EqualLogic Introduces High-Capacity PS300e Storage Array
Expanded PS series family delivers ideal storage platform for Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2006, providing business continuity for the midrange market
New York City, September 27, 2005 -- EqualLogic®, Inc., a leading provider of complete, intelligent iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today introduced the PS300E, the first member of the PS Series family to offer high-capacity, 500-gigabyte SATA II drives. In addition, EqualLogic announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft to support Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006. The expanded PS Series family now delivers a scalable storage platform that enhances DPM backup services with disaster recovery (DR) capabilities for end-to-end data protection.
The PS300E is the highest-capacity member of the PS Series family, offering seven (7) terabytes of raw storage capacity with 500-gigabyte SATA II drives. In addition to their higher capacity, the new SATA II drives offer 3 Gb/second bus speed and native command queuing (NCQ) for faster data retrieval. Because of its scalability, integration with Microsoft Windows storage management features and built-in disaster recovery capabilities, the PS Series family of storage arrays -- including the new PS300E -- is an ideal storage platform for DPM. EqualLogic has worked closely with Microsoft to ensure full integration of the PS Series and Data Protection Manager 2006 within Windows environments. The PS Series provides a seamlessly scalable SAN for DPM backup services while ensuring full DR capability with its built-in auto-replication to a remote site.
“The PS300E and our support of Data Protection Manager demonstrates how EqualLogic is leading the field in technology integration to ensure that our customers have access to the greatest capacity, the highest performance and the richest feature set available,” said John Joseph, vice president of marketing for EqualLogic. “Our ongoing integration with Microsoft storage initiatives gives our broad base of Microsoft customers and channel partners confidence in our support of Windows-based storage management and data protection.”
EqualLogic customer Schenck Business Solutions deployed Data Protection Manager into its enterprise, which runs on Windows servers that boot directly from a PS Series SAN. “With EqualLogic’s PS Series SAN platform, we have improved our data center infrastructure by centralizing storage, gained management efficiencies with boot-from-SAN servers, and are able to add another layer of protection via snapshots and replication,” said Jim Tarala, chief information officer of Schenck Business Solutions. “With DPM we have extended the reach of our backup processes, eliminated tape and enabled instant data recovery, while replication of the central SAN to a remote site for disaster recovery completes our end-to-end data protection.”
“Comprehensive data protection traditionally has been the domain of larger enterprises that have the resources and expertise to utilize more costly and complex storage and backup-and-recovery solutions,” said Robert Gray, research vice president at IDC. “EqualLogic and Microsoft are now making data protection available to small and medium-size companies by offering a less expensive solution with simplified, integrated backup-and-recovery for Windows environments.”
EqualLogic’s PS Series family is fully compatible with Microsoft Windows platforms and is designed to integrate with Windows features such as Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), Multi-Path Input/Output (MPIO) and Virtual Disk Services (VDS). EqualLogic SANs have been deployed in hundreds of Microsoft customer sites using the latest Windows storage platform. EqualLogic is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and is in the process of certifying full compatibility with the Windows Simple SAN program.
“EqualLogic and Microsoft understand the need for simplicity and lower operational costs in storage today,” said Ben Matheson, group product manager of the Windows Enterprise Management Division at Microsoft Corp. “The automation, scalability and built-in DR capabilities of the PS Series family make it an ideal storage platform for Data Protection Manager, which is designed to simplify backup-and-recovery in Windows environments.”
EqualLogic's award-winning and data-center-proven PS Series is the only native iSCSI SAN solution to offer a comprehensive and fully integrated standard feature set at no additional cost. Each PS Series storage array comes with fully redundant fault-tolerant hardware and includes full-featured automatic storage-management software in a self-contained chassis. Multiple arrays can be combined to form a scalable enterprise storage grid of more than 100 terabytes.
About EqualLogic
EqualLogic®, Inc. is a leading provider of intelligent, enterprise-class IP storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses -- from Fortune 100 to small and mid-size organizations -- to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage. For more information, please visit http://www.equallogic.com.
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EqualLogic is a registered trademark of EqualLogic, Inc. Other marks belong to their respective owners.