Seagate has brought its "storage area network (SAN) in a box" to market locally through Storgate's high-end storage solution division, Smart.
The XIOtech Magnitude architecture includes a high-performance RAID controller, an eight-port fibre channel switch, and logical volume management software, thus avoiding incompatibilities that have dogged the SAN architecture image since the concept was introduced.
The box uses XIOtech's Real-Time Data Intelligence (REDI) Storage Architecture, which delivers processing speeds of over 85 000 I/O per second, sustained data transfer rates of over 70MBps and up to 3.2TB of data storage.
The Magnitude includes redundant, hot-swappable components, and can support clustering of boxes. It supports point-to-point and FC-AL topologies, which can be implemented concurrently to support heterogeneous servers and operating systems. Point-to-point is supported by a XP Host Adapter Board (HAB), and will provide connectivity to Intel-based servers that have a PCI 2.1-compliant bus architecture. Up to eight servers running NT or Netware 4.11 or 5.0 can connect simultaneously to the box.
The PC-AL HAB can connect a large number of servers into a single loop. Although performance will be better on the point-to-point interface, the fibre channel solution offers the advantage of a 10km range, as well as better fail-over architecture possibilities. Seagate notes that most applications will never generate the load needed to tax either interface.
Seagate purchased XIOtech last year specifically for its SAN technology. The transaction was valued at $360 million at the time.
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