LAKE FOREST and MILPITAS, Calif. – Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) and Promise Technology today announced that Western Digital's enterprise-class Serial ATA (SATA) WD Raptor hard drive and Promise's families of SATA150™ host bus adapters and FastTrak® SATA RAID controllers have been verified compatible by both companies. The products are key ingredients in Enterprise SATA (ESATA) RAID workstations, servers and storage systems running configurations such as RAID 0, 1 and 0+1, and are currently available for systems builders and storage providers.
To simplify the integration of Serial ATA servers and storage systems, the two companies are teaming to offer systems builders bundled WD Raptor hard drives and selected FastTrak controller cards. The bundle is an example of the quickly growing component infrastructure available to systems builders for the development of cost-effective, enterprise-class SATA storage systems for their customers – many of which are increasingly watchful of IT costs.
Available now through the companies' combined distribution network, the bundle includes four of Western Digital's enterprise-class, 10,000-RPM, SATA WD Raptor hard drives and a Promise FastTrak S150 TX4 four-port controller card that supports RAID 0 for performance, RAID 1 for data protection and RAID 0+1 for performance and data protection.
"Many storage component manufacturers are aggressively developing and marketing ESATA products to satisfy pent up demand for a cost-effective alternative to SCSI," said Richard E. Rutledge, vice president of marketing for Western Digital. "Promise introduced the world to ATA RAID, and has a long-standing reputation in the distribution channel for quality, performance and addressing cost versus performance issues with an extensive ATA-based product line. The company's participation in the ESATA market underscores the momentum SATA is developing in the enterprise and is a significant benefit to systems builders."
The WD Raptor hard drive is the first SATA product available that is designed for the 24x7, high performance demands of enterprise applications, having specifications such as 1.2 million hours MTBF, 10,000 RPM, 5.2 milliseconds (ms) average seek time and a five-year warranty. It offers systems builders and storage providers a primary storage hard drive at substantially less cost than comparable SCSI products.
"Serial ATA is a significant driver in today's distribution channel – bringing down the cost of storage, meeting performance requirements – and literally transforming the approach to designing enterprise storage solutions," said Sam Sirisena, vice president of sales and marketing worldwide, Promise Technology. "Systems builders have been demanding a highly reliable and high-performance ATA hard drive as part of this evolution – and the WD Raptor hits the mark. WD Raptor delivers a new level of value for enterprise-class hard drive reliability and performance, and combined with a Promise FastTrak SATA RAID controller card, results in a compelling component package for systems builders."
From Promise's FastTrak S150 TX2plus and TX4 SATA RAID controller cards to the SATA150 TX2plus and TX4 SATA adapters, Promise provides compatibility-certified, high-performance SATA solutions for up to four drives. With Promise's rich feature set and proven performance, users can realize the benefits of server-class storage at a fraction of the cost of SCSI.
__________________________
Source:
HardwareZone
