Storage distributor Hammer plc has been named as the exclusive UK distributor for vendor ID7 Ltd., in a deal which is Europe-wide.

ID7, who solve storage-related departmental, SMB and HPC business challenges by delivering a broad range of primary, backup and archive storage solutions based upon performance, reliability, scalability, connectivity, simplicity and affordability, identified Hammer as their preferred partner to take an expanded id7 product range to market in the UK and Europe.

“We worked closely with Hammer to gain a comprehensive insight into today's SMB storage and InfiniBand market requirements”, said Mark Klarzynski, Founder & CTO, ID7. “We subsequently productised four product ranges, all based on our core hardware and software technology.”

The product ranges are:

• PR4 - ideal for primary storage requirements, ranging from 1.8TB - 24TB native expanding to 100TB, with 10Gb iSCSI connectivity as standard or optional 8Gb Fibre Channel. The PR4 offers up to 24 x 15K RPM 450GB or 7K2 RPM 1TB SAS drives native, with dual SAS controllers as standard for maximum resilience.
• BK4 - suited to disk-to-disk backup requirements, ranging from 4TB - 48TB native expanding to 500TB, with 2 x 1Gb iSCSI connectivity as standard or optional 10Gb iSCSI and/or 8Gb Fibre Channel. The BK4 has 'advanced backup' features including 4th generation VTL with compression, replication, ‘Clone2Tape’ and encryption. The BK4 offers up to 24 x 7K2 RPM 2TB SATA drives native.
• AR4 - for disk-based archiving requirements, ranging from 4TB - 48TB native expanding to 500TB, with 2 x 1Gb iSCSI connectivity as standard or optional 10Gb iSCSI.
• IB4 - designed for the HPC research and development, manufacturing, media and broadcasting market, the IB4 delivers up to 80Gb true InfiniBand storage connectivity as standard, ranging from 1.8TB up to 500TB. The IB4 offers two configurations: the IB4S delivers a high performance head with support for SAS and/or 2TB SATA drive technology, and the IB4P delivers an ultra-high performance and resilient head with support for 15K RPM SAS 450GB drives, and/or 7K2 RPM 1TB SAS drives with dual SAS controllers. The IB4P also includes ‘storage virtualisation’ and ‘pass-through’ technology, which allows multiple storage pool virtualisation (including future SSD technology) and the ability to pass through or bridge legacy storage and/or tape libraries via the IB4's InfiniBand ports.

Neil Munday, VP Sales & Marketing at ID7, said: “We are excited by the opportunity that our partnership with Hammer offers us, both from a sales and technology standpoint, and as such we are delighted to appoint Hammer as our exclusive distributor for the UK. Hammer also offers us a strong route to market in other European countries, such as the Nordics, Italy and Belgium, as our operations grow.”

The range extends Hammer’s InfiniBand and SMB storage offerings, and enables customers to take advantage of the benefits of the features, functionality and scalability of Enterprise class storage, combined with bespoke design and affordability.

Paul Hickingbotham, solutions manager at Hammer, said: “We are delighted to be appointed exclusive distributor of id7 solutions. The flexibility of these solutions and rich features make them very flexible and appealing to many different vertical markets.”