Iomega To Debut Two NAS Servers, New Enterprise-Focused Channel Strategy

The company, better known for its removable storage products and entry-level NAS appliances, plans to show two new enterprise-class NAS devices at StorageNetworking World here this week.

The two servers are built around dual 2.4GHz Intel Xeon processors running under Microsoft Windows Powered OS 2.01 and feature up to eight hot-swappable IDE hard drives two redundant hot-swappable power supplies, and four hot-swappable fans.

The P800m comes with dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and a user capacity of up to 960 Gbytes. The P850m includes one Gigabit Ethernet interface, a Gigabit Ethernet TCP/IP offload engine for improved performance and usable capacity of up to 1,440 Gbytes. Both are expected to ship April 28.

The P800m and P850m are part of the company's strategy to move into higher-end storage markets, said Wayne Arvidson, director of network storage marketing at Iomega.

The NAS appliances are being targeted at a new class of premier or authorized solution providers, said Arvidson. The company hopes to sign about 120 such solution providers in the United States and has already signed up 23, he said.

At the same time, Iomega is targeting its existing line of non-hot-swap NAS appliances at catalog resellers while moving toward direct relationships with solution providers on its hot-swap NAS line, Arvidson said.

Sometime in April or May, Iomega plans to introduce new low-end NAS appliances with two and three drives, refresh its four-drive NAS line and unveil a tape autoloader with six or 12 tape slots specifically to connect to its NAS appliances, said Arvidson. "We are looking to establish a lead in the backup and archiving area," he said. "We are looking to connect four to five servers on the front of our NAS, and a tape device on the back."

Next quarter, Iomega plans to introduce technology aimed at NAS aggregation and will introduce new NAS appliances based on Microsoft's Server Appliance Kit 3.0, which is itself based on Windows Server 2003, Arvidson said.

By year-end, the company also expects to introduce Serial ATA-based storage devices and enhanced management tools, he said.