Iomega Launches Mid-Range Storage For Virtual Environments

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Iomega, an EMC company, on Thursday unveiled a new family of storage arrays for small and mid-size businesses that need unified storage for virtualization, video surveillance, or cloud applications.

The Iomega StorCenter px Server Class Series has as much as 36 TB of storage capacity and consists of both solid state drives and Serial ATA drives. They fall in size and functionality between Iomega's ix2-200 arrays and EMC's low-end VNXe3100 array. The px Series is available in four models: the px4-300d, px6-300d, px4-300r, and px12-350r.Iomega designed the systems for use in virtual environments. Out of the box, they are certified for VMware vSphere, Citrix XenServer, and Microsoft Windows Server.

The px4-300d and px6-300d support either four or six disks. They support NFS, CIFS, and AppleTalk Filing Protocol and connect to the network via iSCSI. Both boxes are desktop based and require that the customer buy his own solid state or SATA drives to populate the box. The px4-300d and px6-300d support RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and 10. Asynchronous replication via a utility called Copy Job is included. Copy Job can copy data internal to the device, use rsync, or do filewise incremental replication based on the modify date of the file.

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The px4-300r supports as many as four 7,200RPM SATA or SSD drives. A rack-mountable device, the px4-300r supports NFS, CIFS, AFP, and iSCSI. It is available in a 1U (1.75-inch high) form factor.

The largest box in the px Series is the px12-350r, a rack-mountable storage array that connects to the network via gigabit ethernet, to a storage area network, or directly to the server via SCSI. The px12-350r supports between four and 12 SATA drives or SSDs and like other members of the px series family, includes asynchronous replication capability.

Each array in the px series family uses the LifeLine 3.2 operating system, which supports encrypted volumes and replication of secure file shares. IP camera support is included and users can view live video streams from a Web browser.

The px series can function as a cloud portal via integration with the Axis Video Hosting System/Hosted Video Surveillance Solution (AVHS/HVSS), integration with EMC's Avamar backup and deduplication system, integration with EMC's Atmos cloud storage platform, support for MozyPro cloud backup, or the Personal Cloud features of the existing ix series. Prices range from $799 for the px4-300d to $5,000 for the px12.

Deni Connor is founding analyst for Storage Strategies NOW, an industry analyst firm that focuses on storage, virtualization, and servers.

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