14 DAY TRIAL // Although Intel is not necessarily a household name on the network attached storage products market, the truth of the matter is that the company is in over its head, especially since its designs represent the basis for some pretty successful NAS solutions launched by Fujitsu-Siemens and Velocity Micro. And in order to establish an even stronger foothold on this market segment, Intel has just announced the launch of its own network storage series, dubbed Entry Storage System SS4200x, which currently includes two models: the Entry Storage System SS4200-EHW, a hardware-only version and the Entry Storage System SS4200-E, which comes complete with integrated software.
Based on the Intel Celeron 400 Series Processor with DDR2 memory, the Intel Entry Storage System SS4200x provides performance and functionality to accommodate demanding workloads and features an Intel 945GZ with ICH7-R chipset for better I/O performance. Additional highlights of the Intel SS4200x include the customizable and consumer-friendly shell design, which fits easily into many existing product portfolios and an external SATA (eSATA) port that allows for easy external storage expansion beyond four hard disk drives (HDD).
The fully loaded Intel SS4200-E includes software from EMC to create a flexible Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliance for the small business, small office, home office (SOHO) and digital home markets. The storage solution provides strong data access, sharing, protection and backup features for small businesses, while the universal plug-and-play, media streaming features and support for connected CE devices are ideally suited for the home. The system supports Windows and Mac clients and includes support for 11 languages.
On the other hand, the hardware-only version Intel Entry Storage System SS4200-EHW allows for customizable solutions with varying storage capacities, up to several terabytes of capacity, thus granting system builders and integrators a higher level of customization freedom.
"Intel brings an easy and affordable storage solution to the small office and home with our new Intel SS4200x," said Mike Wall, general manager of Storage, Intel Server Platforms Group. "We've taken the performance advantage and power efficiency of Intel Architecture processors to enable system builders to deliver solutions with the right combination of performance, simplicity and value."
The new Intel NAS units will be available starting December and will retail starting at around 500 US dollars, which is not that bad for a price, taking into consideration the extensive set of features packed within each of these things.
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