Dell EqualLogic Storage Array (PS5500E)

Dell announced new storage array today. Dell EqualLogic PS Storage Array, PS5500E, a virtualized iSCSI SAN Server, that can offer intelligence and automation with fault tolerance. All PS Series storage arrays include SAN configuration features and capabilities that can automatically detect network topology, create RAID sets and detect faults.

Architecture

PS Series storage arrays are designed in keeping the requirements like Automate management tasks, ease of scaling, providing a single and shared storage service, complying to the standards, highest possible availability and cost effective. PS Series servers has three essential components, PS Array, PS Group and Volumes. PS Series Groups are comprised of one or more Arrays/Disks. PS Volumes are comprised of one or more PS Groups of similar type. PS Series Groups exports the volumes to the host as LUNs.

Features

The primary and interesting feature is Auto-Snapshot manager. This snapshot manager provides the visibility of the snapshot status, schedules and backup job status. The biggest advantage is the recovery level. You can recover a single file, volume or guest machines in total. This is the clear and clever difference between Symantec Netbackup.

Can scaleup from 24TB to 48TB.
Pooled and Tiered Storage with Thin provisioning
Automatic load balancing
Multipath I/O
Smart copy for MS Exchange, SQL Server and Windows Files systems.
Volume cloning, snapshot and volume management
Automated management

Missing Features.
Though the new PS Storage server (PS5500E) has its own advantages it is deprived of key features like 10Gig Ethernet support, SSD support, Hard disk spin-downs and Dedupe.

To know more about the product visit the following link.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/dell_ps5000e

Database Archiving Software from HP

For the last couple of years, there were solutions on file archiving and retention. Lately there was a focus on data archiving using Deduplication. Now here is a solution from HP for archiving Database.

HP has upgraded its solution (Reference Information Manager for Databases) by adding XML encapsulation to promote long term archiving and retention. This XML feature has few more advantages like quick searching, de-duplication, e-discovery and ease of indexing.

There is a new GUI added in this revision. Designer provides a graphical view of database tables. This helps any end user to write queries by just drag and dropping the tables.

This Archiving software is comprised of Designer, Data movement, Archive Access, Job Engine and Management GUI Console modules. It also supports Oracle and SQL Server database primarily. Versions are as below.

• Oracle 9i Release 2 (9.2.0.6 and above)
• Oracle 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2 and above)
• Oracle 11g
• SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (SP2 and above)

By using the Designer and run time platform, end users can build their own archiving modules. Designer is an easy interface for modeling tables and applying busing rules and company specific policies. To know more about the product please visit here.

VMWare eases Disaster Recovery woes

Yesterday VMWare announced the availability of new disaster recovery solution.

Site Recovery Manager offers non-disruptive testing and automated failover. Site Recovery Manager can manage failover from production datacenters to disaster recovery sites. It can stage failover between two sites with active workloads without any real performance issue.

Site Recovery manager offers to test the recovery plans automatically in an isolated testing environment that is independent of hardware configuration and testing can happen without affecting production systems. It is possible to test the disaster recovery plans automatically thus by avoids painful manual interventions.

Click here to learn more about VMWare Site Recovery Manager.

Site Recovery manager cannot replicate the data by itself but the end user / administrator has to rely on the storage based replication from VMWare partners.

The product will be made available in next 30 days.

HP unveils ExDs9100

HP today anounced a highly scalable storage system named ExDS9100 (Extreme Data Storage System). ExDS9100 can scale in petabytes while the minimum configuration is a cluster of four blades and 246 TB of storage. This product mainly focuses the WEB2.0 applications.

ExDS9100 will be based on HP’s C-Class Blade systems. This allows to scale the storage and power independently. The maximum configuration is ten high-availability storage blocks totaling 820 TB of raw capacity. The performance block be can easily scaled up to a maximum configuration of 16 blades with up to 12.8 cores per unit for an 3.2 GB/second of raw performance.

ExDS9100 can be managed from a single management interface. This system can handle everything from a live cluster configuration to file and storage system provisioning.

This product is expected to hit the market at fourth quarter of 2008.

To know more about ExDS9100, visit the below link.

http://www.hp.com/go/extremestorage

To read the press release, visit the below link.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2008/080506xa.html

Virtual Array from HP for SMB

HP brings enterprise level virtual array to SMB market. Few days back HP announced its new Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) product EVA4400. EVA4400 will be replacement for EVA4100.

EVA4400 offers high-end virtualization features like a dual-redundant hardware architecture that supports local and remote replication software. Storage provisioning is available with HP StorageWorks EVA Dynamic Capacity Management (DCM) software.

The HP StorageWorks 8Gb Simple SAN Connection portfolio offers 8-gig Fibre Channel technology for the EVA4400 for the same price as 4-gig. It includes management software, a 20-port capable 8Gb switch and a PCI Express host bus adapter (HBAs).

 EVA4400 can manage 8 enclosures(96 drives) to the maximum and has HSV300 / HSV300-S controllers. It can support upto 96TB of total capacity. EVA4400 supports the EVA iSCSI Connectivity Gateway, EVA File Services, and the VLS EVA Gateway. HP states that support for the IP Distance Gateway will follow shortly.

IEEE International Workshop on Storage Network Architecture and Parallel I/Os (SNAPI08)

The tremendous need for storage capacity and I/O performance has become a critical factor for computing systems, generally, from enterprise systems to computational science and everything in between. As a result, disk I/O and data storage on which data reside have clearly become “first class citizens” in the modern information world. In addition, parallelism is now ubiquitous in computing, from multi-core processors within a single enclosure to massively parallel I/O systems that span many racks of equipment. SNAPI08 brings together experts from academia and industry to discuss cutting edge research on parallel and distributed data storage technologies, storage interconnects, and storage management.

Some of the topics of interest are:  

1. Networked storage manageability, reliability, and availability
2. Networked storage performance and scalability
3. File systems, object-based storage, block-level storage
4. NAS and SAN architectures
5. Storage networking: e.g. Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, IP Storage, iSCSI
6. Parallel I/O architectures
7. Caching and consistency
8. Evaluation of networked storage architectures
9. Storage management system
10. Distributed metadata management
11. Integration of storage and computation

Follow the links for more information,

http://www.snapi08.wustl.edu

http://storageconference.org

Data Center management tools from NetApp

Server virtualization is masking of server resources, including the number and identity of individual physical servers, processors, and operating systems, from server users. Server Virtualization paves the way for cost reduction at data centers but brings up a set of new challenges on Data management.

When it comes to backing up the data, virtual servers can easily throttle up the server. A data center administrator will certainly need a solution to manage backups, recovery and replication.

NetApp’s SnapManager for ESX environment can solve these issues. SnapManager is a data management solution which can ease the backup, restore and replication. SnapManager integrates NetApp’s Snapshot, SnapRestore and SnapMirror technologies and can provide granular recovery of virtual machines.

NetApp has came up another tool for automatic provisioning. This can erode human errors, improve capacity utilization and policy driven. Provision Manager can provide dashboards of view of data usage, capacity utilization, space management events, SnapShot usage, etc.

To learn more visit, SnapManager & Provision Manager.

Storage Conference

MSST2008 25th IEEE Symposium on Massive Storage Systems and Technologies

Massive storage systems require storage technologies, scalable data systems, and operations concepts capable of managing hundreds of petabytes of data. MSST2008, scheduled for September 22 – 25, 2008 at the Sheraton Inner Harbor, in Baltimore, Maryland, will take a detailed look at the technologies and deployments capable of managing such volumes of data.

MSST2008 will be organized around the following themes.

• Scalable Storage Meets Petaflops.
• Massive Digital Archiving Systems.
• Massive Data Ingest and Analysis.

Additional information on MSST2008 and related workshops will be posted on the conference web site: http://storageconference.org, as it becomes available.

2008 International Conference on Networking, Architecture, and Storage

This conference intends to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to discuss cutting edge research on networking (wireline and wireless), high-performance computer architecture, and parallel and distributed data storage technologies.

Some of the topics of interest include but are not limited to:

    * Network applications and services

    * Network architectures and management

    * Optical networks

    * Peer-to-peer communications and networks

    * Routing protocols

    * Security, trust, and privacy

    * Self-organizing networks

    * Sensor nets and embedded systems

    * Virtual and overlay networks

    * Wireless networks and protocols

    * High-performance I/O systems

    * Innovative hardware/software trade-offs

    * Storage Manageability, Reliability, Availability, and Security

    * Storage Performance and Scalability

    * File systems, Object-based storage, block-level storage

    * Parallel I/O architectures

    * Evaluation of storage architectures

    * Storage management software

Visit the following link for more information

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~taoxie/nas/

Nexus 7000 Series from Cisco

Yesterday, Cisco announced a data center switching platform named “Nexus 7000 Series”. This launch comes after DCX Backbone was released by Brocade.

The Nexus 7000 is designed as highly scalable, robust and off modular platform. It can  deliver up to 15 terabits per second of switching capacity in a single chassis, supporting up to 512 10 Gbps Ethernet and future delivery of 40- and 100-Gbps Ethernet.

Nexus 7000 Series is powered by the advanced operating system “NX-OS”. NX-OS combines the best of Cisco’s SAN-OS, Layer 2 switching, Layer 3 routing protocols, and advanced virtualization capabilities into one reliable operating system with the familiar Cisco IOS interface.

Nexus 700 Series also supports Cisco’s TrustSec for a trusted traffic to ensure the data integrity using AES-128 encryption on every port of Nexus 7000. And Nexus 7000 is fully compatible VFrame DC. Cisco’s Data Center Network Manager can pickup the Nexus 7000 series to manage the data center networks.

Virtualized Storage for SMBs from EMC and Dell

EMC introduced a new variant of CLARiion yesterday. EMC calls the new system the AX4, and Dell brands it as AX4-5.  

The variant, AX4 can scale from 3 terabytes of capacity to 60 terabytes. It supports SATA and SAS mix and match up to the count of 60 drives in total. This new array is targeted for SMB and available in entry and advanced configurations. iSCSI and FC interfaces are supported for both the entry and advanced configurations. The Entry level configuration can scale up to 10 hosts while the Advanced Configuration can be scaled up to 64 hosts. 

AX4 is designed to integrate with VMware and features high availability and reliability. It features a mirrored cache design, built-in standby power supply, continuous disk consistency checking and hot-swappable components to help ensure availability and reliability of the data.  

It also includes Virtual LUN technology which can be used in conjunction with VMWare’s Storage VMotion to enable non distruptive storage migration. In addition, the CLARiiON AX4 supports EMC’s leading replication software, including EMC MirrorView, EMC SAN Copy, EMC RepliStor and EMC Replication Manager to provide the highest levels of uptime in VMware environments.  The CLARiiON AX4 has been certified by VMware and will be included in the VMware Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide.

AX4 may be integrated with XenSource virtualization and Microsoft’s HyperV in near future.