Promise Technology Announces Pegasus2 and SANLink2 Thunderbolt 2 Products
by Jarred Walton on October 25, 2013 2:48 PM EST
We’ve seen Thunderbolt products from Promise before, and we’ve even heard about some of their upcoming Thuderbolt 2 offerings. Today, Promise is formally announcing four upcoming Thunderbolt 2 products. These range from a 4-bay enclosure (R4) up to an 8-bay enclosure (R8), with the Pegasus2 R8; the Pegasus2 is also available in a 6-bay (R6) variant. Of note is that all of the current solutions continue to use hard drives for storage; the target is primarily video and image editing workflows where large amounts of portable storage are important as opposed to ultra-high-speed external storage using SSDs – specific mention of 3D and 4K video is made, and raw 4K video can chew through storage at an alarming rate (up to 15Gbps).
As discussed previously, Thunderbolt 2 effectively doubles the transfer rate of Thunderbolt, up to 20Gbps; it does this by bonding two 10Gbps channels into a single channel. That means aggregate bandwidth for a single Thunderbolt controller remains unchanged, but if you’re primarily reading or writing you effectively double your transfer rate. Interesting to note is that Promise also has their SANLink2 product, which is a portable bridge with dual 8Gbps Fibre Channel ports and dual 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports. This allows the use of the new Thunderbolt-enabled systems with existing high-speed Fiber Channel SANs (e.g. the Promise VTrak x30).
All of the Pegasus2 products support RAID 5. Pricing has not been revealed, but the new Pegasus2 products will be available at the Apple store in November and will either replace or augment the existing Promise Thunderbolt offerings. The Pegasus2 R4 is the entry-level solution with four 2TB hard drives. The Pegasus2 R6 is available with either 2TB (12TB total) or 3TB (18TB total) hard drives, while the R8 will ship with 3TB (24TB total) and 4TB (32TB total) drives. The SANLink2 will be available starting in December, again via the Apple store. Below are the highlights for the new devices.
Pegasus2:
- Supports maximum throughput allowed by Thunderbolt 2 interface
- Supports simultaneous streaming, editing, and backup of 4K video
- Dual Thunderbolt ports for daisy chaining
- Hot-swappable drive bays for effortless drive access and serviceability
- Portable hardware RAID protection for offsite shoots
- Massive storage capacity for backing up creative projects and digital libraries
- Thunderbolt cable included
SANLink2:
- Enables Fibre Channel connectivity on systems with a Thunderbolt 2 port
- Dual 8Gbps Fibre Channel Ports
- Dual 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports with DisplayPort and device daisy-chain support
- Supports OS X and OS X Server
- Supports Xsan and StorNext filesystems
- Supports all VTrak storage subsystems (4Gbps 8Gbps Fibre Channel)
- Thunderbolt cable included
Source: Promise Technology News Release
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lin2log - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Yeah, you SO need more/different **GPUs** of all things when you buy a new Mac Pro??! LOL! Gotcha.Everything else? ALL available otherwise. Almost always better, faster and CHEAPER. The rest is yesterday's news and a waste of time and money. NONE of that is "otherwise unobtainable". What BS. The whole "I need PCI slots!" is such utter MALARKEY. Check your calendar. It's almost 2014. Come join us. But then, if you need any of that so badly, you're simply not the truly PRO customer that the Mac Pro is meant for. Well boo-hoo.
lin2log_gay_lover - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
Yeah, boo-hoo. Don't buy a Mac Pro, loser, just stay with your PC. lin2log and I don't want you buying a Mac Pro. We want the Mac Pro just for us! Lin2log, please pick me up for dinner at 8. I love you!lin2log - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
SCSI, SATA RAID or any of that other i/o??... LOL!! Brilliant! As if I could even be the least bit interested in those when I have THUNDERBOLT??Ouch.
Keep pulling stuff out of your backend without rhyme nor reason. Just... because. :-))))
You forgot floppy-disk drives by the way. Gotta have a floppy-disk drive! LOL
repoman27 - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
I hesitated to respond to your earlier comment because you're obviously trolling or just have no idea how any of this stuff works.Thunderbolt is just a meta protocol for transporting PCIe and DisplayPort packets. Thunderbolt accessories are made by taking existing silicon that would normally be found on a motherboard or PCI Express card and hooking it up instead to the PCIe lanes provided by a Thunderbolt controller. For some applications an argument can be made that it is both cost effective and far more elegant to design a custom solution with the Thunderbolt controller and various ASICs on the same board. For many bleeding edge, industry specific, or legacy applications, simply exposing the PCIe lanes in an external chassis and connecting an existing PCI Express card is a far more reasonable option.
If you've invested a lot of time in writing CUDA code for NVIDIA Quadro, you're probably less impressed with the GPU options for the new Mac Pro. Furthermore, the first Macs to ship with Thunderbolt 2 are the new versions of the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, most of which rely solely on Intel Iris / Iris Pro and at best can be specced with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M. In fact most Macs with Thunderbolt could get a significant boost from a fairly inexpensive discrete GPU if only they had a conventional PCI Express card slot.
Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis will definitely play a more significant role as a transitional technology, with purpose built Thunderbolt accessories being the preferred goal in the long run, but they will always remain useful for certain scenarios.
lin2log - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
"If you've invested a lot of time in writing CUDA code for NVIDIA Quadro, you're probably less impressed with the GPU options for the new Mac Pro."LOL... that bullshit CUDA drivel again! :-D Yeah, too bad the AMD cards "only" support OpenCL, right (along with every Nvidia board btw!)? You know, that OpenCL that kicks CUDA to THE WALL in terms of performance AND is both open-source and non-proprietary?! Oh gee, yeah. What a BUMMER that I'm not forced to use that Nvidia crap... LOL!
And there is NOTHING "reasonable" about spending an inordinate amount of money on some BS PCI chassis to merely run some legacy crap boards... pfffff...
You can't name me ONE PCI card that any relevant amount of people can't do without AND actually needs more than maybe eight lanes, in which case there is ZERO need for a slot... you lose, sorry!
Maccer - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
since you asked so nicely.. RED ROCKET-Xhttp://www.red.com/products/red-rocket
lin2log - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
LOL... yeah, enjoy your RED-Rocket. What a bummer that it's already been announced that RED decode and encode will be optimized FOR THE NEW MAC PRO, making the Rocket completely SUPERFLUOUS and not worth the soldering iron it's made of.My tip: catch a clue FIRST, then post.
lin2log_gay_lover - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
Yeah, loser. Catch a clue FIRST otherwise my lover lin2log will have some spicy words for you! Don't you just love how my lin2log can use such big words as superfluous? He's so smart and when he uses ALL CAPS, it makes him sound even smarter. He's my true love!lin2log_gay_lover - Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - link
Yeah, take that. lin2log just told you off. He is so smart and witty and that's why I love him. Thunderbolt is the way to go, so there! Brilliant! LOL! :-))))). ROFL. You are the best, lin2log!!repoman27 - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
A quick list of Thunderbolt PCIe external enclosures:Bplus TH05 PCI-Express to Thunderbolt Adapter (discontinued thanks to Intel)
Magma ExpressBox 1T
Magma ExpressBox 3T
mLogic mLink
mLogic mLink R
Netstor TurboBox NA211TB Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Enclosure
Other World Computing OWC Mercury Helios PCIe Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis
Sonnet Echo Express Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis for PCIe Cards
Sonnet Echo Express II Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis for PCIe Cards
Sonnet Echo Express Pro Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis for PCIe Cards
Sonnet Echo Express SE
Sonnet Echo Express III-D Desktop Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis
Sonnet Echo Express III-R Rackmount Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis
Sonnet Echo Express SE II Thunderbolt 2 Expansion Chassis
There are also a couple with built-in storage adapters:
Netstor NA211TB-LD Thunderbolt Storage and PCIe Expansion
Netstor NA333TB 3U 16-bay Thunderbolt Storage and PCIe Expansion