Overland Unveils Latest Snap Server NAS Appliance & OS

However, the San Diego-based storage vendor has no immediate plans to integrate that operating system with its REO operating system.

Overland Storage introduced its new Snap Server 620, the first product to be released since it acquired the Snap Server brand and assets from Adaptec in June in a cash deal worth $3.6 million, with $2.1 million to be paid up-front in cash and the remainder to be paid in 12 months.

Prior to the acquisition, Overland offered storage appliances including its Ultimas RAID arrays, REO disk-based backup arrays, NEO tape libraries and autoloaders, and data protection software.

The $3.6 million price tag was quite a deal, considering that Adaptec paid $100 million to acquire Snap Appliance, the company's original name, four years ago this month.

The Snap Server 620 includes a dual-core AMD Opteron processor, giving it 63 percent better performance than the model 520, said Steve Rogers, director of products and solutions marketing for Overland.

The new NAS appliance can be initially configured with one to four 1-Tbyte SATA hard drives, and it scales to up to 88 Tbytes of storage, Rogers said.

Along with the new appliance, Overland is also enhancing the Snap Server's GuardianOS operating system with RAID-6 and RAID-10 capability, Rogers said.

Also new is Enterprise Data Replication version 7.2, a data replication application which runs inside GuardianOS. Overland OEMs the software from Signiant, a Burlington, Mass.-based developer which partnered with EMC on the same application, he said.

GuardianOS also now includes the Linux 2.6 kernel, improved Windows file and folder access control lists, AES-256 encryption technology, and heterogeneous file sharing for Windows, Unix, Linux, and Macintosh platforms, he said.

With the acquisition of Snap Server, Overland ended up with two operating systems: GuardianOS for file-level data management, and its own REO operating system for block-level data management.

Ravi Pendekanti, vice president of marketing and sales at Overland, said that each has its own focus, and that both will continue to be important going forward.

Therefore, Pendekanti said, the vendor has no plans to integrate them into a unified storage operating system at this time. "Both have their own important roles to play," he said. "There's no plan to collapse them together."

Jeanne Wilson, president of Condor Storage, a Sedona, Ariz.-based solution provider and Overland partner, said she has become an active reseller of the Snap Server product line since its acquisition by Overland because of its simplicity.

"Snap Server has over 200,000 active customers," Wilson said. "It doesn't play in the clustered computing world. It doesn't play in the petabyte world. But it's easy to work with. I like it a lot."

For Wilson, the acquisition of the Snap Server line by Overland was key to breathing new life in the line.

"It fits so well with a backup company like Overland that has 28 years of experience," she said. "It's ideal for backing up all of a smaller customer's data, and then keeping it available. And it fits well with Overland's sales and services. And that Snap Server customer base will boost Overland's sales. That base alone is worth the price Overland paid for Snap."

The Snap Server 620 is expected to be available by the end of the month with a list price of about $7,000 with 1 Tbyte of capacity.