Nexsan Ships 3TB SATA Enterprise Storage

Midmarket storage systems maker Nexsan on 29 April claimed to be the first company to make available the option of using 3TB Serial ATA hard drives in an enterprise-class storage system.

That kind of storage density works out to about 45TB of usable storage per 1U storage unit within an array. No other vendor can claim anything in that ballpark at this time.

Other 3TB options on the way

Unofficial industry talk also has EMC Iomega coming out soon with desktop appliances and rack-mounted arrays that also will option 3TB HDDs, the highest-capacity drives now available. Other manufacturers are expected to announce their own 3TB options in the near future.

Thousand Oaks, California-based Nexsan said that it has been delivering E-Series storage systems with 3TB SATA drives, namely inside its 4U Nexsan E60 storage system, since earlier this quarter. As of this week, these new 3TB SATA drives are now available in all Nexsan E-Series storage packages, including the E18 and E60X.

Nexsan said its E-Series features an expandable, high-density and high-performance platform. All E-Series storage systems feature centralised storage management software, which is easier to handle, the company said.

Enterprise-class features also include high-reliability, low-power operation and small space consumption.

“This level of storage density and energy savings is impressive and sets the bar for other storage system vendors,” said George Crump, principal analyst for Storage Switzerland. “As the first to bring these innovations in density and power management to market, it speaks well of Nexsan’s engineering team and the company’s ability to execute.”

The Nexsan E-Series storage systems are available immediately. Pricing for the E60 with 3TB SATA drives and a single controller starts at under $80,000 (£48,000).