LSI ships Syncro™ Storage

LSI has announced the channel and OEM availability of the Syncro CS solution. Syncro CS is a robust, cost-effective and easy to deploy high-availability storage solution for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and remote and branch offices. Operating on Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Syncro CS brings new benefits such as shared storage and storage controller failover into direct-attached storage (DAS) environments at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional high-availability solutions.

High availability is considered a universal business need regardless of business size or industry. When business-critical data is not accessible, the results can be lost revenue, lost productivity, and reduced customer satisfaction. LSI Syncro CS is designed to reduce downtime for critical applications, making failover latency transparent to the application or user. Syncro CS brings the robust data protection, high performance, low cost and low complexity found in DAS solutions and adds the additional benefits of shared storage and high availability.

Built on LSI MegaRAID® technology, Syncro CS solutions use two controller cards to allow system administrators to build a high-availability, shared DAS solution. Syncro CS supports two deployment models:
· Syncro CS 9286-8e: Provides shared storage clustering using two volume servers and an off-the-shelf JBOD. This affordable high-availability solution brings shared storage and controller failover to DAS environments.
· Syncro CS 9271-8i: Enables OEMs and system builders to use Syncro CS controllers to build cost-effective two-node Cluster-in-a-Box systems and deliver high availability in a single self-contained unit.

“The need to have uninterrupted access to business-critical applications, combined with the growth in the amount of virtualization and storage managed per server, make Syncro CS a compelling solution for data-intensive environments of all sizes,” said Bill Wuertz, senior vice president and general manager, RAID Storage Division, LSI. “Syncro CS makes the valuable enterprise capabilities of data sharing and application uptime affordable to the SMB market segment and helps ensure uninterrupted productivity.”

LSI and Microsoft collaborated closely so that Syncro CS running on Windows Server 2012 can provide seamless high availability. Windows Server 2012 provides failover clustering and management capabilities, and LSI delivers the clustered storage subsystem.

“Windows Server 2012 introduced groundbreaking storage capabilities, and Microsoft continues to innovate by bringing affordable and flexible storage to customers,” said Brian Hillger, director, Server and Tools Marketing, Microsoft. “Storage is an essential element of a highly available system, and LSI Syncro CS storage solutions with Windows Server 2012 help customers deploy high availability on a massive scale. This provides the key benefits found in traditional high-availability storage systems.”

“As the entry direct-attached storage market segment experiences about 30% capacity growth year over year, the value of the data grows with it and increases the need for storage systems with higher availability,” said Dan Iacono, research director of Storage Systems, IDC. “By enabling SMBs to lower the cost of their storage systems while simultaneously protecting their businesses with high-availability solutions like the LSI Syncro CS, business efficiency and continuity can be greatly improved.”