March 01, 2012 -- Quantum Corp., provider of data protection and big data management offerings, announced this week availability of new StorNext appliances designed to help organizations proactively manage the extreme growth of unstructured data. The StorNext G300 Gateway appliances simplify and leverage high-speed networking technologies to provide flexible and affordable data access in big data environments. Offered in two models, the gateway appliance is purpose-built to provide virtual, highly available access over an IP connection to large data sets managed by the high-performance StorNext file system. With new digital technologies creating larger data files that can generate greater business value, the StorNext G300 appliance is ideal for data intensive operations, such as film editing and transcoding, seismic processing or genome sequencing. It is also optimized for organizations with a growing number of users who need high-performance, parallel access to a scalable infrastructure of shared big data files.
Beyond the StorNext G300 now being generally available, Quantum announced that it has added the new StorNext QS2400 Storage System to its primary disk product line, further building out the company’s StorNext appliance family offerings.
The StorNext gateway appliance’s virtual access to a shared data pool enables it to be configured for “on demand” provisioning of clients over Ethernet. This LAN (local area network) connectivity into the StorNext File System also provides those clients with high-speed networking access to cost-effective tiered storage via StorNext Storage Manager. The new, gateway-based LAN client licensing brings greater flexibility, making it easy to accommodate changes in workflows or the overall configured StorNext environment. Quantum’s StorNext G301 supports GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) with aggregate throughput of 800 MB/sec per appliance, and the StorNext G302 supports 10 GbE with aggregate throughput of 1.6 GB/sec per appliance. Throughput scales as needed when multiple StorNext G300 Gateways are combined in a single cluster to support a large number of LAN clients. The gateway appliance is compatible with StorNext software and StorNext metadata controllers. Multiple StorNext G300 appliances can be attached to a single StorNext environment for high availability, automated load balancing and best-in-class per-stream performance which scales to enable faster optimized workflows and resilient file sharing. A gateway conversion kit is available for customers that want to protect their prior investments and transition between a 1 GbE and 10 GbE network infrastructure.
The StorNext QS2400 array is validated and optimized for StorNext implementations and provides a blend of high performance and high capacity for organizations with primary disk needs. The new storage system also offers enterprise-class redundancy, availability and manageability to address the needs of demanding big data computing environments. Encased in a 2U 24-drive chassis, the StorNext QS2400 Storage System uses 900 GB 10K, 2.5" SAS drives and scales to over 172 TB of raw capacity in a single array.
“The desire to cost effectively extract greater value from digital content has created tremendous demand for solutions that both protect data and make it easily accessible,” said Janae Stow Lee, senior vice president, Filesystem and Archive, Quantum. “Six months ago we announced our plans to expand our StorNext appliance family to address these complex challenges, and today we are pleased to announce that we’ve delivered on that promise. Our new gateway appliance provides virtualized IP access to digital data stored and protected by StorNext. With today’s announcement, customers can now benefit from the power of our proven StorNext software in purpose-built, end-to-end hardware that simplifies the delivery of unparalleled streaming performance for sharing and archiving large volumes of big data,” Lee added.
Quantum’s StorNext G300 Gateway appliances, Gateway Conversion Kit and StorNext QS2400 Storage System are available now. The list price of the StorNext G301 begins at $22,000, StorNext G302 begins at $32,000, StorNext G301 to G302 Gateway Conversion Kit begins at $12,000, and the StorNext QS2400 begins at $118,500.
