Re:permastor (Score 2)

Thanks for your questions.

Initially we have built products for the Home and Small Office markets. The technology is scalable upwards into other markets, but we want to understand the needs better. We certainly can provide other configurations pretty easily, so your feedback is very valuable.

Here are some answers to your questions and we will add them to the website as FAQs.

For the HomeStor and OfficeStor products:

The chassis is configured to hold 3 hard drives. Seagate drives of 40GB, 80GB, 120GB, 160GB, 200GB, 250GB, 300GB and 400GB are used. That gives the scalability of 80GB-800GB effective storage.

The main data storage partition is configured as RAID 5. There are very small partitions for the root file system and they are also RAIDed appropriately.

The VPN access is compressed.

The Data Mirror is over ssh and is not currently compressed. A need for the future feature list... Although if you were using an external VPN router front-end, it might do the compression.

The data mirror is rsync based so only changes are mirrored. You are probably correct that it would be easiest to do the initial mirror of large data set on the same local network initially and then ship the system to its final location.

For the HomeStor and OfficeStor systems, the disks come pre-configured. We have not built in the user upgrade to larger disks for those markets; we have used the strategy similar to PCs, if you need more, buy an additional system (the cost are really driven by the disk pricing). For Enterprise versions, the product does need to have upgrade capability.

The current chassis for the HomeStor and OfficeStor systems is 5 3/4" x 13 1/2" x 14 1/2" (WxHxD). Again for other versions, a different chassis would be straight forward.

In addition to the features you mentioned, the VPN and Data Mirror, the warranty is three years for the OfficeStor and 1 year for the HomeStor. As we continue to upgrade the software for the systems, we will be adding more remote monitoring and management features to the OfficeStor system, since it is usually managed by small VAR IT specialist. A major difference is the ability to do remote backup is a must for the OfficeStor market.

The system is based on linux and several of the linux applications. The linux configuration and application configuration is a PermaStor built implementation that focuses on the storage appliance needs. There are over 12K lines of Permastor code that are proprietary.

The system weight with DVD is 25lbs. In the current shipping container that we use, it has an effective UPS shipping weight of 44lbs.

Again thanks for your questions and your inputs!