Sans Digital 3U 16-Bay AccuRAIDs

Sans Digital is introducing its 3U 16-bay dual-channel single controller (upgradable) and quad-channel redundant controller SAS or Fibre Channel solutions.

Supporting 6G SAS or 6G SATA hard drives, the AccuRAID AR316X6 (single, upgradable to redundant controllers) and AR316X6R (built-in redundant controllers) come with standard SFF-8088 6G SAS interfaces, while AR316F8 (single upgradable to redundant controllers) and AR316F8R (built-in redundant controllers) come with 8Gbps Fibre Channel interfaces.

AR316X6 and AR316F8’s design allows customers to start with a single controller, offering dual channel SAS or dual channel 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports and upgrade to redundant controller at a later time. The AR316X6 and AR316F8 support both 6G SAS and 6G SATA hard drives and are capable of expanding their capacity by adding up to 6 more JBOD expansion units, offering up to a total of 112 drives or 336TB raw capacity in a single setup. AccuRAID AR316X6 and AR316F8 provide hardware RAID, including level 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60 RAID protection against potential hard drives failures.

Each controller provides two channels of SAS or Fibre Channel support, offering high bandwidth interface with fast data transfer rate along with support for clustering application storage fail-over. Both the AR316X6 and AR316F8 offer a peace of mind due to their high quality constructions and redundancy features (dual controllers, power supplies, and cooling fans).

Designed to be used in a Fibre SAN, the Sans Digital AR316F8 is suitable for high-definition video editing in a collaborative effort video editing environment. The Sans Digital AR316F8 provides dual 4Gbps Fibre Channel interface (AR316F8) while the AR316F8R support 4 x 8Gbps Fibre channel interface with dual controllers. Fibre Channel not only provides the benefits of the DAS, it also work as the centralized storage for multiple servers in a Fibre SAN environment and is used in virtualization environments such as VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XGenServer for high-availability server computing and disaster recovery. The Sans Digital AR316X6 allows IT Administrator to provide fast data transfer rate between the host servers and its external RAID protected data storage system as 6G SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) interface is designed to provide fast data transfer speed between its computer host and its direct attached storage.

"AccuRAID AR316X6 and AR316F8 are versatile RAID storage products that could be used in a large variety of data storage applications," said Stanley Chan, Director of Business Development of Sans Digital. "Customers could now enjoy the industrial leading performance benefits and versatility of SAS and Fibre Channel products with RAID protection, plus the ability to upgrade from single controller to dual controllers with additional data expansion capability."

AR316X6 and AR316F8 are available now for $7,795 and $8,345 respectively. AR316X6R and AR316F8R will be available mid-April.

Note: The use of SATA HDD drive with dual-controller storage model requires Qmux board for each HDD used.