Nexsan has highlighted activities in Japan as part of its efforts to lower IT infrastructure energy consumption in light of recent power restrictions. Most recently, Nexsan exhibited the company’s E-Series storage systems at the Data Storage Expo 2011, Japan’s largest storage industry event, which took place recently at Tokyo Big Sight. At the expo, Nexsan showcased its latest generation storage systems where it received accolades for industry-leading energy efficiency, the company reported. 

Power shortages due to the Tohoku Earthquake last March 11 have resulted in demand for energy efficient solutions by organizations at every level, across private industry as well as government agencies. According to the Japanese business daily, Nikkei, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) had planned to require a 25 percent restriction in energy use by large corporate users and a 20 percent cut by smaller corporate users. But METI changed those plans because power output was boosted by measures such as installing more gas turbines. The restrictions now require a 15 percent reduction for large companies, which has put continued pressure on operationally intensive organizations. 

As an initiative to make its energy efficient storage systems available to these operations, Nexsan has joined with reseller partners in Japan to support organizations in the region. With the ongoing need to conserve power, Nexsan recently demonstrated the new E18 and E60, in addition to the company’s popular iSeries and SATABeast storage systems at Japan’s largest storage industry event–Data Storage Expo 2011. The latest technologies from Nexsan include its line of power-managed storage systems featuring AutoMAID (Automatic Massive Array of Idle Disks). This evolutionary energy saving technology transparently places disk drives into an idle state to vastly reduce power and cooling costs. 

Nexsan has a reputation for providing high-density storage systems optimized for highly efficient data center environments. The company’s storage systems maintain a small form factor, superior energy efficiency, enterprise-class performance, availability and reliability as proven in more than 25,000 deployments globally. The latest E-Series storage systems support any combination of 3.5-inch SAS, SATA and SSDs, including 3 TB SATA HDDs with enterprise specifications, providing significantly greater capacity and functionality than comparable systems in the same form factor, according to the company. At the recent Storage Expo in Japan, all systems were highly rated by show attendees which included more than 120,000 IT and business professionals from across Japan. 

About Nexsan E-Series Storage Systems

Nexsan E-Series storage systems are purpose-built for the mid-market to deliver easy, efficient, enterprise-class storage in a single integrated solution. The latest generation storage provides robust centralized storage management software for simplified deployment, management and support. Nexsan systems deliver business advantages that include industry-leading density, high reliability and low power consumption. The Nexsan E-Series delivers an easy out of the box experience by integrating reliable Nexsan storage hardware and E-Series intelligence. Product models include: 

• E18—The E18 offers 18 SAS drives in 2U, for up to 10.8 TB of capacity per chassis. The system also supports mixed SAS/SATA/SSD drive types and includes Nexsan's next-generation controller, two 8 Gb/s FC and two 1 Gb/s iSCSI ports per controller, and comes with up to two controllers per E18. It also features a dedicated Ethernet port for management and no single point of failure configurations.
 
• E60—The E60 features 60 SATA/SAS/SSD drives in only 4U for up to 180 TB of capacity per chassis. It supports any mix of drive types and includes Nexsan's next-generation controller, two 8 Gb/s FC and two 1 Gb/s iSCSI ports per controller, and comes with up to two controllers per system.
 
• E60X—The E60X expansion chassis includes 60 SATA/SAS/SSD drives in only 4U for up to 180 TB of capacity per chassis. It supports any mix of drive types and offers two 4x SAS connectors and a dedicated Ethernet port for management.

Nexsan's E-Series systems also feature advanced technologies for energy efficiency, high density and ease-of-use including: 

Active Drawer Technology

This revolutionary approach to extreme density simplifies the maintenance of a high density system by offering specially designed cables for continuous operation even when one of three self-contained drawers is momentarily opened so a single person can perform disk and fan service. 

AutoMAID Technology

This technology delivers "Speed with Green" for up to 85 percent reduction in power consumption without performance compromise for popular applications such as backup to disk. Included with E-Series storage systems is AutoMAID Level 4 capabilities to enable maximum power savings. 

Available with Nexsan's E-Series is the company's next-generation RAID controller delivering over twice the performance of the previous generation controller, ideal for demanding production environments. The high-speed cache is mirrored to support dual active/active controller configurations, which offer increased performance and no single point of failure. The cache is backed by both battery and flash memory. The I/O expansion slot on the new controller will host a dual 10 GigE card for high performance iSCSI.

"With serious electricity shortages anticipated for the summer of 2011, organizations throughout Japan must optimize operations to cut their average rates of electricity consumption,” said Takahiko Higashi, Representative Director, Nexsan Japan. “By optimizing the data center with energy efficient E-Series storage systems, enterprises can reduce storage-related power requirements as much as 85 percent for faster compliance with these imposed restrictions."