New Aberdeen AberNAS LX 64-Bit Linux NAS

Aberdeen LLC announced the availability of the new AberNAS LX Series storage appliance featuring a 64bit Linux-based OS. The Linux-based OS offers support from the Linux open source community, combined with enterprise-class NAS storage capacity and the flexibility of iSCSI target capability.  

Aberdeen’s current lines of NAS (AberNAS)/SAN (AberSAN) and custom (Stirling) servers are designed to support Hitachi’s 3TB Ultrastar 7K3000 drive family – the first 7,200 RPM drive family rated at 2.0 million hours MTBF, providing improved uptime and lowered TCO. Aberdeen is rolling out support for the 3TB drives and will begin shipping these storage dense servers and storage appliances in late Q1.

The new 8u NAS appliance server provides the largest amount of pure storage capacity in a single rackmount server to date (up to 198TB utilizing 3TB drives). Utilizing a dual-sided chassis, the unit features 48 front and 18 rear HDD bays for superior storage density. It also includes three external SAS ports for JBOD expansion and two SAS 6G HBA ports for XDAS (direct-attached-storage) expansion.

"Our new 64bit Linux-based AberNAS storage server provides unmatched versatility, flexibility and dependability to meet the needs of even the most demanding IT manager," said Moshe Ovadya, president and chief executive officer of Aberdeen LLC. "Many existing Aberdeen customers have already shown interest in this new server and we’re confident the Linux-based OS will make it the server of choice for an increasing variety of applications."

This new NAS appliance is designed to grow as a company’s storage needs increase. It is for growing organizations that require continuous expansion of their storage capacity. The AberNAS LX Series is designed to securely store and transfer very large files in real time.

The Linux-based NAS appliance eliminates the 16TB single array volume size limitation and can include as much as 8EB of storage in a single virtual array. The AberNAS LX Series comes standard with 6GB ECC DDR3 memory and can support up to a maximum of 192GB. It utilizes the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5600 series microprocessors, formerly code named Westmere. The Xeon processors help to deliver the lowest power consuming servers in the marketplace while providing the flexibility to virtualize different generations of Xeon server processors within the same pool.

The new 64bit Linux NAS appliance features a Web GUI with drop-down menus. With menus located both at the top and on the lower right, IT managers always have easy access for managing functionality. Web administration can occur via http or https only, or it can be disabled. The AberNAS LX Series provides added NAS-to-NAS replication features and volume snapshot support.

An all-in-one NAS plus iSCSI storage server, the new 64bit Linux NAS version of the AberNAS LX Series uses RAID optimized SATA 3Gb/s drives, providing RAID 0, 1, 5 or 6 storage arrays. Its SAS expansion port facilitates connection to several Aberdeen XDAS devices, enabling storage expansion.

The LX Series supports SCSI-3 persistent reservation, required by clustering applications, such as Microsoft Windows 2008 Server Clustering and Veritas Advance Cluster. It supports write-back/write-through cache policy for the iSCSI target volume. Just as with its predecessor, the 64bit AberNAS LX Series will be VMware certified as NFS and iSCSI storage in Q2 of 2011.

Pricing
Pricing for entry level (1u) storage appliance models begin at $2,795 and $4,795 with Hitachi’s new 3TB drives. Midrange (5u) models start at $10,995 and $20,495 with 3TB drives and enterprise (8u) models start at $23,995 and $50,995 with 3TB drives.

Availability and Support
The AberNAS LX Series featuring its 64bit Linux-based OS is currently shipping and can be custom configured with SAS or SSD drives. All Aberdeen products feature a 5-year limited warranty as well as a free 30-day trial assessment program with all of its branded servers.