CARLSBAD, Calif., July 7, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: HILL), a world-class provider of entry-level and midrange storage solutions for OEMs and system integrators (SIs), today announced it has completed qualification of Western Digital's new 2TB enterprise SATA drives, and is gearing up to launch what is anticipated to be the world's first generally available 24TB RAID storage arrays featuring a compact 2U footprint.

Slated for general availability later this month, the Dot Hill arrays leverage Western Digital's enterprise-class WD RE4-GP 2TB hard drives with WD GreenPower Technology(TM) - the world's highest capacity drives - which also offer energy efficiency.

In laboratory testing, the Dot Hill 24TB RAID array outfitted with the WD RE4-GP 2TB drives demonstrated an up to 60% reduction in power usage over that used by traditional 1TB drive technology.

"Capacity-hungry applications that have reached a dead-end with floor space now have a new lease on life," said Andy Mills, vice president of marketing, Dot Hill. "With today's announcement, Dot Hill and WD are at the forefront of a major milestone in the storage industry. The combination of Dot Hill 2U arrays and WD RE4-GP 2TB hard drives, which scale to 216TB total storage capacity, maximize data center space and reduce costs on cooling and power."

Dot Hill's move to more power-efficient drives is the latest in a series of initiatives undertaken by Dot Hill to help lower power consumption and improve efficiencies in the data center.

WD RE4-GP 2TB hard drives are eco-friendly, cool-and-quiet 3.5-inch disk drives based on WD's third-generation WD GreenPower Technology, and which use an industry-leading 500GB per platter to realize excellent performance at energy-saving speeds. WD RE4-GP 2TB drives are available today with Dot Hill 2330, 2530, 2730, 2730T, and 5730 storage arrays as well as the company's 2130 JBOD expansion arrays.

"Businesses are looking to increase capacity and performance while finding ways to trim power costs," said Tom McDorman, vice president and general manager of WD's enterprise storage solutions business unit. "We've found a way to do both with the new WD RE4-GP 2TB hard drive. With this innovative enterprise drive offering, leading RAID vendors such as Dot Hill can now easily double the capacity of their storage arrays to address customers' burgeoning storage needs."

"Today, the range of use cases for capacity-optimized storage systems is very broad and growing: digital media, data archiving, secondary storage, etc.," said Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, storage systems, with Framingham, Mass.-based industry analyst firm IDC. "IDC expects the share of capacity-optimized terabytes shipped into enterprise storage to increase from 43% in 2008 to over 70% in 2013. Dot Hill's quick move to integrate 2TB SATA drives into its storage products is a positive for the company, and is aligned well with customer expectations for high-capacity low-cost storage solutions in an optimal footprint."

Dot Hill R/Evolution Architecture Gives Customers a Competitive Advantage

Dot Hill 2000 Series and 5000 Series arrays are based on the highly modular, highly dynamic Dot Hill R/Evolution Architecture, which is designed to rapidly evolve and support OEM technology, enabling OEMs to quickly achieve sustainable competitive advantage in the volume storage market. The R/Evolution Architecture delivers the high levels of performance, storage density, time-to-market leadership and -- most importantly -- configuration flexibility required by volume storage customers. Using modular and bladed components, the R/Evolution Architecture provides OEMs with a "configure-to-product" model (not just "configure-to-order") that lets them customize volume storage market solutions quickly, easily and precisely. This unique model revolutionizes how OEMs bring storage products to market by ensuring opportunities for product differentiation, even between different companies that simultaneously OEM products from Dot Hill.