Iomega Unveils Low-Cost NAS System

Two days after EMC introduced a new high-end storage system for the largest and most advanced data centers, its Iomega subsidiary is trying to shake up the low-end of the storage market with an inexpensive rackmounted NAS system.

The StorCenter pro ix4-200r NAS Rackmount Server offers 2 TB or 4 TB of networked storage in a 1U form factor and includes a variety of high-end features for remote offices or small businesses with 100 or fewer users, the company says. They include a 3.2 GHz Intel Celeron processor, 1-GB of system memory, and one Gigabit Ethernet connection. A version with four 500-GB SATA II drives starts at $1,800, while a version with four 1-TB drives starts at $2,400. The company said it expects to roll out larger capacity systems during the next few quarters.

"We are offering features usually seen in mid-level enterprise systems that cost around $10,000. We are bring those features to the small office at a much lower price thanks to the EMC technology we can incorporate into our systems," says Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega and the consumer and small business products division of EMC.

The feature list includes iSCSI support for block-level access, VMware ESX server certification for NFS and iSCSI storage, remote access, RAID 5 and 10, support for a variety of Windows, Linux and Mac environments and network protocols, Active Directory support, USB ports for external hard drives, and the ability to support four Axis network cameras for video surveillance.

It also includes EMC's LifeLine operating system and can be set up with four mouse clicks, and uses EMC Retrospect Express software for automated backups. A connection to EMC's MozyHome online backup service, which can be upgraded to MozyPro for businesses, is included, as is some encryption technology to protect installs and upgrades that is supplied by RSA, another EMC division.Huberman says Iomega, which EMC bought last year, plans to incorporate more high-end features and capabilities from the parent company's enterprise storage systems. One example is the LifeLine operating system, which EMC had been developing for two years and Iomega first introduced last year in a two-bay desktop NAS system. "The key is to make it easy to use. Our sweet spot is offices with 25 to 50 users that may have a single IT person or may not. Also, EMC is helping us to reach into remote offices of larger companies," he says.

There is a growing worldwide market for networked storage now that it doesn't cost much more than direct-attached storage, he says. "There are literally millions of small offices with more than one PC or server and if you have more than one it makes sense to have network-attached storage for backup and other reasons. It used to be that NAS was difficult, but now a non-IT professional can easily set it up," Huberman says. He says unit sales have been growing around 50 percent year over year.

EMC on Tuesday raised the bar for high-end systems by introducing the Symmetric V-Max, a new system and architecture designed for the virtual data center filed with virtual servers. EMC says it will provide three times the usable capacity, twice the connectivity, and three times the performance of the company's current top-of-the-line Symmetric, the DMX-4, which will continue to be offered. A large cluster can scale to hundreds of petabytes of storage, and handle thousands of virtual servers and process millions of I/Os per second. It uses multi-core processors and enterprise flash, Fibre Channel, and SATA drives to provide tiered storage, and later this year EMC plans to release FAST, or Fully Automated Storage Tiering, to automate the movement of data between tiers.

EMC also offers storage systems that are aimed at smaller enterprises and cost much less than the Symmetrix, but Huberman says Iomega and its parent won't tread on each other's turf. "We're not going to get into the $10,000 range -- maybe eventually in the $5,000 to $6,000 range," he says.

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