Hammer Storage releases scalable Storage-over-IP solutions for SMBs 4 April, 2006 By Alan Thwaits

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Factory Direct Should Not be Cheaper William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Cloud Ecosystem II: A Candid Conversation with Oracle Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cloud Ecosystem: A Candid Conversation with Rackspace Hosting Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Channel Manager Compensation William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Financial Expertise William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels

"SMBs are trying to reduce the cost of deployment," he said. "The Z-Series technology allows us to scale the solution, and the Hammer Personal Storage Manager software suite makes this is quick solution. We have backlog for this product already, and that tells us that we're on the right track."

The Z-Series, which includes desktop and 1U rackmount enclosures, incorporates Zetera Corp.'s Z-SAN Storage-over-IP (SoIP) technology, which, by using IP as the only storage fabric, eliminates the need for controllers, dedicated switches, and RAID controllers that serve as performance bottlenecks.

"Our storage architecture is one of those rare technology breakthroughs that is superior in every dimension to its predecessors," explained Zetera CEO Chuck Cortright. "Z-SAN enables Hammer network storage devices to perform better, scale more fluidly and provide superior virtualization to what is available from today's more costly NAS and SAN devices, all at a competitive price point."

Because it is based on SoIP, the Z-Series eliminates the need specialized hardware, such as fibre channel switches, host-bus adapters, TCP offload engines, and RAID controllers. Z-Series solutions aggregate for capacity up to 128 PB per volume across multiple enclosures, and for performance of 10+ GB/sec across multiple enclosures, uses distributed RAID to deliver hardware RAID functionality and the ability to extend RAID volumes across physical enclosures, and offers, via a multi-initiator file system, NAS-like file and volume sharing on a block-based device. The Hammer Z-Series is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, with Redhat Linux 4 compatibility available in the second quarter of 2006, and includes the Hammer Personal Storage Manager software suite.

"Hammer's Z-Series is the future of network storage," said Jerry Kagele, Bell Micro's executive vice president, computer products. "We have teamed with Zetera to deliver game-changing storage solutions that change the way IT managers purchase and implement network storage. Today's businesses need storage that is faster, more scalable, easier to manage and less expensive. Z-SAN is the only storage architecture that delivers on all of these factors simultaneously, allowing Hammer to be the first to provide exactly what the market demands."

The first Hammer Z-Series solutions will include the Z-Box desktop and the Z-Rack 1U rackmount solutions with capacities of up to 2 TB per device, with solutions offering greater than 9TB capacity coming later in the year.

"For the VAR, this is a Hammer-branded solution, with support from Bell Micro's supply chain, at a reasonable price point," added Nash. "Our VAR customers are all interested in the Z-Series product line."

Hammer's Z-Series solutions are available for order, with worldwide delivery scheduled in April. Prices for 1TB desktop and 1U rackmount solutions start at $1,299 (U.S.) and $3,999 (U.S.), respectively.