News

posted on 18 August 2008 12:06

Although it is announcing The Edge, Nexsan is not sponsoring U2's guitarist. Instead, it has added a 1U NAS (network-attached storage) server to front-end its nearline SAS and SATABoy and SATABeast drive arrays in a combined product offering.

The server uses Windows Unified Data Storage Server (WUDSS) technology and provides iSCSI block and CIFS and NFS file-level access to the drive arrays. These arrays have Nexsan's graduated spin-down AutoMAID technology to save power. They are termed nearline arrays as Nexsan sees them being used for storing non-transaction data or tier 2 data as opposed to front line tier1. SAS provides faster data access than SATA and so gives Nexsan a 2-tier offering.

The Edge is Nexsan's moniker for a server plus nearline drive arrays. Nexsan says an Edge bundle can store up to 84TB in 9U, 'more than twice the density of comparable solutions.' The recently announced DATABeast isn't included though.

Bob Woolery, SVP of Marketing at Nexsan, said: “The Edge is the latest addition to our complete line of green data storage products. The Edge delivers an innovative mix of green NAS, high reliability and tiered storage at an attractive price point that SMB customers are looking for.”

The Edge is package and priced for the small and medium business market and the prices are:

- one SATABoy with eight 500GB SATA drives - £13158 street;
- one SASBoy with eight 300GB SAS drives - £17895 street;
- two SATABeasts with 1 TB drives; 84TB total - £790/TB or £66316 street.

^{[Martin Edwards, news writer.]}