Exar Unveils Hifn Data Reduction and Protection Cards

Hifn, recently acquired by Exar Corporation, announced the new Express DR 1600 series of advanced data reduction and protection cards designed to address the needs of the next-generation data center. The new Express DR 1600 series provides unprecedented performance, security, end-to-end data protection, and advanced data reduction capabilities for primary and secondary Storage Capacity Optimization (SCO).

Today’s IT administrators are faced with the difficult task of managing the exponential growth in data and supporting a demanding business environment – specifically, no down time, information protection, operational efficiency, and agility. With the introduction of the Express DR 1600 series cards, Hifn is unveiling its new Unified API Software (UAS) which provides complete software failover capabilities and a superior level of end-to-end data protection. These cards have built-in functionality to detect, isolate and prevent the propagation of corrupted data caused by silent disk errors, application interactions and memory errors within a system. This makes it easier for IT administrators to locate and correct the problem rather than dealing with corrupted data that has been spread company-wide. The new UAS architecture also simplifies system integration for OEMs and shortens time to market.

"Despite the downturn in the economy, storage continues to grow at nearly 50% CAGR, and as such optimization and protection of data becomes paramount," said Benjamin S. Woo, vice president, enterprise storage systems at IDC. "The focus on improving performance, availability and data optimization of both primary and secondary storage with this new generation of DR cards reflects Hifn’s commitment to maximizing the value of storage solutions."

The DR 1600 series provides complete hardware offload of security, hashing and data compression functions so that valuable CPU resources can be utilized to improve overall system performance. The hash acceleration for deduplication combined with the data compression capabilities can reduce storage capacity requirements by 10:1 or more resulting in significant cost savings. Furthermore, with over 60% power reduction than previous generations these new cards provide industry-leading performance per watt.

"In today’s business climate, it is becoming increasingly difficult for IT departments to reduce costs while supporting their growing corporate demands," said Zack Mihalis, senior director, product marketing at Exar. "The DR 1600 Series offers IT administrators the ability to reduce costs through storage capacity optimization and ensure high availability through our enhanced failover and data protection features."

About the DR 1600 Series
The DR 1600 Series includes six different models to address the price-performance requirements for a broad set of applications and market segments, including Network Attached Storage (NAS), Direct Attached Storage (DAS), Storage Area Networks (SANs), replication, and backup. The Express DR 1600 cards provide data compression, encryption, and hash acceleration for data deduplication, performance up to 1,800 MB/sec and the ability to cost-effectively scale performance by adding additional cards. All DR 1600 products utilize the same UAS and support Windows and Linux.

Pricing and Availability
OEM pricing for the Hifn Express DR 1600 Series advanced data reduction and protection cards start at:

Compression Only

• DR 1600 (300 MB/sec): $500
• DR 1610 (900 MB/sec): $1000
• DR 1620 (1,800 MB/sec): $1500

Compression, Encryption and Hash Acceleration:

• DR 1605 (300 MB/sec): $750
• DR 1615 (900 MB/sec): $1400
• DR 1625 (1,800 MB/sec): $2000

Evaluation products are available now with general availability in July.