Networking solutions provider D-Link announced the ShareCenter Pro network storage solutions, which support concurrent NAS and iSCSI connectivity and are designed for SMB environments. With the ShareCenter Pro N-Series and S-Series models, D-Link has expanded its business storage offerings to offer unified storage solutions with built-in security, data protection and disaster recovery functionality well-suited for file sharing, data backup and IP video archival.
The appliances complement the company’s existing xStack Storage family of high-performance iSCSI SAN arrays.
The ShareCenter Pro models are Windows, Mac and Linux compatible, and come with a five-year warranty as well as an extended five-year warranty option for a total of 10 years. The ShareCenter Pro N-Series and S-Series models offer disaster recovery capabilities for remote backup, either to a physical device offsite or to the cloud using Amazon’s S3 service, the latest in a series of D-Link technologies leveraging the cloud to bring enterprise features within reach of SMB budgets.
The ShareCenter Pro N-Series includes the DNS-1100-04 and the DNS-1200-05 devices. Both models offer iSCSI connectivity, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB ports, RAID 0/1/5/6/10 support, encrypted volumes, and virtual disk drive (VDD) expansion. The DNS-1100-04 four-bay desktop offers 512MB of RAM and supports up to 12TB of raw capacity, and the DNS-1200-05 five-bay desktop offers 1GB of RAM with support up to 15TB of storage.
The ShareCenter Pro S-Series includes the DNS-1250-04 four-bay desktop, DNS-1250-06 six-bay desktop and the DNS-1550-04 four-bay 1U rack-mount model. Designed for optimum performance, all three models offer iSCSI connectivity, 2GB of RAM, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, five USB ports, RAID 0/1/5/6/10, encrypted volumes and VDD expansion. The DNS-1250-06 offers RAID 30/50 capabilities, and the DNS-1550-04 offers dual hot-swappable power supplies for added redundancy.
“Small businesses evaluating network storage often have a checklist of the latest ‘must have’ features, but need to realize that reliability, data protection and network interoperability are paramount,” said Joseph Martins, managing director and analyst at Data Mobility Group. “The D-Link ShareCenter Pro models support non-proprietary hardware in a unified system with NAS and iSCSI support for added flexibility, ease of use and cost savings.”
The DNS-1200-05 ShareCenter Pro 1200 is available now for $773.49, the DNS-1100-04 ShareCenter Pro 1100 will be available in October for $662.99, the DNS-1250-04 ShareCenter Pro 1250 will be available in October for $972.99, the DNS-1250-06 ShareCenter Pro 1250 will be available in October for $1,172.99, and the DNS-1550-04 ShareCenter Pro 1550 will be available in September for $1,499.99. All of D-Link’s network storage products are sold through the company’s network of channel partners, including value-added resellers, solution providers and distributors.
Gerrit Koester, a technology and facilities manager at the Filutowski Cataract and Lasik Institute in Orlando, Fla., was tasked with optimizing and managing a network infrastructure that ensured quick and easy access to more than 100,000 patient records containing over 2 million electronic image files. “What I needed was a highly available, redundant storage solution offering easy backup and iSCSI support,” said Koester.
After evaluating the D-Link ShareCenter Pro DNS-1200-05, Koester was surprised by the performance the solution achieved, as well as the flexibility and affordable price. “We should get great speeds, probably as good as USB 2.0, maybe 40 megabytes a second, give or take,” Koester said. “We got well over a hundred, and I said, ‘Wow, this is faster than some of the SANs we’ve evaluated.’ This is a phenomenal product and is truly cutting edge, but it is using existing technologies in a smart way that makes it very easy to configure, and it guarantees that it is going to be reliable.”