Iomega, the small business and consumer division of EMC, has introduced the StorCenter Pro ix4-200r four-drive rackmount data storage system this week with iSCSI support for block storage as well as network-attached storage (NAS).
The ix4-200r is the latest product in Iomega's StorCenter NAS product line for SMBs and remote offices, a goal that sees it overlap with low-end versions of EMC's Celerra product line.
But the overlap is intentional, according to Rich Napolitano, Senior Vice-President and General Manager of EMC's ESD Multi-Protocol Products group.
"Iomega is part of our group and I was part of the original engagement [to acquire Iomega]," he told SearchStorage ANZ. "You always want some overlap because without it you have gaps."
"Iomega's products target the sub-$5000 market and Celerra and Calriion take over between $5000 and $250,000. Those are the sweet spots in EMC's market segmentation."
The ix4-200r has a four-drive bay and scales to 2 TB with four 500 GB SATA drives, or 4 TB with 1 TB drives. Both systems run on EMC's LifeLine operating system.
Jonathan Huberman, Iomega's CEO, and president of EMC's consumer and small business products division, said the StorCenter product line was developed so SMBs and remote offices can install and operate enterprise-level storage devices without advance training. "If the small office doesn't have an IT staff, it can use our tools without any specialized training or knowledge," Huberman said.
The 19-inch, 1U rackmount system has a 3.2 GHz Intel Celeron processor, 1 GB system memory, 1 Gigabit Ethernet support, and three external USB ports to attach additional devices and extra storage capacity. Iomega upgraded the LifeLine OS with this release to include iSCSI block-level access.
"Lifeline brings enterprise-level applications to small businesses," said Marc Tanguay, general manager of Iomega's network products.
Tanguay also said the ix4-200r can run NAS and iSCSI access at the same time. "Even a small business user can make NAS available with a shared storage pool, use purpose-built targets for iSCSI, and have that all work at the same time," Tanguay said.
