Archive for the ‘Fibre Channel’ Category

Dell Buys 3PAR for $1.15bil….wait…what?!?

Monday, August 16th, 2010

I awoke early this morning to an email at the top of my inbox from one of my analyst buddies, “Call when you can to discuss the Dell/3Par deal…”  …OK…Wait…what?!   I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was reading it right, gulped the rest of my coffee and gave him a ring.

So, yeah…Dell has agreed to acquire 3Par for ballpark of $1.15billion…Billion with a “B”.   Seems high to me what what do I know about company valuations.  Maybe someone else was bidding on them too..

This is interesting for a number of reasons not the least of which is the further strain it puts on Dell’s already-rocky (despite what they say in the press) relationship with EMC.  First, Dell buys EqualLogic for $1.6billion, and in doing so adds a major competitor to EMC to their product offering…Both parties shrug it off to the media but if you’re a fan of logic (and who isn’t!) that was a HUGE gut-punch to EMC from essentially their largest partner.  Now they add a large-scale, high-end virtualized storage line and the hand-holding and nervous smiles they display when seen in public together don’t hold much water.   This relationship is on the rocks…It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.

Anyway….As a long-time EqualLogic and Dell Partner we welcome the opportunity to offer 3Par to our customers and think this is a great move by Dell.

Please give us a shout if you’d like to discuss further and/or get technical/pricing info on 3Par.

Posted in Fibre Channel, Large Scale Storage, SAN, Virtualization, iSCSI | 3 Comments »

Nexsan gets onthe Solid State Bandwagon

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

I’ve said it before and, well, I’ll say it again: Nexsan is on a tear.  They’ve recently announced support in their SATA/SASboy and SATA/SASbeast line of arrays for Solid-State Drives (SSD)….this comes just on the heels of support for 2TB SATA in the Beast line.

So, the Beast (4U, 42-bay) and Boy (3U, 14-bay) arrays can now support SATA, 15krpm SAS and SSD’s.   Add their AutoMAID power-saving feature and you’ve got the building blocks for a very robust, dense and power-efficient tiered storage platform….which can scale out to 8PB using their DATAbeast virtualization controllers.

If you’d like more info on Nexsan, please give us a shout.

satabeast

Posted in Backup, Fibre Channel, Green Storage, Large Scale Storage, SAN, iSCSI | 2 Comments »

Nexsan…in a word: “WOW”

Friday, September 18th, 2009

We’re just getting back from Nexsan’s NexStep Expo in Las Vegas and 2 things are clear: our wallets are a little lighter now thanks to the craps table and Nexsan is on a major roll .

Here at Scale Datacom, we see a lot of storage technology from various vendors and when the dust settles there are really only a handful of vendors that we can honestly say are innovating…an Nexsan is definitely one of them.
Nexsan has a rule of not letting too many details out of the bag w/ regards to future products, but the ones we saw were amazing..and we don;t use that word all that much.
I think I’m safe in saying you will definitely see more of what they do best: density.

With the recent qualification of 2TB SATA drives in their SATAbeast and SASbeast arrays, you can now fit an amazing 84TB in only 4U of rackspace and dole it out via iSCSI and Fibre Channel as the controllers can handle both protocols simultaneously.

There are 1 or 2 other LARGE (wink wink) announcements that will coming in the near future, but safe to say, if you are considering Nexsan or currently have it installed you are partnering with one of the industries true leaders in the SAN storage space.

Get all the details at our Nexsan Mini-Site

Posted in Backup, Fibre Channel, Green Storage, Large Scale Storage, iSCSI | 2 Comments »

Best Practices for Solid-State Drives

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Now that most top-tier vendors are including support for solid-state drives (SSD), the question of whether or not to use them in projects is starting to crop up more and more.  “Is it worth the money?”  “How much faster will it be than what we have now?” “Will our apps make use of them?” etc…

SearchStorage has a good article on best practices for solid-state drives.  If you’re thinking/planning on using SSD in your environment its probably a good idea to check it out.

Article here

Posted in Fibre Channel, iSCSI | 2 Comments »

Nexsan Consolidates SATAbeast/SASbeast, Lowers Price

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

For a while now, Nexsan has offered two 42-bay, 4U SAN arrays: the SATA-only SATAbeast and the  SASbeast which allowed you to mix SATA and 15k rpm SAS drives.  The SASbeast also had more powerful  controllers in it.   This begged the quesiton: with the prices so similar why even have the SATAbeast….well that question is being answered.

Nexsan is migrating to one platform, the SASbeast..in a nutshell

  • SATAbeasts will be phased out and migrated to SASbeasts
    • Allowing for SATA and SAS drive tiers in same chassis
  • 2GB Cache is now standard (vs 1GB)
  • Pricing has been dropped substancially

And you still get all the things that made these boxes a hit to begin with:

  • 42-bay, 4U Rackmount Chassis – Ultra-Dense!
  • iSCSI and Fibre Channel Connectivity in same chassis
  • Active-Active Controllers
  • AutoMAID Energy-Saving Feature
  • 3-Year Warranty w/ 24×7 Phone Support

All of the above conspire to make the SASbeast an unbeatable value whether you’re looking for a high-performance or high-capacity solution (or both).   Yes, we said unbeatable…For what you get and what you pay, the SASbeast trumps everything in its class…its not even close.

Contact Us for technical or pricing info.

Our Nexsan Mini-Site

sasbeast

Posted in Backup, Fibre Channel, iSCSI | 2 Comments »

Compellent Remote Replication – Light-Years Ahead

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

As corporate data explodes and the virtualization wave continues to roll across the planet, protecting those environments from disaster is no longer a “nice-to-have” feature..it is a “must-have”.  Traditional data backup only gets you so far and the once expensive and confusing task of remotely replication your data to another site has finally reached the masses.

And if your project hinges on the remote replication piece being bullet-proof, then the list of candidates is short and Compellent should at the top of that list.

Most midrange SAN vendors offer remote replication but their implementations vary greatly, from the simple to the “why is this so confusing?”.  Compellent is the former but their simplicity  masks the powerful features that lie underneath:

  • Setup in 6 clicks
  • Bandwidth shaping and simulation
  • Realtime replication validation/testing
  • Replication templates
  • Synchonrous and Asynchronous options
  • Thin Replication feature consumes less space and bandwidth

Add to this the rest of their award-winning feature set and you have a virtualized storage platform with performance, is simple to admin and will keep your data protected from disaster.

For more info or if you’d like to discuss how Compellent’s DR features might benefit your organization, please contact us.

Our Compellent Mini-Site

partner

Posted in Backup, Disaster Recovery, Fibre Channel, Green Storage, Virtualization, iSCSI | 1 Comment »

Nexsan’s AutoMAID – Greener Storage Starts Here

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Nexsan’s award-winning AutoMAID energy saving feature has been around for quite some but has been getting more and more of the spotlight as the “Green Movement” sweeps the planet.   If power consumption and heat dissipation costs of your data storage equipment are concerns for you, read on.

AutoMAID offers granular control of both individual drives and RAID sets, allowing you to selectively balance between response time and energy savings.   The feature happens transparently and automatically to the host so no extra configuration is needed.

Typical configuration settings:

  • Level 1: Heads Unloaded
    • 15% to 20% savings
  • Level 2: Heads Unloaded, slows to 4000 RPM
    • 35% to 45% savings
  • Level 3: Stops spinning (sleep mode; powered on)
    • 60% to 70% savings

AutoMAID comes standard in every Nexsan SAN array from midsize SATAboy to the multi-petabyte DATAbeast and is so compelling that deals have been won simply by illustrating cost savings to be had by using it.

Contact us today for more info on how Nexsan’s AutoMAID can help you cool off and save money in your data center.

Our Nexsan Mini-Site

SATABeast-AutoMAID

Posted in Backup, Fibre Channel, Green Storage, iSCSI | 6 Comments »

Compellent adds Solid-State Drives

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Mid-Tier SAN juggernaut Compellent has recently announced support for solid-state drives.  The addition makes their already standout features more, well, standout-ish.

Compellent is known for their very slick Automated Data Progression (ADP) and Thin Provisioning and the addition of SSD bolsters this.  Thru ADP, a Compellent SAN only puts the most demanding data on SSD, and can remove it if demand drops over time.  This ensures you’re not wasting the precious (read: expensive) tier w/ seldom-accessed bytes.  Thin Provisioning furthers this by only consuming SSD real estate when data is actually written, not when a data volume is created.

This new announcement makes an already-strong player an absolute  nightmare for the competition.

If I’m EMC am I worried about these guys? yes. yes I am.

Contact us today for more info or if you’d like to schedule a demo to see Compellent in action for yourself.

Our Compellent Mini-Site

ssd_tiers

Posted in Fibre Channel, Virtualization, iSCSI | 3 Comments »

Nexsan’s SASbeast: Dense, Fast, Flexible, Efficient

Tuesday, August 11th, 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.

sasbeast

Posted in Backup, Fibre Channel, Green Storage, iSCSI | 3 Comments »