Dot Hill Systems Corp. (http://www.dothill.com) -- a provider of storage solutions and software for OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), open storage partners and system integrators -- has announced it's now shipping its next-generation 3000 Series disk arrays with support for 8Gb Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs), dual interface 8Gb Fibre Channel and 1Gb iSCSI, and optional AssuredRemote data management software.

Dot Hill's 3000 Series enables storage network implementers to protect their investments and provides non-disruptive storage upgrades through the use of 8Gb Fibre Channel and/or dual interface 8Gb Fibre Channel/1Gb iSCSI solutions that are backward compatible with existing 4Gb Fibre Channel and 1Gb iSCSI installations. With the addition of drive spin-down, mixed drive type support and dual protocol interfaces, users can now combine both high performance primary volumes and secondary storage with different performance and energy usage profiles in the same physical unit, according to Andy Mills, vice president of marketing and business development, Dot Hill Systems.

The 3000 Series arrays deliver up to twice the performance of Dot Hill's 2000 Series Fibre Channel arrays, the 3730 dual port 8Gb Fibre Channel 2U 12-drive and 3720 2U 24-drive models, provide double the host I/O bandwidth for bandwidth-intensive applications and virtual server environments, and can help reduce the physical number of connections in the SAN infrastructure, he adds.

Additionally, the Dot Hill 3000 Series supports up to 144 drives fully configured, including SATA, SSD and 6Gb SAS drives, to support third-party tiered storage initiatives, and is expandable using either 3130 2U 12 3.5-inch drive or 3120 24 2.5-inch drive JBOD systems. In keeping with Dot Hill's prior generations of arrays, the new products are all compliant with NEBS level 3 and MIL STD 810F specifications.

The Dot Hill 3000 Series is now shipping through OEM partners and will be available via Dot Hill channels in March. Contact Dot Hill for pricing.