Features - Storage Innovations:

StorCase LAUNCHES InfoStation 10-BAY 1U SCSI BACKPLANE ENCLOSURE

StorCase Technology announced the upcoming release of the InfoStation 10-Bay 1U SCSI backplane enclosure. The high-density enclosure supports up to ten 2.5-inch SFF (Small Form Factor) SCSI Ultra320 drives and incorporates features that assure flexibility for a variety of configurations.

The 10-Bay 1U is designed specifically to support Seagate's new Savvio 2.5-inch enterprise-level drives. With the introduction of Savvio drives as the industry's first 2.5-inch SCSI drives and the development of the StorCase 10-bay InfoStation as the first SCSI Ultra320 enclosure available in the market to support this latest drive size, a new generation of higher-density enterprise storage has arrived.

"IDC expects adoption of 2.5-inch enterprise-class drives to begin this year, with more significant adoption in 2005," said Dave Reinsel, program director of storage research at IDC. "Early introduction of products such as StorCase's InfoStation help to initiate and increase market adoption of these new SFF drives."

The new 10-bay InfoStation for 2.5-inch drives is extremely space-efficient and allows daisy-chaining for anticipated future system growth. The flexible enclosure is software-configurable to support either single or dual host connections.

"Three 1U 10-bay InfoStation enclosures can be used to create a 30-drive SCSI storage system using only 3Us of rack space, whereas two 3Us would be required to accomplish an equivalent system with traditional 3.5-inch drive enclosures this is a rack space savings of at least 50 percent," stated Joel Tang, StorCase director of engineering, "The 1U InfoStation also consumes significantly less power than larger 3.5-inch drive enclosures, conserving energy and also allowing for much cooler and quieter operation."