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Scale Releases True-Cluster™ Version 1.0

Scale Computing's ICS™ breaks the price barrier in the commodity-based clustered storage (CCS) category by providing scale-out storage at a price affordable to the small business market.

Indianapolis, May 6, 2009—Founded by serial Silicon-Valley entrepreneurs, Scale Computing today announced version 1.0 of its ICS storage architecture. ICS is the first of its kind to provide enterprise-class, truly clustered storage features at an entry price below $13,000.

“Among the Commodity-based Clustered Storage solutions, no one else is offering incremental, scale-out features at this price, that I know of,” said Arun Taneja, storage analyst and founder of the Taneja Group.

Clustered storage combines many disk-based storage arrays into a single storage system without using expensive controllers or master units. Instead, each storage appliance, or “node,” contains the software required to become part of the larger cluster. If one node or drive fails, services continue uninterrupted. Clustered systems (long viewed as the holy grail of storage) are common among high-performance computing applications found in the world’s most advanced supercomputers.  Until recently, only the largest enterprises could afford this complex functionality.

“Our vision was to completely redefine storage for the SMB,” explains Scale founder and VP of Technology, Jason Collier. “Before ICS, the SMB had two choices: simple arrays with few features and no scalability [outside the form factor] or expensive solutions that are also costly to scale and manage. ICS gives the SMB what it needs—enterprise features—at a price it can afford.”

ICS Version 1.0: Business Continuity for the SMB

ICS creates a fluid, easily scalable data center that makes business continuity less of an abstract concept and more of a reality for SMBs.

“We moved the fault tolerance in storage away from hardware and into advanced software allowing us to drastically reduce cost, and delivered it in a very easy to use package,” said Scott Loughmiller, Scale’s founder and VP of Product Management.

ICS’s advanced business continuity features include:

No Single Point of Failure. Some leading storage vendors that claim to be “clustered” or “grid” systems use control units with limited scalability to simulate a truly clustered environment. Not only do control units add layers of complexity, they also infuse single point vulnerability. When the control unit fails, storage nodes become inaccessible.

ICS has no master or control unit, allowing for fine-grain, linear scalability with no single point of failure. Each node in the ICS storage pool includes all the software needed to operate independently of other nodes. If one node goes down, services continue.

Migrationless Scalability. With simple arrays, data must be migrated from one appliance to another when upgrading. With ICS, nodes are added to the cluster as needed. Data is automatically striped and mirrored across the entire array. Services continue, even when adding storage.

Virtually Unlimited Scalability. SMBs can start with just 3TBs and scale, as needed per TB, to more than 2.2 PBs on a single file system.

Low Total Cost of Ownership. Starting at less than $13,000 for 3 TB, Scale’s ICS can grow for as little as $2,500 per extra TB. Other CCS systems scale incrementally by 5TBs or more, adding significantly to growth costs.

Multi-Protocol Support. ICS supports CIFS, NFS and advanced, out-of-chassis, iSCSI multipathing, making it available for virtualization and archiving.

Simple Management Interface. ICS’s easy-to-use interface requires little training and removes the complexity from clustered storage management.

More Information

For more information on Scale’s ICS solution and to view a FLASH demonstration of the ICS architecture, visit http://www.scalecomputing.com.