D-Links xStack Storage arrays are iSCSI disk enclosures that are targeted primarily to SMBs for use in nearline storage or backup/recovery scenarios. The product line is now offered in the 3000 series arrays and the new 2000 series offerings.

The 3000 series enclosures house up to 15 SATA I or SATA II drives and connect and communicate to host servers via iSCSI; listed compatible host servers include Windows (2000 Advanced Server, XP Pro, Server 2003, Vista), Linux (Red Hat, Fedora Core, and SuSE), and Mac OS X (10.4.7, 10.4.8, 10.4.10). Listed iSCSI NICs, accelerators, and HBAs that are supported include the QLogic 4010C and 4052C, Intel PRO 1000 (MT/XT) and Intel Pro 10000 CX4, Alacritech SES2102ET/SES2104ET, Neterion Xframe II and Xframe E, and Chelsio S210X-SR-XFP.

The new 2000 series offerings, on the other hand, are 2U enclosures housing up to 8 drives and with four 1 Gb Ethernet ports. Device/OS compatibility is as in the 3000 series above.

A key feature of the xStack SAN Arrays is their SoC (System on a Chip) design, in which a single ASIC handles the system's 10 Gb/sec iSCSI communications, TCP and IP offload, embedded processors (including the RAID controller), and a storage virtualization firmware stack. Management is via an embedded IP-based GUI, with which administrators can create, manage, expand and monitor storage pools, volumes and RAID. SMI-S based monitoring and SAN control are supported, and additional management features include cache management (write-back, write-through, write coalescing and multi-stream read-ahead on a volume basis), VLAN Zoning (IEEE 802.1q VLAN tagging), IEEE 802.1p QoS, and volume virtualization.

Other features common to the xStack entries include:

- Embedded server, facilitating remote access

- Support for RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 5, and JBOD (the arrays host a single RAID controller, included in the ASIC)

- 512 MB system memory standard and up to 4 GB of cache memory (512 MB standard). Cache memory is battery-backed (minimum 72 hours)

- Support for up to 1,024 hosts and 1,024 virtual volumes (256 accessible per initiator)

- Redundant power supplies

- Support for up to 8 VLANs

- Support for link aggregation on multi-port models (all ports can be combined into a single, high-bandwidth link)

For the 3000 series arrays, two basic enclosures are offered: the 3200, with 8 1 Gb/sec copper ports; and the 3400, with a single 10 Gb/sec Fiber port. The 3000 series is additionally divided into models with (3200-10/3400-10) or without (3200-20/3400-20) hot swap drive trays.

New to the xStack product line is the DSN-2100-10 array, a 2U enclosure with four 1 Gb/sec ports and 8 total drive bays.

Both SATA I and SATA II drives are supported for use in the arrays; the vendor themselves currently offers 400 GB, 500 GB, and 750 GB SATA drives with hot-swap trays. The enclosures themselves ship without drives.

The 3000 series arrays are available now; the new 2100-10 is expected to be available in April, 2008 with a price of about $5300.

Contact D-Link for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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