Overland Storage - SnapSan S1000, iSCSI, Fibre Channel or SAS Connectivity

Overland Storage expanded its iSCSI storage area network (SAN) portfolio for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) today with the SnapSAN S1000 array, a 2U 12-drive modular array that can scale from 1.2 TB to 120 TB with disk expansions. The SnapSAN S1000 is smaller than the SnapSAN 2000 that Overland brought out in February, but the new system includes a dual controller option for high availability.

The SnapSAN 1000's dual controllers support active-active failover and the devices have redundant, hot-swappable components. It also has supports 10 Gigabit Etherent (10 GbE) iSCSI and either SAS, SATA or Fibre Channel drives, according to Overland solutions marketing manager Joe Disher. It has snapshot capability and automatic disk spin down. The SnapSAN 1000 supports software replication, and Disher said Overland plans array-based replication down the road.

"We are working on getting replication for the S1000 array," he said. "It's really a time to market issue. We had many customers that wanted an encapsulated solution. But we are working on (integrated) replication as well."

Like the SnapSAN 2000, the SnapSAN 1000 is based on the Snap OS Overland acquired when it purchased the Snap Server NAS platform from Adaptec Inc. in 2008. The Snap storage platform is a key piece of Overland's strategy to branch out from its legacy tape business. Last week, Overland acquired the assets of clustered file system startup Maxiscale to build a Snap scale-out NAS system.

"The fact that the new product has dual controllers opens up the addressable market base," said Terri McClure, senior analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. "It has the same size chassis as the SnapSAN S2000 but it has two controllers. This is a nice fit for small- to medium-sized businesses that wants high availability on one site."

Overland claims the array can perform at 900 MBps and 200,000 IOPS with a Gigabit Ethernet interface, and 1,300 MBps and 220,000 IOPS at 10GbE.

Pricing for the SnapSAN S1000 starts at $6,895 for a 4 TB iSCSI array. The SnapDisk E1000 expansion unit is available at a starting price of $4,195 without drive