Nexsan Launches High-Performance SAS Storage Array

The company's new SASBeast packs up to 42 Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives for a maximum capacity of 18.9 Tbytes in a 4U rack-mount enclosure.

The new array targets customers looking to handle both high-performance primary applications such as Microsoft Exchange as well as high-capacity secondary storage applications such as disk-to-disk backups with a single product, said Bob Woolery, senior vice president of marketing at Nexsan.

The SASBeast allows users to mix and match any combination of SAS and SATA hard drives.

It features a dual storage controller configuration with four hardware RAID engines and the ability to connect simultaneously to both Fibre Channel and iSCSI networks, Woolery said. Technology in the SASBeast also mitigates the impact of the vibration from so many closely-packed hard drives, he said.

To cut power consumption, it also includes Nexsan's AutoMAID technology. AutoMAID cuts up to 60 percent of the array's power consumption by spinning down those disks that are idle for a certain user-programmable amount of time.

AutoMAID can be used to set the drives to spin down to one of three levels, with energy savings ranging from 20 percent when set at a sub-second recovery time to 60 percent when set to recover within 30 seconds.

Nexsan has put together a high-performance, high-density array with both SAS and SATA storage and Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity in one affordable package, said Ben Chademarti, CTO of Boost Systems, a solution provider and long-term Nexsan partner.

Customers like the density of the SASBeast and the energy savings from AutoMAID, Chademarti said. "It's a good product for high-transactional, high operations-per-second applications like databases, and yet it's easy to tier the storage according to customer requirements," he said.

The SASBeast lists for $38,800 with 14 300-Gbyte SAS hard drives. A fully-configured unit costs as low as $4,200 per Tbyte, Woolery said.

The SASBeast is only available through Nexsan's solution provider channel.