Winchester Systems Adds Ruggedized, Dual-Redundant NAS

Winchester Systems Inc. announced the availability of its COTS-Rugged FlashNAS ZFS RZ-Series NAS systems.

The products are designed to store and protect data in harsh C5ISR operating environments; tolerating levels of dust, moisture, shock and vibration not possible with standard commercial units – for less than ultra-ruggedized systems. Numerous major U.S. federal/military programs currently depend on these products to be easy to deploy, manage and provide high fault tolerance in theater and data centers alike.

The FlashNAS ZFS RZ-2U12 is a 2U high, ruggedized rackmount base unit that holds up to twelve 3.5-inch magnetic disk drives or SSDs, and supports up to nine 12-drive expansion shelves. The 3U-high FlashNAS ZFS RZ-3U16 holds up to 16 drives in the ruggedized base unit, and can scale to 240 drives via expansion shelves – providing up to 1.5PB of storage capacity.

Sporting controllers, power supplies and fans that are modular, redundant and hot swappable, the hardware is built for continuous availability and long-term robust durability. The front door is crafted of 3/4-inch milled aluminum to provide rigidity, structural integrity and prevent flying-object hazards. It also contains a dust/raindrop seal and a heavy-duty filter to trap dust particles and provide a moisture shield to protect internal components. An optional 1U mounting tray enables front access to normally rear-accessed components/connectors, saving three feet behind the storage unit and increasing structural integrity.

In addition to simultaneous block and file access via CIFS, NFS, AFP and iSCSI protocols over 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet, the systems can also serve disk blocks via 16Gb FC. Each system comes with eight embedded 1GbE ports (four per controller). Four 1GbE, two 10GbE or two 16Gb FC ports can be added to each controller using a daughter-card module that plugs onto the controller motherboard. This modular design makes it easy to tailor each system to suit specific mission requirements. It also enables field upgrades: a system initially deployed with 1GbE ports, for example, can later be upgraded in-theater to 10GbE or 16Gb FC (FC) when faster connectivity is needed.

Integrated with this hardware platform, the ZFS file system provides end-to-end error detection and correction, self-healing, and SSD optimization features for unsurpassed protection of data integrity throughout. Building on this foundation, these systems adds advanced functions such as storage-pool mirroring and remote replication.

The result is a ruggedized, integrated NAS system with ‘Top-Tier’ functional capabilities:

Data Sharing across Windows, UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X
Unified Security Model
Online-Expandable RAID-0/1/5/6/50/60 storage pools with hot spares
End-to-end data error detection and self-healing
Storage-pool mirroring across multiple FlashNAS ZFS RZ systems
I/O acceleration using SSDs
Unlimited snapshots
Asynchronous remote replication
In-line, block-level compression
Thin provisioning
WORM protected directories
Support for ICAP-based anti-virus scanning

All of these capabilities are integrated into a single COTS-Rugged NAS system with a web-based management interface. There are no hidden, or ‘extra’ costs to enable specific features. All hardware and software functionality is included in the base system price.

This is for deployable video surveillance and playback, mobile ground stations, and multi-application mission-planning and analysis systems. Other ruggedized products from the company include COTS-Rugged servers, COTS-Rugged RAID systems; and Ultra-Ruggedized removable-canister RAID and Ultra-Ruggedized portable server systems that comply with MIL-STD-810G, MIL-STD-901D, MIL-STD-461E, etc. Custom design and integration services are available to meet challenging program-level requirements where standard COTS products just will not suffice.

The company also offers storage-infrastructure consulting, on-site installation and service spares, and 24×7 product service and support worldwide.