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Although we tested the desktop model, you can rack and stack the FlashDisk to over a terabyte tall.
Whether you are building a departmental server, a Web server, or consolidating departmental servers onto an enterprise-- level system such as an IBM S/390, an SGI Origin 2000, or a Sun Starfire, disk storage is always a design issue. While you may opt for storage systems from the same vendor that is supplying the server, third-party storage vendors such as Winchester Systems (WS) often offer excellent alternatives. For that reason, we like to review various storage systems from time to time. This month, we put a desktop model of Winchester Systems' FlashDisk RAID through its paces, and explore some options offered by its bigger brothers in the product line.
Weighing in at a mere 40 to 55 pounds, and measuring only 12.2inches high, 10.3-inches wide, and 14.5-inches deep, the desktop FlashDisk is certainly a change of pace from the large servers we've reviewed in recent months. However, even small RAID arrays are a necessary part of the enterprise's system landscape. Although Winchester Systems might not be the first company you think of when discussing RAID arrays, the company has sold storage products since 1981, and dates back to the DEC PDP-11 days. For readers with a penchant for industry history, the company's Web site (http://www.winsys.com) has an interesting chart depicting how far storage systems have come in the past ten years. In that period, the company's storage systems have gone from a system capacity of 0.38GB at $15.79/MB to 1.4TB at $0.33/MB. Similarly, the 160MB eight-inch SMD drives in the AT&T 3B5 that I had in 1988 were larger, heavier, and drew a lot more current than the desktop FlashDisk RAID array equipped with seven 9.1GB disks we review here.
OF NOTE
Some system administrators view storage products as commodity items, and, to a certain extent, disk systems fall under that description. Literally dozens of storage OEMs build systems around disk drives manufactured by a handful of drive vendors. Most storage systems within a particular category also offer similar feature sets, pushing the decision point toward the soft-issue side of the equation. Company reputation and longevity in the business are important aspects to consider, and...