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
Talk about good timing: Hot off the heels of EMC and NetApp’s battle-royal for Data Domain, Nexsan, in partnership with Falconstor has just announced a dedupe solution of their own: DeDupe SG (Speed and Green).
DeDupe SG takes the best of both companies and welds them into one very nice package
Add to this mix remote replication with global dedupe, NAS interface and the ability to handle multiple streams from multiple applications and it appears there is a new player that is sure to be on folks’ short list for dedupe projects.
If you are looking for a data storage”safe deposit box” that is secure, auditable, and protected against disaster, then we’d like to introduce you to Nexsan’s Assureon secure online disk archive.
Assureon at a glance:
Assureon Key Features:
Markets for Assureon:
Contact us today for more info.
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
And you still get all the things that made these boxes a hit to begin with:
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.
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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:
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.
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:
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.
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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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
Contact us today if you’d like more info.