
Iomega offers two expansion pack options: an 8TB expansion pack (4 x 2TB HDD) for $1,399.99, and the 12TB expansion pack (4 x 3TB HDD) for $1,699.99. Additionally, 128GB SSDs are available for $399.99 each.
In both configurations, the px12-350r features an Intel Core2 Duo processor and expanded 4G memory; four gigabit Ethernet ports with bonding capability for load balancing and high-performance bandwidth aggregation or failover; UPS support, hot swap drives and data replication with device-to-device copy jobs that can be defined and scheduled as needed; ISCSI target capability for block level access; embedded AXIS Video Hosting System (AVHS) to support up to 12 AXIS IP security cameras.
“What we’re finding in the Iomega storage business overall is that video surveillance is hot,” Krone said. “There’s general increased awareness for physical security in businesses everywhere. And there’s a sea change going on in the physical security industry these days, which is the shift from analog to digital. If it’s a digital camera, it wants digital storage.”
Thor Olavsrud is a contributor to SmallBusinessComputing.com and a former senior editor at InternetNews.com. He covers operating systems, standards and security, among other technologies.
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