Iomega launches NAS storage line for SMEs

EMC subsidiary Iomega today unveiled a new series of simple disk storage arrays aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses and remote offices.

Known for its small office and home office products, Iomega is trying to sell upstream with its new StorCenter PX Series of network storage products. The company said the new arrays are its most advanced series of desktop and rackmount NAS devices.

The StorCenter PX Series features four-bay and six-bay desktop models and a four-bay rackmount model, each available in scalable configurations. Prices for the NAS range from $799 for a diskless, four-bay StorCenter desktop version to $3,999.99 for a six-bay, 18TB StorCenter px6-300d model.

The NAS arrays are optimised for 3.5-in., 7,200rpm, serial ATA (SATA) hard disk drives, but they can also use 2.5-in drives. The devices are also the first for Iomega that can use solid-state drives (SSDs).

Another first for Iomega: the StorCenter PX series arrays can replicate data between each other for business continuity and disaster recovery purposes, according to Marc Tanguay, Iomega’s general manager of network storage products.

Tanguay said Iomega plans to demonstrate streaming multiple virtual desktop image files from SSDs in a StorCenter PX box next week at EMC World. “Virtualisation is a real target application for these products,” he said. “They have great performance for things like call centers with boot storms in the morning and for streaming video.”

The StorCenter PX series features hot-swappable drives and several levels of RAID disk protection. Iomega also included an iSCSI port for block-level data transfers.

The arrays are certified for VMware vSphere 4.0, Citrix XenServer, and Windows Server 2003/2008/2008 R2 HyperV environments.

“With new software features, we think this will help us expand into the remote office of larger enterprise customers,” Tanguay said. For example, the NAS boxes offer Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services for distributed networks, allowing the boxes to replicate back and forth to a main corporate data centre.