Provides Single Source for Rugged IT Equipment
Washington, DC. March 10, 2009. At the FOSE trade show at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, March 10-12, 2009, Winchester Systems Inc., a leading data storage solutions provider, today announced a major new generation of COTS rugged data storage and servers. The units will be shown in booth 1525.
Winchester Systems introduced three rugged expandable (RX) lines of RAID data storage systems and a rugged Intel-based server:
FlashDisk RX-1300 Series – 1U high, 12-drive shelves - 2.5” & 3.5” disks expandable to 65.7 TB
FlashDisk RX-2300 Series – 2U high, 12-drive shelves – 3.5” disks expandable to 64 TB
FlashDisk RX-3400 Series – 3U high, 16-drive shelves – 3.5” disks expandable to 80 TB
FlashServer RS-1000 Series – 1U high shelf – up to 2 Xeon processors – 8 cores
“Customers find that they need field deployable storage and servers that exceed standard commercial capabilities but not full military rugged specifications or prices,” explained Mr. Joel Leider, the company’s chief executive officer. “Our rugged storage and servers provide extra security and protection against dust, rain, shock and vibration at COTS prices which are about half of full military standard costs,” he added.
The US Army and certain military units of other countries approved these units for field use. They are deployed in harsh environments worldwide in HUMVEE and other mobile communications trailers as well as stationary shelters. The front door is crafted of sturdy milled aluminum that provides rigidity and structural integrity. It also houses a heavy-duty dust filter to constrict particle flow and provide a moisture shield to protect internal components. The LCD front panel is easily viewed by field personnel, is EMI protected and uses long life pushbuttons. The door features a dust and raindrop seal. Optionally, the US Army mounts the unit to a chassis using five bolts secured, in a triangulated pattern for strength, to a rugged heavy-duty base plate.
The FlashDisk RX Series offers single and redundant controllers and supports SAS 4x wide, 1 Gb Ethernet and 4 Gb Fibre Channel hosts. FlashDisk RX disk arrays feature RAID 6 dual parity for the utmost in data protection for valuable data. Even if two disk drives fail or become unreadable, the data will remain intact. This RAID 6 protection is invaluable for protecting irreplaceable or irreproducible data – particularly for field use where hardware is vulnerable. According to the company’s white paper, “Enterprise RAID 6,” RAID 6 dual parity offers 500 to 30,000 times longer MTDL (Mean Time To Data Loss) than RAID 5. An informative 6-minute presentation “RAID 6 Essentials” is also available.
The companion rugged FlashServer is designed to complement the FlashDisk storage and provide a single source for both storage and servers. This simplifies the task of matching rugged servers with rugged storage and ensuring that the two work together – eliminating potential finger-pointing problems – and a great benefit to program managers. FlashServer supports up to 8 Xeon processors, a 1,333 MHz system bus, up to 32 GB SDRAM and up to 160 TB of storage.
FlashDisk prices start at under $12,000 and FlashServer prices start at under $18,000 plus storage. Quantity discounts are available. These rugged systems are built to order and delivery is 4-8 weeks ARO.
-30-
About Winchester Systems Inc.
Winchester Systems provides network-attached storage, direct-attached storage, tiered-storage, storage area network and enterprise data storage solutions for commercial, industrial, healthcare, education, government and military applications. These solutions include high performance iSCSI, SAS, SCSI, SATA and Fibre Channel RAID disk arrays; tape backup devices and other high performance commercial and military grade data storage for mid-range servers including Windows, Windows Clusters, Linux, Linux Clusters, and UNIX. For more information visit Winchester Systems on the web at www.winsys.com.
