Winchester Systems(R) Announces Ruggedized, Dual-Redundant NAS Storage

BILLERICA, MA--(Marketwired - Jun 19, 2014) -  Winchester Systems Inc., a leading data-storage infrastructure provider to Military Prime Contractors and Commercial SI's, today announced the immediate availability of its new COTS-Rugged FlashNAS ZFS RZ-Series network-attached storage systems. Winchester Systems COTS-Rugged NAS products are designed to store and protect data in harsh C⁵ISR operating environments; tolerating levels of dust, moisture, shock and vibration not possible with standard commercial units -- for much less than ultra-ruggedized systems. Numerous major U.S. Federal/Military programs currently depend on Winchester Systems COTS-Rugged products to be easy to deploy, manage and provide high fault tolerance in theater and data centers alike.

The FlashNAS ZFS RZ-2U12 is a 2U high, ruggedized rack-mount base unit that holds up to twelve 3.5-inch magnetic disk drives or SSDs, and supports up to nine 12-drive expansion shelves. The 3U-high FlashNAS ZFS RZ-3U16 holds up to 16 drives in the ruggedized base unit, and can scale to 240 drives via expansion shelves -- providing up to 1.5 Petabytes of storage capacity.

Sporting controllers, power supplies and fans that are modular, redundant and hot swappable, FlashNAS ZFS RZ hardware is purpose-built for continuous availability and long-term robust durability. The front door is crafted of 3/4-inch milled aluminum to provide rigidity, structural integrity and prevent flying-object hazards. It also contains a dust/raindrop seal and a heavy-duty filter to trap dust particles and provide a moisture shield to protect internal components. An optional 1U mounting tray enables front access to normally rear-accessed components/connectors, saving three feet behind the storage unit and increasing structural integrity.

In addition to simultaneous block and file access via CIFS, NFS, AFP and iSCSI protocols over 1Gb and 10Gb Ethernet, FlashNAS ZFS RZ systems can also serve disk blocks via 16Gb Fibre Channel. Each system comes with eight embedded 1GbE ports (four per controller). Four 1GbE, two 10GbE or two 16Gb Fibre Channel ports can be added to each FlashNAS ZFS RZ controller using a daughter-card module that plugs onto the controller motherboard. This modular design makes it easy to tailor each system to suit specific mission requirements. It also enables easy field upgrades: a FlashNAS ZFS RZ system initially deployed with 1GbE ports, for example, can later be upgraded in-theater to 10GbE or 16Gb Fibre Channel (FC) when faster connectivity is needed.

Integrated with this hardware platform, the breakthrough ZFS file system provides end-to-end error detection and correction, self-healing, and SSD optimization features for unsurpassed protection of data integrity throughout. Building on this foundation, Winchester Systems FlashNAS ZFS RZ adds advanced functions such as storage-pool mirroring and remote replication.

The result is a ruggedized, integrated NAS system with "Top-Tier" functional capabilities:

• Seamless Data Sharing across Windows, UNIX, Linux and Mac OS X
• Unified Security Model
• Online-Expandable RAID 0/1/5/6/50/60 Storage Pools with Hot Spares
• End-to-end Data Error Detection and Self-Healing
• Storage-pool Mirroring across multiple FlashNAS ZFS RZ systems
• Intelligent I/O Acceleration using SSDs
• Unlimited Snapshots
• Asynchronous Remote Replication
• In-Line, Block-Level Compression
• Thin Provisioning
• Write Once, Read Many (WORM) Protected Directories
• Support for ICAP-based Anti-Virus Scanning

All of these capabilities are seamlessly integrated into a single COTS-Rugged NAS system with an easy-to-use, web based management interface. There are no hidden, or "extra" costs to enable specific features. All hardware and software functionality is included in the base system price.

COTS-Rugged FlashNAS ZFS RZ-Series is ideal for deployable video surveillance and playback, mobile ground stations, and multi-application mission-planning and analysis systems. Other ruggedized products from Winchester Systems include COTS-Rugged servers, COTS-Rugged RAID systems; and Ultra-Ruggedized removable-canister RAID and Ultra-Ruggedized portable server systems that comply with MIL-STD-810G, MIL-STD-901D, MIL-STD-461E, etc. Custom design and integration services are available to meet challenging program-level requirements where standard COTS products just will not suffice.

Winchester Systems also offers storage-infrastructure consulting, on-site installation and service spares, and 24x7 product service and support worldwide.

For more information about FlashNAS ZFS RZ-Series storage, see the FlashNAS ZFS RZ-2U12 and FlashNAS ZFS RZ-3U16 Data Sheets. To start designing a purpose-built infrastructure for your workload challenge, contact a Winchester Systems storage expert.

About Winchester Systems Inc.
Founded in 1981, Winchester Systems provides purpose-built, dependable, high-performance server and storage systems -- and expertise -- to Commercial, Federal-government and military clients. Winchester Systems I/O-performance and ruggedized-system experts collaborate with each client's integration team to tailor an IT infrastructure, including storage and servers, to best fit their customer's environmental and workload requirements. Storage offerings include FlashDisk^® RAID Disk Arrays in Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) configurations, and FlashNAS unified Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems. FlashServer Intel-based servers include standard and high availability configurations. For more information visit: www.winsys.com.