The fact that about 80% of companies that fall within the target market for network-attached storage (NAS) solutions are Windows-based, opens up a significant market opportunity for Maxtor`s Windows-powered storage solutions, according to Mike Cassidy, business development manager at Rectron, SA`s official Maxtor distributor.
"Having Windows at the core of our operating system means we are not emulating it, which is what Linux players, for example, need to do," he says.
"This means systems integrators and VARs operating in the NAS arena can integrate Maxtor solutions smoothly and their users can immediately realise the robustness, interoperability and manageability offered by a Windows powered solution."
Last year, Microsoft selected Maxtor, an early innovator in network attached storage servers, as its Windows Embedded Partner of the Year in the OEM category.
Maxtor MaxAttach NAS 6000 is Maxtor`s latest Windows Powered enterprise-class server. The storage server leverages Maxtor`s ATA hard drives and the Microsoft Windows 2000 platform with the Server Appliance Kit to create a true plug-and-play offering.
Maxtor MaxAttach NAS 6000 scales from 1.9TB to 5.7TB, integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Active Directory for easy storage management and increased data security, and includes high-end features such as Maxtor`s Persistent Storage Manager "snapshot", enabling users to roll back in time to earlier versions of documents in the event of accidental deletion or corruption.
The snapshot software allows for up to 250 different point-in-time images (snapshots) of the data, and provides the ability for users or administrators to browse through folders of the snapshots to directly access lost or outdated files for immediate use or recovery. Also, data can be archived to tape from the snapped image, which eliminates issues of file availability during backup.
Cassidy maintains that while NAS is considerably cheaper to buy than a storage area network (SAN), he sees both technologies co-existing in the same environment, but serving different purposes.
"NAS costs about R250 000 per terabyte, whereas SAN can be around R1 million per terabyte. So, from a cost perspective, there is no comparison, but where a SAN would be deployed to support the storage needs of a mission critical environment where access to data needs to be instantaneous, a Maxtor NAS solution would typically be used in less critical environments where it might take minutes rather than seconds to retrieve the data."
One of those applications finding an increasing market in SA is managing the explosive growth of e-mail volumes in the enterprise. MaxAttach automatically offloads e-mail data from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino e-mail servers to MaxAttach storage servers, providing end-users with more storage capacity to save messages and attachments.
It also improves overall e-mail server performance, reduces backup time and virtually eliminates the need for mailbox or message size restrictions. Users maintain transparent access to archived messages and attachments, without any performance degradation.
MaxAttach can also be used to enable companies to seamlessly expand their storage capacity by allowing multiple storage servers to be combined into one large data repository. This creates a highly scalable storage environment that helps IT administrators improve data management efficiency.
"The low cost of Maxtor NAS storage also makes it a viable alternative to tape library archiving especially when tape`s poor reliability, performance and restore times are considered," concludes Cassidy.
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