Network-attached storage vendor ONStor this week mixed scalability and performance with the introduction of a new line of NAS gateways. (Compare NAS products)

Named Cougar, the new 6000 series NAS gateways are aimed at enterprise-size businesses and content-rich organizations.

Cougar scales to as much as 4 petabytes of storage and provides 400,000 SpecSFS Ops in a cluster configuration. Compared to systems from NetApp, Cougar has twice the price/performance, according to ONStor’s claims.

Cougar features the ONStor EverScale architecture, a modular and redundant system that supports heterogeneous storage virtualization and the use of multi-core network processors. As many as 18 cores may be used per filer.

The Cougar is available in two models – the Cougar 6520 and 6720. Each supports as many as 4 filers in a cluster, and scales from 2 petabytes to 4 petabytes. They have maximum performance of 3Gbps. They also feature eight 4Gbps Fibre Channel ports, 8Gigabit Ethernet ports, built-in TCP offload and 12GB to 16GB of memory. Each features performance of 800Mbps on sequential reads and 700Mbps on sequential writes.

Both models have dual controllers – ONStor’s Bobcat gateway has one – and consumes about 300 watts of power in its 2U high form factor.

The Cougar 6520 with clustering software starts at $125,000; the 2-filer 6720 starts at $300,000.

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW.