Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is bringing its TagmaStore family to the midrange in hopes of gaining ground in the fastest growing SAN segment (see Midrange Makes Its Move).
Early next week, Hitachi plans to announce three midrange arrays plus its new TagmaStore Network Storage Controller, the NSC55, Byte and Switch has learned. The NSC55 is a scaled-down version of the controller at the heart of Hitachis TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform (USP), the series of enterprise systems HDS rolled out last September (see Hitachi Struts Mr. Universal). Like the USP systems, Hitachi says its midrange systems will work with other vendors hardware to virtualize storage, putting it all in one big pool. The NSC55 is positioned at the high end of the midrange market.
Hitachi is officially keeping mum on the midrange systems a spokeswoman says there will be an announcement Monday, but will not confirm or deny whether it's about midrange SANs or not. According to several sources familiar with the product rollout, however, Hitachi will launch two midrange arrays Monday with an SMB version following in August.
The new arrays include the TagmaStore Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS)200 and AMS500, both pitched at the low and middle segments of the midrange market. They will replace the Thunder 9530V and 9570V systems, while Hitachi will keep the Thunder 9885V at the high end of the midrange (see Hitachi Boasts New Thunder).
The AMS200 and AMS500 will be available in single- and dual-controller configurations and support Fibre Channel and SATA intermix drive trays. The AMS500 holds 14 drive trays for a maximum capacity of 88.5 TBytes, compared to 40.5 TBytes capacity for the AMS200. The AMS500 has more cache memory 8 GBytes compared to 4 GBytes for the AMS200 and it supports 4 Gbit/s Fibre Channel host connectivity.
