Quantum Adds To StorNext Family Of Storage Appliances

Quantum is announcing several new members to its StorNext family of storage appliances that make the products more scalable, improve their performance and provide access to other types of storage. The family of appliances, the first members of which were announced in June of this year, is intended for smaller organizations that have relatively high storage capacity and performance demands, such as companies that do media production. The products also offer support for tape, includingforthcoming future standards in tape development.

The StorNext family of appliances is particularly suited for small to midsize companies, because it packages the hardware and software and eliminates issues such as configuration and compatibility, says Russell Fellows, senior partner of Evaluator Group. While such packaging can be more expensive than buying the parts individually, that is typically less of an issue with a vendor such as Quantum, which manufactures storage hardware. It is difficult to be sure about this, however, because the company did not reveal pricing, he says. While it is true that the products scale, they are less likely to be used in large companies, he adds. "As you go larger, whatever configuration there is isn’t quite right, so it has to be highly customized anyway." It is particularly used in small reproduction houses, especially on the Macintosh side: "There are a lot of five- to 10-person shops with a couple of hundred terabytes." In addition, Quantum’s strong integration with tape helps in that market because for many such companies, their workflow comes in on tape, he says.

The product family uses a proprietary StorNext file system, and offers SAN connectivity as well as LAN, meaning that it supports storage connected via Fibre Channel as well as over a LAN, says Will McGrath, StorNext strategic marketing manager for the San Jose, Calif., company. Quantum announced a series of devices to provide expansion attachment devices for NAS gateways, high-speed priority disk for connecting data in a purpose-built environment and libraries.

Quantum, part of the Linear Tape Open Technology Provider Companies (LTO WPC), will also be offering tape data integrity checking software, McGrath says. Users will not have to pay additional licensing fees when the LTO-6 standard becomes supported, nor for LTO-7 when it becomes available in three to four years, he adds.

The enterprise StorNext Archive Enabled Library is available now at tiered prices starting at $272,800 for a 400-slot, 600-Tbyte system, to $1.18 million for a 5,000-slot, 7,500-Tbyte system. Users can upgrade in 100-slot increments. The StorNext G300 Scale-Out Gateway Appliance and the StorNext QD6000, StorNext QS1200 and StorNext QM1200 Storage Systems will be available in the second half of the year. The midrange archive-enabled library will be available in the second half of the year, with follow-on delivery of the archive-enablement feature to be available in the first half of 2012. The company did not provide pricing information for the other new products, but the company’s existing StorNext M330 appliance starts at about $75,000.

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