2U 2.5-Inch SAS RAIDs From Dot Hill

Dot Hill Systems Corp. announced general availability of the Dot Hill 2522, the industry’s first two-rack-unit (2U), 24-drive high-performance, high-density, external RAID storage system that leverages small form factor (2.5-inch) hard disk drives with SAS host connectivity.

These high performance direct attached storage systems, which support SAS, SATA and solid state disks (SSD), are ideal for OEMs and storage integrators implementing blade server systems in IT or telco environments where high-speed and high-density, local storage is required. With a host interface speed of 12Gbps and short chassis depth, the new Dot Hill 2522 SAS disk arrays are a natural upgrade for older parallel SCSI deployments and are ideal for high density video streaming applications such as video-on-demand as well as high definition imaging, video non-linear editing and post production.

"The Dot Hill 2522 combines the benefits of 2.5-inch drives and Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) host computer connectivity to deliver a powerful solution that can meet the needs of a wide variety of customer applications," said Andy Mills, vice president of marketing and business development, Dot Hill Systems. "Users can now take advantage of the increasing number of external SAS host connections being integrated into next-generation servers and workstations to provide a highly effective storage expansion solution."

"The 2522 is the latest example of Dot Hill’s time-to-market leadership in storage innovation," Mills continued. "Within two years we expect more than half of RAID drives to be 2.5-inch, given that servers have already begun to make the transition. By being first to market earlier this year with the first 2U Fibre Channel – and now the first SAS – RAID-based storage systems using this game-changing form factor, we continue to provide our customers with greater host I/O and disk form-factor choices."

Dot Hill 2522 and 2722 2.5-inch RAID Storage Systems
The 2722 Fibre Channel (4Gb FC) and 2522 Serial Attached SCSI (3Gb SAS) arrays feature intelligent, fully redundant enterprise-class controllers, with optional support for Dot Hill’s AssuredSnap snapshot and AssuredCopy volume copy data protection software modules. In addition, a 2U, 24-bay 2122 SAS JBOD unit is available to facilitate expansion of the 2722 or 2522 arrays.

Featuring a variety of 2.5-inch drive options, these systems will support a maximum of 96 SAS drives for a total capacity of 28.8 terabytes based on the newest 300GB SAS drives. An existing Dot Hill 2U, 12-drive 3.5-inch SAS expansion chassis with SAS, SATA, or SSD drives can also be intermixed with the 2722 and 2522 arrays to accommodate both the performance and capacity requirements of demanding applications within the same storage pool or in tiered storage deployments, supporting configurations of up to 79.2 terabytes.

Using SAS drives, both products have measured performance of up to 230,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS), a 130 percent performance increase as compared to prior generation 2U, 3.5-inch equivalent capacities. With the use of 80 percent-plus efficient power supplies, the new arrays represent as much as a 34 percent power savings over 2U, 12-drive arrays of equivalent 3.5-inch spindle counts, greatly enhancing the green aspects of the design.

Available for purchase now, the 2522 populated with 146 gigabyte 10,000 RPM drives has an expected street price starting at $16,000.