Seagate Technology recently announced two rackmount NAS devices aimed at business collaboration and data protection.
Seagate Technology recently announced two new NAS devices in 4-bay and 8-bay 1U rackmount form factors. Aimed at business collaboration and data protection, the Seagate Business Storage devices offer centralized backup remote access to data for small- and medium-sized businesses. The devices range in capacity from 4 TB to 32 TB.
According to Seagate, the units support multiple simultaneous connections and enable employees to easily back up and share files. The network-attached storage (NAS) devices are designed to back up Windows and Mac computers to a single centralized location, and are compatible with backup software for Windows PCs, as well as Apple's Time Machine. The devices also feature the new Seagate NAS OS, which Seagate said has been redesigned for better performance and a new Web-based management dashboard.
Seagate said the 8-bay NAS is aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with up to 250 employees, and features an Intel 2.3 GHz dual-core processor. The device has slots for eight 3.5-inch Enterprise Capacity (formerly Constellation ES.3) hot-swappable drives, as well as redundant power supplies and dual Gigabit Ethernet connections.
The company said the 4-bay device is aimed at SMBs with up to 100 employees, and offers a 2.13 GHz dual-core Intel Atom processor and 2 GB of RAM. The NAS devices also offer support for iSCSI to support virtualized environments.
Remote access/file sharing is enabled by the integrated Wuala cloud service and applications for PC and Mac, as well as smartphones and tablets. The app synchronizes and encrypts files for access and security.
"In the SMB, particularly at the lower end -- as well as ROBO [remote office/branch office] and the high-end of SOHO [small office/home office] -- converged NAS solutions like these are trending both in terms of industry adoption and deployment," said Greg Schulz of Stillwater, Minn.-based Server and StorageIO. "In fact, I recently added a converged NAS-type solution for use as a backup target from other systems, as well as for primary storage across both virtual and physical servers. I also use it as a staging area for moving things off-site to my cloud provider."
The 8-bay 1U rackmount will be available in October with pricing beginning at $2999.99 for the 8 TB model and up to $5999.99 for the 32 TB model. The 4-bay model will be available "later this quarter" with pricing beginning at $1299.99 for the 4 TB device and $2499.99 for the 16 TB device.