Scale Datacom’s Data Storage Blog

One of the standout features in Compellent’s long list of great features is their Data Progression. What it does is autonomously classify and move data at the block level between tiers of storage based on frequency of use.

This has several benefits, all of them big:

• Save money by storing inactive data on cheaper, larger capacity drives
• Improve the overall SAN performance by keeping only high-traffic data on the faster drives
• Reduce administrative overhead by doing all of this autonomously - no intervention required

Surprisingly, most midrange SAN’s out there do not do this out of the box like Compellent; usually requiring either manual transfer of data between tiers or a 3rd party software layer which adds cost and complexity.

More info can be found on our Compellent Mini-Site

We’ve always had a good iSCSI SAN solution for our customers (read:EqualLogic) but have never had a true enterprise-class EMC-killer solution on the fibre side…until now.

Scale Datacom is very proud to announce that we are now a Compellent Business Partner and able to offer our customers Compellent’s entire line of award-winning virtualized SAN products.

The nice thing about Compellent is that their solution does it all: Fibre and iSCSI SAN as well as NAS in a single, easy-admin environment. Also, in addition to enterprise features like snapshots, thin provisioning and remote replication, Compellent also offers the ability to automatically migrate data across different storage tiers while data remains online. This ensures that your data is on the most performance and cost-appropriate hardware and makes Compellent a great choice for everything from MS Exchange and SQL to VMware and Web Operations.

Their recent win as InfoWorld’s “Best SAN of the Year 2008″ is further proof that this company has got a product that offers great performance, easy of use and value.

Contact us today to discuss if Compellent is the right solution for your needs.

And check out our new Compellent Mini-Site for more info on this exciting solution.

Boy is this getting old…or is it? Like our beloved New England Patriots, EqualLogic can do wrong these days. InfoWorld has voted EqualLogic “Best iSCSI SAN of the Year” for 2008. They are going to need a larger mantle for all their trophies.

Full press release here…

Yet another feather in their cap and further validation that the architecture path they’ve charted is the best for high-performance, feature-rich iSCSI SAN’s.

Let us know if you’d like to discuss how EqualLogic’s line of virtualized iSCSI SAN’s can help your organization.

EqualLogic has just announced a new member to its SAS-based iSCSI array family: the PeerStorage 3700X (PS-3700X). This new array boasts 16 x 400GB 10k rpm SAS drives, giving it a raw capacity of 6.4TB.

This nudges out its smaller brother, the PS3600X (16 x 300GB) which will be terminated at the close of this year. The 3700X offers 1.6TB more capacity than the outgoing 3600X and carries a List Price on $1000 higher. 1.6TB for $1000 is a GREAT deal no matter how you slice it…and an even better deal given that it comes w/ EqualLogic’s full compliment of features, like Snapshots, Remote Replication, MultiPath I/O, Thin Provisioning, Phone Home etc…

The 3700X is available for order today with first shipments hitting the UPS trucks by October 31th.

If you’d like pricing on this new array, simply drop us a line.

EqualLogic’s blogger extraordinaire Marc Farley has posted a great video on his Storage @ Work blog of their Director of Product Management, Eric Schott, explaining how their remote replication works.

Click here for the video

In keeping with their corporate mantra “simplifying networked storage”, EqualLogic’s remote replication implementation is truly incredible because of its simplicity and as well as performance. If you have remote site data that you’d like to centralize or are thinking of implementing a disaster recovery plan, EqualLogic’s PeerStorage iSCSI SAN arrays have the features, horsepower and reliability to be the backbone of your disk storage needs.

Contact us today if you’d like to discuss EqualLogic’s products/features in further detail. Or try our new EqualLogic Quote Generator

Everyone is looking at virtualization these days. And those that aren’t aren’t because they already have it. VMware…The undisputed king of server virtualization (and new Scale Datacom Partner!) is doing it part across this great land to help IT organizations save time and money by greatly increasing the efficiency and flexibility of their server hardware assets. So, you’re considering VM’ing your server environment…or you’ve just VM’ed it. Now what? One word: storage.

Going with a virtualized disk storage platform affords you the same budget savings and operational agility that VMware does on the server side. Another partner of ours, EqualLogic, offers full virtualization on all their iSCSI SAN arrays and is a perfect compliment to a VMware environment.

EqualLogic’s ability to scale capacity (from 1-168TB), mix, match and reallocate RAID sets, disks types, speeds, and sizes on the fly all in a completely redundant, enterprise-class environment insures that your organization will be ready as its data storage requirements change.

Here’s an overview PDF

Let us know if you’d like to discuss how virtualized storage (or servers) can help you.

When we say “exabyte” here we’re not talking about everyone’s favorite small-to-midsize tape backup company…We’re talking about 1000 Petabytes. As in near-limitless scaling. Granted, there are not that many organizations on earth that have that sort of data requirement, then again, we all thought 1 terabyte was an awful lot of capacity 8 years ago.

NEC’s HYDRAstor is also a perfect fit for organizations that deal in tera and petabytes as well. Thru the use of its virtualized architecture, HYDRAstor is a a true pay-as-you-grow environment where you can add capacity (storage nodes) and performance (accelerator) nodes as you need it. HYDRAstor also uses NEC’s “Data ReDux” technology (aka: data deduplication) which eliminates redundant data, making efficient use of all available capacity.

Of course, in a system that can grow on this scale, HYDRAstor comes with all the “platinum” features you’d expect: full redundancy, effortless management, failure resiliency, zero-downtime expansion and the like.

If you would like more information on this new storage platform, please let us know.

To quote the late great Fred Sanford, “This is the big one Elizabeth!”….Scale Datacom LLC is proud to announce we have signed with VMware and is now an authorized VMware Partner. The courses were all passed, the steak dinners all paid for and now we can offer VMware’s industry-leading defining virtualization solutions.

Unless you’ve been in a cave or stuck on an island ala Tom Hanks in ‘Cast Away’, you undoubtedly know that virtualization is THE key initiative being looked at and implemented in IT departments the world over. The reasons are many and all compelling:

• Lower operational costs
• Greatly improved utilization of server hardware
• Ease of centralized management
• Increased performance for your user communities
• Improved agility in reacting to new demands
  

Contact us today to discuss how virtualization can help your company lower costs and while improving the operational efficiency of your IT organization.