Features - Storage Innovations:

PROCOM'S NEW SATA-BASED NAS FILER PROVIDES UP TO 1.6TB STORAGE

Procom Technology Inc introduced a low-cost entry-level NAS filer that combines the company's industry-proven enterprise-class operating system with a hardware platform that deploys best-of-breed components in a 1U-high enclosure to provide up to 1.6 TB of storage capacity.

The NetFORCE 700L is a serial ATA-based NAS appliance that comes with dual Gb Ethernet ports and hot-swappable SATA drives. It was designed to address requirements of existing Procom partners for a feature-rich NAS appliance with lower price points and higher storage capacity.

"We met this demand by leveraging the evolution of SATA disk drive technology, which greatly improved the cost/capacity ratio and allowed us to create this entry-level appliance," said William A. Long, Procom's vice president of product planning and development. "Our partners are now able to offer end-toend solutions in their respective vertical markets."

The NF-700L is ideal for systems integrators and OEMs as a highly integrated fast file appliance to incorporate into their specialized solutions for telecommunications, imaging, remittance processing, unified messaging, Internet filtering, blade server storage and other applications.

"Getting 1.6 TB of raw storage capacity in a 1U platform at an affordable price is an important consideration for many of our customers," said Eric Lundbohm, vice president of marketing at 8e6 Technologies. "Add in Procom's powerful NAS operating system, and the NetFORCE 700L represents value that is unrivaled in the storage industry."

The NF-700L NAS filer is especially suitable for workgroups, departments and small businesses that need to consolidate storage, share information and reduce storage management costs. Through the use of Procom's ProMirror software option, organizations with satellite offices and no local IT expertise can replicate the information generated at these locations to a larger NetFORCE filer -- at a remote site such as a corporate datacenter -- for disaster recovery, backup or other data management purposes.

Procom's sophisticated NetFORCE operating system offers advanced reliability features such as a journalized file system to ensure data integrity and checkpoints for rapid recovery of damaged or deleted files. Other functionalities include cross-platform heterogeneous file sharing, NDMPcompliant backup, and SNMP monitoring.