American Megatrends Introduces StorTrends® 3400i Dual Controller SAN

NORCROSS, Ga., April 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Editorial Summary:

• American Megatrends (AMI) introduces its new dual controller StorTrends® 3400i SAN storage appliance
• The StorTrends 3400i SAN offers incredible value, flexibility and all-inclusive enterprise features, with dual controllers in separate canisters for outstanding reliability and uptime
• The StorTrends 3400i is the first StorTrends appliance to feature the new, 64-bit version of StorTrends iTX network storage software, designed to leverage the power and reliability of the StorTrends® 3400i's dual controller design
• The StorTrends 3400i adds a number of hardware and software improvements over the previous 3U StorTrends 3200i, including Quad Core Intel® processors, Software RAID with RAID-RT™ technology, Data Archiving, Capacity Expansion to up to 7 StorTrends 3201j JBODs and much more
• The StorTrends 3400i offers a host of enterprise-class features at no additional cost, as well as support for all industry-leading virtualization suites

American Megatrends (AMI), a leader in storage and computing innovations, is pleased to introduce its new StorTrends 3400i SAN storage appliance. Extending the successful StorTrends SAN series from AMI, this new solution integrates the advanced features of StorTrends iTX network storage software in a reliable dual controller 16-bay 3U form factor.

Most notably, the StorTrends 3400i is the first StorTrends appliance to feature the new, 64-bit version of StorTrends iTX network storage software - StorTrends iTX 2.8 - which is optimized for this platform and designed to be at home in a data center or server room as front-line storage for high-volume transactions or as part of a tiered storage solution. OS-agnostic High Availability makes it a solid candidate for mission-critical data that requires "always on" availability and reliability, while the auto failover capability between its dual containers ensures that any disaster or interruption is handled smoothly.

Paresh Chatterjee, Chief Technology Officer of AMI, points out the performance gains and high reliability when using the 3400i appliance in a Disaster Recovery (DR) solution. "Customers seeking high performance along with high uptime will find the StorTrends 3400i very attractive, as the dual controllers with Quad Core Intel® processors act in an active/active configuration to increase I/O throughput," he says.

The StorTrends 3400i adds a number of hardware and software improvements over the previous 3U StorTrends 3200i IP-SAN, including:

• Dual Controller Configuration: Auto Failover/Failback in Active/Active or Active/Passive Configurations
• Software RAID with RAID-RT™ Technology: Scalability to 256 TB
• Data Archiving: Data Deduplication and Compression for Archiving Data
• Auto Tiering: Hierarchical Tiering of Data with Information Lifecycle Management
• Near-CDP with Data Snapshots: Advanced Redirect on Write (ROW) Snapshots, with support for 8,048 Snapshots
• WDS Technology: Compression, Encryption, Data Dedupe and WAN Optimization for fast replication
• Data Replication:  Replicate Data to DR (Disaster Recovery) and Remote Sites
• Vertical Capacity Expansion: Save hardware and disk costs by expansion with up to seven StorTrends 3401j JBOD Appliances, with multipathing for increased performance and reliability
• Virtualization:  Support for leading virtualization suites including VMware®, Microsoft® Hyper-V and Citrix® Xen™
• Multi-Platform Replication: Lower DR costs by replicating from the StorTrends 3400i dual controller appliance to a single controller StorTrends 2400i

However, like its siblings in the StorTrends lineup, The StorTrends 3400i keeps many of the aspects that users know and love about StorTrends, including the ManageTrends™ GUI for "single pane of glass" storage management, easy-to-use wizards for simple, fast configuration and a host of all-inclusive, enterprise-class features preinstalled on every StorTrends appliance at no added cost.

Because the StorTrends 3400i features Asynchronous Replication with WDS, it is also ideally suited for Disaster Recovery (DR) applications requiring a secondary appliance in an offsite location, as WDS provides exceptional savings in bandwidth usage and data transfer times. The Archiving with Deduplication feature adds additional layers of flexibility and functionality to its replication capabilities, and takes it beyond a mere DR role into the realm of true data warehousing.

American Megatrends President and CEO S. Shankar commented that "because the StorTrends 3400i is a dual controller storage appliance, it conserves hardware (i.e., duplication of additional disk) and integration costs and precious rack space while providing outstanding uptime. From data backup and recovery, remote or local storage, to replication and multiple site backups, the StorTrends 3400i truly does it all."

With Thin Provisioning and ILM, the JBOD expansion capability of the StorTrends 3400i can be leveraged to the maximum. The sophisticated Auto Tiering/Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) of StorTrends iTX analyzes data for its value, and stores it accordingly - in the fastest, most responsive top-tier storage for the most popular data, and automatically migrates it down the chain to less expensive, less powerful storage as it loses value. For organizations struggling to contain the cost of adding new storage and exploding volumes of data, ILM can manage data growth and accessibility, reduce cost, improve recovery, and remove risk and exposure to data loss.

Expandability is also a key attribute of the StorTrends 3400i. Along with its onboard SAS expander for JBOD expansion, the option to add two additional NIC ports or 10 Gigabit Ethernet means blazing fast network performance. With the ability to expand up to seven StorTrends 3201j JBODs, the StorTrends 3400i enables organizations to solve all of their data storage pain points with a single StorTrends appliance.

To learn more about the new StorTrends 3400i dual controller 3U IP-SAN data storage appliance and the full line of StorTrends data storage products from American Megatrends, please visit www.stortrends.com or contact a StorTrends Sales Associate at 1-800-U-BUY-AMI.

About AMI

Founded in 1985 and known worldwide for AMIBIOS®, American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) supplies state-of-the-art hardware, software, and utilities to today's high-tech manufacturers. AMI's innovative Aptio® solution for UEFI, modular AMIBIOS8, high quality StorTrends® IP Storage Area Networks (IP-SAN), Network Attached Storage (NAS), and Storage Management software solutions, along with MegaRAC® remote server management, KVM over IP, IPMI 2.0 firmware and high-density motherboards continue to garner industry acclaim and awards around the world. In line with the diversity of its technology and product line, AMI is a member of a number of industry associations and standards groups, such as the Unified EFI Forum (UEFI), the Intel® Embedded Alliance and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). Headquartered in Atlanta, AMI has locations in the U.S., China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan to better serve its customers.

For more information on AMI, and its products and services, call 1-800-U-BUY-AMI or visit www.ami.com.

SOURCE American Megatrends (AMI)