Native Avamar support in the ix12-300r? That's new!

Chocolate and Peanut Butter

EMC’s Avamar backup product deserves much more press than it gets. Global deduplication is the secret sauce, allowing high efficiency for backups, both in terms of capacity and bandwidth usage. This means that Avamar is very well-suited for small business and remote office use.

Iomega’s new ix12 is similarly well-suited in this environment. It includes flexible storage allocation, both iSCSI SAN and NAS, and is bursting with features, from replication to webcam support. The 12-drive array fits perfectly into the small-business and remote-office markets with a low $5k-$10k price tag.

Avamar’s backup deduplication technology and Iomega’s “just right” small-business storage is a real “chocolate-and-peanut butter” combination. Both target the same markets and mixing them together is even better than selling them apart. Integrated Avamar client support makes the ix12 even more compelling, and will likely drive Avamar sales as well.

I talked to the Iomega execs at EMC World and they confirmed that this support will be included in the shipping ix12 software but was not yet supported by the company. They expect Avamar qualification to come later in the year, but I suspect that customer interest could accelerate this timetable. If you are interested in the combination, let Iomega and Avamar know!

ix12 Impressions

My release-day review of the ix12-300r was based on press materials and a briefing, but getting a hands-on look at the device revealed details beyond the Avamar support. I was quite pleased by the build quality of the array: It is solidly constructed and the connectors, fans, and power supplies looked to be of high quality. The designers seem to have paid attention to cooling and airflow, important in a box containing 12 spinning hard disk drives. The dual power supplies are hot-swappable and seemed fairly robust as well.

I also spotted two empty PCI Express slots at the rear of the ix12. One wonders what use Iomega will put these to. One can imagine adding additional gigabit or 10 gigabit Ethernet controllers, but solid-state storage (SSD) would be much more interesting. The ix12′s LifeLink software has been enhanced fore more-flexible RAID configuration; I wonder if it also includes the ability to tier storage to SSD. A mini array with EMC’s FAST technology would be compelling, but the use of SSD as a cache (FAST Cache?) might be simpler to implement.

Clearly, the ix12-300r is much more than a SATA-expanded ix4-200r. Iomega is adding real valuable business features to the system and moving it ever closer to the EMC and Dell CLARiiON products. Yet the price is still well below those systems. Chocolate and peanut butter, anyone?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | EMC Mixes Avamar Into Iomega ix12-300r
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Iomega's new ix12-300d brings EMC's SOHO company into the data center

EMC’s Iomega unit today released the 12-drive rack-mount storage product we have all been waiting for. It was never a question of whether Iomega could produce such a beast: The EMC LifeLine software and Iomega hardware were definitely up for it. The question was always if EMC would direct Iomega to fill the gaping hole in their storage lineup between the 4-drive ix4-200r and the entry-business AX4 arrays. The new ix12-300r packs 12 drive bays, scaling from 4 TB all the way to 24 TB, and backs it with quad gigabit iSCSI, redundant power, and everything else the small data center needs.

Stepping Up

The ix12 is a big step up. Although they sold multi-drive RAID systems even before the EMC acquisition, this new device is unlike anything we’ve seen before from Iomega. This slim (2U) chassis is all drives up front, with 12 hot-swap slots full of 3.5″ SATA storage. Under the hood is a dual-core 3 GHz Intel Core2duo E8400 “Wolfdale” CPU, a major horsepower upgrade from the single-core Celeron in the ix4-200r. It also has double the memory (2 GB) compared to that 4-drive product.

It all makes sense now: EMC's storage spectrum, from home to enterprise

If you’re concerned about performance after trying out a desktop ix4-200d, you needn’t worry. The desktop unit has a lowly 1.2 GHz Marvell 6281 and just 512 MB of RAM. While this might be enough for a desktop user, it could never handle the pounding of servers in a shared networked configuration. The ix4-200r, with its 3.2 GHz Intel Celeron D 352 “Cedar Mill“, offered much better performance even though its name was just one letter different. And the ix12′s CPU is three times faster still, though it remains a single-controller system.

More significant changes lurk around the back of the ix12. Dual redundant power supplies, a frequent request in this class, and variable-speed fans, surround four Ethernet ports. Each sports gigabit speed and the set supports Microsoft Windows MPIO, can be aggregated with 802.3ad, or used in VLAN configurations with up to 4 VLAN tags per port. The ix12 speaks just about every language, from NFS and SMB to AFP and iSCSI, and now adds WebDAV and DFS support, too.

A few limitations separate this new ix12 device from its enterprise-grade brothers, however. As noted, a single controller manages all access, so redundancy and parallel processing are limited. Although the ix12 sports 12 drive bays, it only has four SATA channels internally; each bay shares a channel with two others using SATA expanders. Don’t expect to push wire speed over all four Ethernet ports at once, even with all this newfound CPU power.

A Wall of Drives

Base ix12s ship with 4 drives installed, but we were disappointed to learn that additional drives must be purchased in 4-disk packs from Iomega. Although this decision is understandable, the ix series remains a holdout amid growing legions of bring-your-own-drive competitors. At least the company supports mixing and matching drive sizes, including 1 TB and 2 TB at present. We suspect that the unit uses the same reliable 5900 rpm Seagate Barracuda LP drives as the ix4-200d.

Iomega added a few tricks to the LifeLine software to take advantage of a possible 12 drives installed. First up is the addition of dual-parity RAID-6 for improved data protection. The company (and this reviewer) suggest this over RAID-5 once more than 5 drives are combined in one set. Don’t worry, though, because RAID configuration can be changed online and any unused drive can be used regardless of its location in the array. The ix12 also adds drive spindown, saving power when the RAID set isn’t in use.

Like the ix4, any portion of a RAID set can be carved out into an iSCSI LUN for Ethernet-connected hosts. Iomega claims that LUN provisioning times have improved with the added horsepower and software tweaks, and we hope this is true. A maximum of 256 LUNs can be configured in this way, though even 12 drives are unlikely to drive much performance to that many storage users.

Where to Use It?

Although not listed yet, Iomega promises that the ix12 will have a place on the Exchange ESRP, Windows Server and Hyper-V logo list, and VMware Compatibility Guide this month. It’s already the first Iomega product to be “EMC E-Lab Tested”, meaning it is on the EMC Support Matrix; this fact alone speaks volumes of EMC’s expectations for the unit. My own experience shows that Iomega iSCSI is fine for smaller VMware and Hyper-V deployments.

Clearly, the ix12 is a new kind of Iomega array. If the 200d and 200r were a sign that the company wanted to move out of the house, the ix12 is a demonstration that they have graduated. Starting at US $5,000, the ix12 is all business and its resume ought to impress in interviews. It can’t quite boast the scalability and redundancy of established arrays (including its brothers from EMC), but it ought to be an easy acquisition for companies looking for a little more storage here or there.

One is left with questions, though: How big will EMC let Iomega get? If 12 drives are acceptable, what about 24? Is SAS off limits? What about 10 Gigabit Ethernet and even Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) eventually? Can we dream of dual controllers? At some point, the Iomega lineup could even threaten the CLARiiON!

Then there is the competitive landscape. Iomega leapfrogged the 8-drive Data Robotics lineup and landed squarely in competition with the likes of the revitalized Overland Storage but at a much lower price. We also have Netgear, HP, Dell, and Promise, and there is an attractive D-Link box packing 15 drives and 10 GbE. Iomega also has to worry about its own big brother, the Dell/EMC AX4, starting around $12k. It’s a competitive market, and Iomega is in for a fight as even more vendors wake up to the possibilities in this market.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Iomega Graduates and Goes to Work with the ix12-300r
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The Iomega ix4-200d is a sleek 4-drive SOHO RAID system that does just about everything, from NAS to Time Machine to iSCSI for a list price right around $700

Iomega is well into its second coming as EMC’s entry-level storage division. First, they applied EMC’s compact and full-featured LifeLine home storage software to existing gear, giving birth to the Home Media Network Hard Drive, StorCenter ix2, and StorCenter Pro ix4-100. Then they wooed the small-business community with the rack-mount StorCenter ix4-200r, adding iSCSI target support and VMware compatibility.

Today, they are back with the new ix4-200d, probably Iomega’s best product yet. It includes every feature of the rack-mount ix4-200r, including NAS and iSCSI target mode plus great new stuff like one-touch synchronization. All of this is packaged in a Drobo-like desktop system with a starting list price of just $700, or less than half the cost of a comparable ix4-200r!

Desktop Storage

External desktop storage products, exemplified by Western Digital’s wildly successful My Book series, have been a huge retail hit. Priced just over $100, these drives pack a terabyte or more and offer plug and play simplicity. I recently visited a small business with a WD or Seagate USB enclosure on every single desk. I’ve purchased five USB- or FireWire-connected hard drives myself over the last two years!

But these single-drive desktop wonders are a disaster waiting to happen:

• They fail frequently (like my Maxtor 3200), instantly wiping out the data they contained
• They are targets for thieves, so data loss prevention (DLP) experts warn against their use
• They aren’t shareable natively, so most people resort to sneakernet swapping rather than fight with Windows to present them as a network share
• When they’re full, they’re full, forcing the purchase of a whole new drive

Many vendors sell grown-up versions that address some or all of these concerns with multiple drives, network connections, and encryption, but these have been slow to catch on. Since they contain redundant drives and extra hardware and software, they are much more expensive than their little cousins. Iomega has done battle in this arena with their original StorCenter ix2 and the ix4-100, but these have yet to catch on. Even Drobo, with their fanatical user-friendly focus, has failed to convince many buyers.

Then there is the world of business storage. Way down at the bottom of the enterprise storage pyramid lies the realm of small 4- and 8-drive storage arrays. These SMB storage arrays offer a lot of capacity and reliability for the money but very little in the way of features. Iomega’s StorCenter Pro ix4-200r, in contrast, wowed the techies with a full iSCSI target stack that was certified for VMware ESX. But the price, over $1500, definitely limited sales to the home hobbyist.

“Just Right” Storage

Although the name is similar to the StorCenter Pro ix4-200r launched this Spring, Iomega went back to the drawing board for the ix4-200d. They built an entirely new device that could offer the impressive features of their StorCenter Pro line at a price closer to consumer storage offerings. The result boasts everything the Pro has and more at less than half the price:

• You want connectivity? The ix4 sports dual gigabit Ethernet ports that can be teamed up for performance or split off for redundancy.
• You want NAS? The ix4 supports NFS, SMB, and even Apple’s AFP, plus it’s Active Directory compatible.
• How about iSCSI? It’s a full-featured iSCSI target, certified for Microsoft Server 2003 and 2008.
• Want to host virtual machines? The ix4 is certified with VMware ESX 4 vSphere using both NFS and iSCSI, on the Xen HCL, and that Microsoft logo means it will work with Hyper-V as well.
• Need backup? The ix4 comes with EMC’s Retrospect and supports OS X Time Machine over AFP just like an Apple Time Capsule.
• Looking for weird features? How about support for up to 5 Axis network cameras, BlueTooth Picture Transfer Protocol, and UPnP/DLNA media service!
• Iomega also added a new feature, QuickTransfer, to synchronize files between devices.

This is one seriously feature-rich storage system. In fact, this glut of features is the ix4′s Achilles heel: How do you effectively communicate the value of a device that does so much? Most of the buying public has never heard of most of these features, so the price remains hard for some to justify.

Every ix4 configuration comes loaded with four hard disk drives

Another hurdle for the ix4 is Iomega’s decision to fill it with hard drives. One cannot buy an empty ix4-200d, and both the 2 TB and 4 TB configurations come loaded with four hard disk drives. This raises the price of entry and scares off the very techies who might be interested in the device. The majority of Drobos are purchased with no drives at all, and storage geeks like me love the idea that disks can be added as-needed in the future. Although Iomega is open to users swapping out the drives in their own StorCenter device, this is not its intended use case. Iomega’s decision to sell the ix4-200d as a loaded appliance seems counter to the price sensitivity and flexibility needs of buyers.

QuickTransfer: Data Synchronization for Everything

One nifty new feature included with the ix4-200d is QuickTransfer, a one-touch data synchronization capability. Leveraging rsync technology, but hiding this complexity with a more-friendly wizard-based GUI, QuickTransfer allows users to set up synchronization jobs between the ix4 and a variety of targets:

• USB drives can be plugged into one of the three USB 2.0 ports and synchronized with a subset of the content of the ix4. For example, a portable USB drive could be “recharged” with the latest set of data before one heads out of the office.
• Two Iomega ix4′s, or other NAS systems for that matter, can be synchronized over the Ethernet/IP LAN. This would provide a robust and bandwidth-friendly remote office backup or data replication solution.
• A PC or Mac can also be synchronized over a network share, providing a simple alternative to the bundled backup software.

QuickTransfer is exclusive to the ix4-200d for now, but Iomega assured me that it would be included in future StorCenter products and added to the StorCenter Pro ix4-200r in the near future. It is unknown if or when other existing StorCenter devices will get QuickTransfer, however.

Iomega’s Next Move

What will Iomega do next? They must be ready to announce their vSphere 4 and Microsoft Windows Server certification soon, since both company’s web sites already list the device in their compatibility lists. Iomega ought to try to take advantage of the interest among VMware users with a big VMworld splash. They will be there, but it is awfully hard to get noticed at such a large event. I am looking forward to the event to get a hands-on test.

The ix4 should begin showing up for sale at online stores very quickly. Amazon listed the rackmount product within days of its release, and we expect the same this time. But will Iomega offer this cheaper device in retail stores? It would be great to have it available at Staples and Best Buy, but shelf space for a storage system this expensive would be hard to get. Instead, expect it at specialty outlets like Fry’s and perhaps Micro Center.

How much does the StorCenter ix4-200d cost?

• The 2 TB model (SKU# 34546 with four 500 GB drives) lists at $699.99
• The 4 TB model (SKU# 34549 with four 1 TB drives) lists at $899.99
• The 8 TB model (SKU# 34563 with four 2 TB drives) lists at $1,899.99

It also seems likely that the 2-bay product is up for a refresh in the near future. The ix2 can’t be said to be very attractive, so hopefully the company will do something about this with the next-generation product. It is unclear whether the inexpensive 2-bay device will get iSCSI support, but I suspect it will. Beyond this, might Iomega move further upmarket with an 8-drive unit? We shall see!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Iomega’s ix4-200d: A Killer Desktop Storage Array
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.