July 2nd, 2009
Dell-EqualLogic’s newly-released SAN Headquarters (SAN HQ) is a fantastic app. With thousands of customers and implementations in pretty much every country on the planet, SAN Headquarters couldn’t have come at a better time….and like all new features for Dell-EqualLogic customers, its a free download.
So what is it? Its a management app that presents a single-pane-of-glass for all of your EqualLogic Groups wherever they may be.
In the past if you had multiple EqualLogic Groups, whether they be in the same building or a different country, you had to log into them each seperately to admin and monitor them. SAN HQ brings them all under one roof and adds some really nice I/O, Capacity and Network Performance tools.
SAN HQ is compatible with all generations of EqualLogic product including the new Ps 6000 and 4000 Series.
Contact us today if you like more info on SAN HQ or any of Dell-EqualLoigic’s award-winning line of products.
Posted in Disaster Recovery, Virtualization, iSCSI | No Comments »
July 1st, 2009
Cloud Storage is one of the big buzz’s lately and for some very good reasons. Most though, have not seriously considered it a viable option for storing their primary data…for some very good reasons: lack of good file system support, latency, lack of features etc…
Zetta, recently out of stealth mode, looks to change that in a big way. With a suite of enterprise-class features (snapshots, replication etc), industry-standard interfaces (CIFS, NFS etc..) and guranteed data security, privacy and performance guarantees, their offering is going where none have gone before. They leverage that on top of the already-known advantages of cloud storage:
- No hardware/software to purchase and manage
- True “Pay-As-You-Grow” Model
- Unlimited, On-Demand Scalability
Made up of industry veterans and well-funded, Zetta is poised to become a household name in this rapidly growing market segment.
Contact us for more info.
Our Zetta Mini-Site
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June 29th, 2009
So you’re a storage admin managing a fair amount of data and you’ve got problems: bandwidth constraints, latency issues, unpredictable growth and a budget that won’t seem to let you solve them.
Enter Nimbus Data’s flagship MH860…
- 10Gigabit native connectivity? … Check
- Massive System Cache? …Check (24GB)
- Block (iSCSI) and File-Level (NAS) under one roof? …Check
- Solid-State Drive Support? …Check
- Mix and match any combination of RAID set and drive type? …Check
- Scale as you need to 200TB+? …Check
Add to that comprehensive environment reporting, power-consumption tools, and pre-data-migration benchmarking and the list of competitors that can match the MH860 becomes very slim. Factor in initial cost and $/TB over time and the list shrinks further still.
Contact us today for more technical or pricing info.
Our Nimbus Mini-Site
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June 24th, 2009
The above are the 4 words that best describe Nexsan’s fantastic SASbeast SAN array.
Dense: The SASbeast fits 42 drives into a 4U rackmount chassis allowing you to cram more storage into a far smaller footprint.
Fast: Having 42 drives all connected to the same high-speed backplane as the controllers speeds up data movement and the 2GB of cache and dual processing cores per controller certainly doesn’t hurt either.
Flexible: the SASbeast can accomodate either or both 15k rpm SAS and 7200rpm SATA drives in the same chassis allowing for multiple disk tiers under one backplane. In addition, its controllers offer both Fibre and iSCSI ports for additional SAN fabric flexibility
Efficient: Utilizing Nexsan’s award-winning AutoMAID technology, the SASbeast gives you complete control over the various stages of drive spin-down, thus greatly reduce your power and cooling requirements.
Our Nexsan Mini-Site
Contact us today if you’d like more info.
Posted in Fibre Channel, iSCSI | No Comments »
June 23rd, 2009
Nexsan’s DATAbeast is no joke: with an expansive list of enterprise-class features (ie: replication, snapshots, proxy volumes etc..) and a capacity ceiling of 4PB, it is designed to store massive amounts of data and keep it protected and performing well.
Basically, the DATAbeast is a controller and switching framework that fronts their award-winning, ultra-dense storage arrays (you can also use it to front your existing SAN storage). Nexsan’s SATAbeast and SASbeast arrays are an ideal backend storage for the DATAbeast with 42-drives of SATA or SAS in only 4U of rackspace and Nexsan’s AutoMAID energy-saving technology which allows granular control of drive spin dow.
The DATAbeast offers this capacity out as both block level and file-level (NFS/CIFS) and layers a lot of nice features
Given this, the competitive advantages are many:
- Huge power/cooling savings
- Greatly reduced datacenter fllorspace requirements
- Store more data in less racks
- All-inclusive feature model doesn’t nickel-dime you to death
- Longer product lifecycle than the competition
- You most likely won’t outgrow it
- Its hardware-agnostic so future arrays are compatible
- Extremely easy to administer
- Existing storage can be rolled into it for further savings
DATAbeast Datasheet (pdf)
Our Nexsan Mini-Site
Contact us today if you’d like more info or discuss if the DATAbeast is right for your needs.
Posted in Fibre Channel, NAS, Virtualization | No Comments »
June 23rd, 2009
The Dell-EqualLogic juggernaut continues on with a recent announcement of the PS-4000 Series of virtualized iSCSI SAN arrays.
Geared towards small-medium businesses (SMB) and remote offices, The PS-4000 Series will slot in below PS-the 6000 Series and offers a very attractive price point. The main technical differences between these 2 lines are that the 4000 Series will have 2 x live iSCSI ports/array vs 4 for the 6000 Series, scaled back controller innards and can only scale to 2 x arrays in a Group (vs 12 for the 6000 Series)…there are a few other snapshot and volume count limitations but those are the big differences….other than that: same drives, feature set and cache.
There will be a PS-4000E (SATA drives), PS-4000X (10k rpm SAS) and PS-4000XV (15k rpm SAS) models.
You can also integrate PS-4000 Series arrays into your existing PS Group, giving you yet another tier of storage. Scenarios for this could be an inexpensive tier for nearline storage or a remote replication target at a DR site.
Our Dell-EqualLogic Mini-Site
Contact us to discuss if the new PS-4000 Series is right for your next project.
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June 23rd, 2009
Nimbus Data is a relative newcomer to the virtualized IP storage market but they are worth a serious look…yes, they are that good.
Coming to the party a little late has allowed Nimbus to incorporate the best of the competition into their product while leaving out the less-than-desirable aspects of those vendors.
Examples:
- They offer iSCSI and NAS (NFS and CIFS) into the product (ie: NetApp)
- They follow the “all-inclusive” feature model..the price of the array includes all features (ie: EqualLogic)
- They are 10-Gigabit Capable out of the box (ie: LeftHand)
- A four-year-old could admin this product (ie: EqualLogic)
They’ve also fixed a few shortcomings of others:
- They’re cost/TB drops drastically as you scale out
- They scale expansion trays via 12Gbps SAS links
- They’re support costs are reasonable
- They also have the option of an on-site spares kit
…and they do this at a price that beats pretty much everyone
If you’re looking to virtualize your storage for VMware, Hyper-V or XenServer, Nimbus Data is worth a serious look.
Our Nimbus Mini-Site
Contact us today for technical, competitive or pricing info
Posted in Disaster Recovery, NAS, Virtualization, iSCSI | No Comments »