Iomega Delivers EMC Enterprise Storage Solutions To SMBs And Distributed Offices

SAN DIEGO, May 4. Iomega, an EMC company and the world's fastest growing provider of network storage to small and medium business, today announced the most advanced entry in its lineup of easy-to-use network storage products with the worldwide launch of the new Iomega StorCenter ix12-300r Network Storage array. Incorporating industry-leading enterprise-class EMC storage technologies, the StorCenter ix12-300r is the ideal rackmount storage device for small and medium businesses, as well as small enterprise locations such as workgroups, departments and distributed/branch offices that require expandability, reliability and advanced capability features without the need for a dedicated IT staff.

Easily supporting groups of up to 250 users, the StorCenter ix12-300r Network Storage array provides up to 24TB of networked storage in a 2-rack unit (2U) form factor. The StorCenter ix 12-300r has sophisticated configuration and networking features often only available in larger enterprise installations, and is ideal for production file (NAS) and block (SAN) data storage, backup to disk (B2D) of critical business data, shared storage for virtualized environments including Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and VMware vSphere, and application-specific storage such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. The StorCenter ix12-300r mounts in an EIA-310 standard equipment rack and starts with 4TB and 8TB base configurations that can be expanded in four-drive increments of 4TB or 8TB, up to a total of 24TB.

In the U.S., configurations of the StorCenter ix12-300r will be available in mid-May from CDW and can be purchased in mid-June from Iomega's other US channel partners, including EMC's Velocity partners, at a starting estimated U.S. suggested list price of $4,999.99 (4TB model). Internationally, the new StorCenter ix12-300r is available to IT resellers via select distribution channels. "The new StorCenter ix12-300r is an exciting network storage array that delivers EMC's world class enterprise storage technologies to small businesses and distributed enterprises in the market segment between the current Iomega and EMC network storage offerings," said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega and the Consumer and Small Business Products Division of EMC. "From capacity, expandability and reliability to network flexibility to support for applications like Microsoft Exchange 2010, the ix12-300r retains Iomega's signature ease-of-use with key features business users expect and need, including testing and list on EMC's own EMC Storage Matrix (ESM). The software capabilities, testing and certification set the ix12-300r apart from anything else in its category."

Matt Troka, Vice President, Product and Partner Management, CDW, Iomega's exclusive U.S. launch partner for the StorCenter ix12-300r and leading provider of technology solutions for business, government and education in the U.S., said, "Small and medium businesses experience the same information explosion as larger enterprises, driving storage requirements for expandability, capacity and software functionality into product categories with considerably higher price points. The capability, performance and economics of the ix12-300r will be particularly helpful to our SMB customers implementing virtualized environments and deploying specific applications like Microsoft Exchange. And as the storage capacity needs of their businesses grow, the affordable expandability of the ix12-300r will protect and continue to bring value to our customers' storage investment."

"In terms of features, capabilities and price point, the new Iomega StorCenter ix12-300r fits nicely into EMC's low end network storage offerings," said Benjamin S. Woo, Program Vice President of Worldwide Storage Systems Research, IDC. "The product brings advanced enterprises features to small enterprises that require more data management sophistication than what had previously been available at the top of Iomega's NAS offerings. At the same time the ix12-300r tops out in features and benefits just below the EMC Clariion line. This is a cohesive product strategy to address today's dynamic SMB marketplace."Astrid McClean, senior technical product manager of the Exchange Product Group at Microsoft Corp., said, "Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 enables customers to implement large, low-cost mailboxes, performs well on less expensive disks and supports a range of storage options across SAN, DAS or even JBOD configurations. The flexibility, iSCSI connectivity and JBOD capabilities of the new Iomega StorCenter ix12-300r make it another cost-effective storage option that complements Exchange 2010 features in many smaller environments."

"Small and medium-sized businesses share the challenge of managing the enormous growth of data with large enterprises," said David Tuhy, general manager, Intel Storage Group. "Meeting their needs requires easy-to-use and affordable storage solutions with advanced capabilities. The Intel architecture dual core processor with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology has the performance that enables Iomega to deliver data management features suited for this class of users."

Bogomil Balkansky, vice president, product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platforms, VMware, said, "With the Iomega ix12-300r, SMB customers can virtualize their entire infrastructure -- including mission critical applications like Microsoft Exchange 2010 and SQL -- and take full advantage of VMware's industry-leading capabilities just like their larger counterparts. The VMware vSphere Essentials offering combined with the Iomega ix12-300r lowers cost, simplifies management, and allows for higher performance and better energy utilization -- making it a great building block for deploying virtualization at SMBs."

An Affordable Rackmount Array for Primary Storage, Backup and Application Data
The new StorCenter ix12-300r utilizes the acclaimed EMC LifeLine software, a fully-developed Linux operating environment and suite of applications that protects data and performs valuable business tasks above and beyond simple storage. EMC LifeLine software is designed for cross-platform support of Windows-, Mac-, Linux- and UNIX-based computers and is HCL certified for the leading virtualized environments, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

The StorCenter ix12-300r features new advances in the EMC LifeLine software's provisioning and storage management capabilities. The ix12 can be configured with different levels of RAID support: RAID 5 (pre-configured), RAID 6, RAID 1 and RAID 10 (all with automatic RAID rebuild), as well as JBOD (a single volume of storage). RAID 6 provides dual parity drives for each group of data drives, further ensuring data integrity should two drives fail. The ix12 supports storage pools, which enables the drives inside the array to be grouped together by similar size and data protection mechanism. The ix12 also supports multiple storage pools -- for example, an eight-drive RAID 6 group for file and database data and a four-drive RAID 10 group for log data. Additionally, the ix12 supports online RAID type migration from RAID 1 to RAID 5 to RAID 6 to let users tune data protection on the fly. Finally, the ix12 supports online capacity expansion so users can expand their ix12 unit without impacting online operations.New StorCenter ix12-300r Features Bring Advanced Storage Capability to Millions of SMBs
With the launch of the StorCenter ix12-300r, Iomega continues its foundation of making sophisticated storage features from EMC's enterprise heritage available to millions of customers worldwide. IDC estimates that there are over 70 million businesses worldwide with fewer than 100 employees and another 700,000 businesses with 100 and 500 employees. (IDC, Worldwide SMB Taxonomy 2009: Company Size Categories, Industries, and Technology Sources, Doc # 219332, July 2009.) The ix12-300r's new system and software functionality enable SMBs to count on reliability, performance and data protection features with the deployment simplicity and flexibility they need at a price they can afford.

With four Gigabit Ethernet connections and a high-performance Intel Core2Duo CPU, the StorCenter ix12-300r can serve as the only shared storage device a small enterprise or remote workgroup needs in today's data-intensive marketplace. The ix12-300r also has three USB 2.0 ports to support an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) to ensure data integrity in the event of a power failure or to connect external storage capacity with USB drives for loading and unloading data. Two other new features debuting on the ix12-300r are 2GB of main memory to support both I/O workloads and software functionality, and user replaceable redundant hot-swap fans and power supplies to maximize system availability.