ABERDEEN PRESS RELEASE

Enterprise SAN in a Box:
Aberdeen Rolls out 128TB ZFS-based SAN Appliance

Press Release Oct 12, 2010
Enterprise SAN in a Box:
Aberdeen Rolls out 128TB ZFS-based SAN Appliance

Santa Fe Springs, California, October 12, 2010: Server and storage manufacturer, Aberdeen LLC, rolls out the highest density storage server to date. The 128TB AberSAN Z80 delivers enterprise SAN unified storage for everyone. It will be unveiled at the 2010 Content & Communications World Conference & Exposition in New York City on October 12th. This high density, 8U storage server supports up to 64 hot-swap disk drives with boundless scalability options, resulting in virtually an unlimited storage capacity.

Aberdeen’s AberSAN Z-Series, scalable storage platform brings the simplicity of network attached storage (NAS) to the SAN environment by utilizing the innovative ZFS file system. Continuing the trend toward high density servers without capacity limitations, the AberSAN Z80 demonstrates a panache for delivering enterprise class features at entry level pricing, delivering the best bang for the buck.

"How can Aberdeen create a server with 64 drive bays? I’ve heard this on countless occasions,” states Jack Tateel, Executive VP for Aberdeen. “Our customers have ever expanding storage needs and are downright giddy to hear that Aberdeen is continuing to increase storage capacity to meet their ever expanding storage requirements.”

The unified storage AberSAN Z-Series touts unlimited storage with the ability to scale well beyond 1PB (petabyte) of storage capacity, managed in one single Z-RAID array. The added capacities can be achieved via cascading additional physical devices via XDAS JBOD expansion boxes. Future growth is ensured through optional 10Gbit Ethernet and 8Gbit Fibre channel connectivity, to help companies manage large collections of infrastructure storage and networking as a seamless, flexible and dynamic cloud storage environment.

"In conjunction with NexentaStor, the AberSAN Z-Series is positioned to deliver a dynamic unified enterprise storage appliance, with an impressive native capacity," stated Jason Yoho, vice president of business development for Nexenta. "The 128TB AberSAN Z80 is a certified NexentaStor solution which takes advantage of the NexentaStor feature set including in-line de-duplication, unlimited snap-shots, end to end data integrity, and unlimited storage scalability to well beyond 1 petabyte."

Featuring the high performance of the ZFS files system powered by NexentaStor, the AberSAN Z-Series offers; in-line deduplication, thin provisioning, data mirroring, unlimited snapshots, WAN optimized IP replication and high-availability clustering. By consolidating the elements of a shared storage environment into a single high-density server, the Aberdeen AberSAN Z80 decreases operating costs by minimizing consumption of physical storage resources and provides a cost-efficient solution for delivering scalable storage.

This expandable 64-bay, 8U server is qualified as a VMware Ready Certified SAN appliance and is prominently featured throughout Aberdeen’s product matrix, including; the aforementioned AberSAN - Storage Area Networks unified appliance, the Linux and Windows based AberNAS - Network Attached Storage, and the Stirling series of customizable storage servers. A well equipped 128TB AberSAN Z80 scalable appliance with dual Intel Xeon processors can be configured at an incredibly low cost per terabyte of $520, while the entry point 8TB AberSAN Z20 scalable appliance starts at a budget friendly sub-$9,000 MSRP.

This latest announcement comes in a series of innovations undertaken by Aberdeen to bring enterprise class unified storage to the masses, thus helping to improve storage efficiency and performance, while stifling rising deployment costs found commonly with other enterprise SAN solutions. With 96TB units already implemented by select qualified customers, the AberSAN Z80 is poised to leverage its uncompromising competitive advantage exemplified by Aberdeen's continued credo to embrace density-efficient storage servers coupled with dynamic, simple to use storage management tools.