Auspex Announces Storage Controller

Auspex Systems, Inc. , a provider of enterprise storage solutions, announced the forthcoming release of a storage controller that it said will enable enterprises with Storage Area Networks (SANs) from virtually any vendor to access and share files via Network Attached Storage (NAS) protocols.

Scheduled to ship in April 2002, the company said the controller will require 5U or 8.75 inches of standard 19″ rack space and enable enterprises to utilize the file service capabilities of the NAS architecture without requiring the purchase of disk subsystems dedicated to the NAS server. It will operate with all major SAN storage subsystems, including those from LSI Logic, EMC, Compaq and Hitachi Data Systems.

“Giving SAN administrators the ability to provide file services without investing in a separate storage infrastructure, re-architecting the whole environment or being locked into a single vendor is a major step in reducing the costs of storage management,” said Robert Passmore, a research director at Gartner Group in Stamford, CT. “It means that IT staff will be able to get optimal use out of their existing storage, select new storage according to criteria like price and performance rather than vendor name, and eliminate unnecessary administrative effort. These are important milestones on the road to better storage resource management.”

Auspex said its controller will serve as a bridge between IP-based clients and SANs.The company said it allows information stored in SANs to be shared without the need for application servers, data manipulation or additional
hardware; enables SAN administrators to assign excess disk capacity in the SAN pool to information requiring access by the storage controller; permits the use of disparate disks, tapes and other storage media for file serving; allows enterprises with more than one storage subsystem within their SAN to access multiple storage pools from a single
controller, even if the storage subsystems are from different vendors; enhances SAN performance by leveraging the virtual storage capabilities of Auspex’s Xtreme Virtual Partitions to stripe Logical Unit Numbers (LUNs) from multiple controllers into a single logical volume; and permits synchronous data replication between heterogeneous storage by using Auspex’s Xtreme Virtual Partitions to mirror and stripe between multiple RAID controllers.