FREMONT, Calif.--BUSINESS WIRE--SGI NASDAQ:SGI, a global leader in HPC and data center solutions, today announced the release of SGI InfiniteStorage 5000, a RAID storage system that combines leading edge hardware with a choice of host interfaces and drive technologies in a powerful external storage platform. This system provides advanced features and configuration flexibility to accommodate a broad selection of data store requirements with compelling mid-range performance at entry-level affordability. SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 is SGI’s first storage system to employ 6Gb/s SAS technology.

�Although 6Gb/s SAS for drives has already become common in the industry, completing that transition by including the host side has finally begun in earnest�

SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 provides customers with improved performance and scalability, multi-protocol host connectivity, flexible drive support, data security features and advanced energy savings. With SGI’s DMF software, SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 is an ideal primary or secondary storage solution for tiered virtualization implementations. It is also ideal as a front-end for active archive architectures using an SGI® COPAN™ MAID solution on the back-end. It perfectly complements SGI® Altix® UV server and Rackable™ rackmount server environments.

“As data volumes in the enterprise continue to grow, increased performance, reduced power consumption and system flexibility are of primary concern to customers,” said Rick Chapek, SGI senior vice president of hardware engineering. “By utilizing 6Gb/s SAS technology, SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 brings performance, reliability and a strong feature set normally seen in high-end Fibre Channel systems to an aggressive entry-level price point.”

SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 delivers bandwidth up to 4,000 MB/s on sustained reads from disk, a 4X performance improvement compared to the previous generation product. The system delivers 40,000 IOPS input/output operations per second random disk reads, a more than 2X improvement over the prior generation.

“Although 6Gb/s SAS for drives has already become common in the industry, completing that transition by including the host side has finally begun in earnest,” said Benjamin S. Woo, program vice president, worldwide storage systems research at IDC. “With both 6Gb/s host and drive-side architecture, InfiniteStorage 5000 should provide an affordable entry-point system that offers improved storage performance and scalability, and greatly decreased power consumption. Furthermore, it is ideally-suited for mixed workloads and virtualization, making it a top choice for storage upgrades.”

SGI InfiniteStorage offers the ability to intermix drive types, allowing organizations to address a wide range of capacity and performance requirements. Customers can deploy high performance solid-state drives SSDs or SAS drives for the most demanding application workloads as well as cost-effective nearline SAS drives for less performance-sensitive, high-capacity applications. SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 consumes less energy with power supplies that meet the forthcoming Energy Star, 80 PLUS® energy efficiency and Climate Savers Computing specifications.

Four native 6Gb/s SAS host interfaces can be intermixed with eight 1Gb/s iSCSI or eight 8Gb/s Fibre Channel FC host ports per dual controller. This flexible and multi-purpose dual protocol approach allows organizations to implement a variety of configurations – from rackmounted server and storage DAS implementations using SAS, to iSCSI and FC SAN environments for larger consolidation and virtualization projects.

Availability and Pricing

SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 is available immediately and pricing is provided upon request. For more information, please visit www.sgi.com/storage.

Note to editors: High-resolution photos of SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 are available for download at www.sgi.com/media.

About SGI

SGI is a global leader in large-scale clustered computing, high performance storage, HPC and data center enablement and services. SGI is focused on helping customers solve their most demanding business and technology challenges. Visit www.sgi.com for more information.

© 2010 SGI. SGI, COPAN, Altix and Rackable are registered trademarks or trademarks of Silicon Graphics International Corp. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

This news release contains forward-looking statements regarding SGI technologies and third-party technologies that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such statements. The reader is cautioned not to rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of future or current performance. Such risks and uncertainties include long-term program commitments, the performance of third parties, the sustained performance of current and future products, financing risks, the ability to integrate and support a complex technology solution involving multiple providers and users, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's most recent SEC reports, including its reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.