How many hard drives do you have in your enterprise? What happens when you need to upgrade one of those drives or replace a bad drive? Can you take out the old drive and swap in a new one in a matter of seconds? Or is it a more time-consuming process?
    In today’s enterprises with vast storage demands, where it’s vital to keep drives up and running and be able to quickly upgrade or replace failing drives, time is of the essence. iStar’s trayless product lineup, including its new tray-less M-Series rackmount server chassis, can simplify a time-consuming process.

A Less Tedious Task

    “The trayless products are designed for people who would like to have a simple way to install and change hard drives in a computer, especially in multiple hard drive storage systems,” says Luke Yang, iStar product manager. “Most of the major manufacturers are still focused on offering chassis and backplanes with trays.”
    The concept of a trayless chassis is really quite simple: make it less tedious to replace hard drives without sacrificing security or manageability. The idea for the products came about after time spent analyzing some of the biggest user frustrations with storage server chassis.
    “In the past years, system integrators and engineers realized that it is tedious work to put multiple hard drives onto

trays to build a storage unit,” Yang says. “It can be very time-consuming to mount hard drives to trays with screws,

incorporates a key lock to secure the hard drive in place, ensuring no one can access the hard drive unless he’s supposed to.

or mini-ITX motherboard; and is compatible with ATX and mini redundant power supplies.
    M-280-MATX. A built-to-order 2U rackmount chassis for up to eight drives. Has four low-profile expansion slots; room for a 9.6 x 9.6-inch microATX or mini-ITX motherboard; and is compatible with ATX power supplies.
    M-140-ITX. A 1U rack-mount chassis for up to four drives. Has one low-profile expansion slot; room for a 6.7 x 6.7-inch mini-ITX motherboard; and a built-in 250W Flex PSU.
    All have great value, Yang says, making it affordable to add trayless features to your storage setup. “In addition to the money that customers spend to get such convenient and useful products, iStar provides great after-sales service and support.”

iStar Trayless Rackmount Server Chassis

• Trayless, hot-swappable hard drive design allows for quick and easy drive swaps • Available in 1U to 4U versions, with room for four to 16 hot-swap 3.5-inch drives • Include a built-in key lock

(888) 989-1189 www.istarusa.com www.TheTrayless.com

    In a traditional storage server chassis or hard disk tower, Yang says when there is a bad hard drive that needs to be taken out, users have to unscrew the drive, put a new drive on, put the screws back on, and insert the new drive back into the system. He says some iStar customers would stock extra caddies to reduce the time the process takes, but that’s really not a convenient option. “So we thought, why not design something that users can simply take hard drives out and put hard drives back in a split second.”

Secure, Lightweight

    The biggest advantage to the trayless design is the convenience of easily taking the drives out and putting them back in, Yang says, but at the same time, the design reduces the weight of the drive carrier or chassis itself.
    iStar made sure the tray-less design is also secure, as it

Product Lineup

    The iStar trayless products include individual drives, towers, and a new M-Series tray-less rackmount server chassis lineup in four versions that all have power and hard drive activity indicators and include peer-to-peer SATA ports on the backplane to support the latest hot-swappable 3.5-inch SAS and SATA hard drives:
    M-4160-ATX. A built-to-order 4U rackmount chassis capable of holding up to 16 drives and one slim optical drive. Has seven expansion slots; room for a 12 x 9.6-inch ATX, micro-ATX, or mini-ITX motherboard; and is compatible with ATX and mini redundant power supplies.
    M-3120-ATX. A built-to-order 3U rackmount chassis with room for up to 12 drives and one slim optical drive. Has four expansion slots; room for a 12 x 9.6-inch ATX, microATX,