SGI Delves into Storage

Mountain View, CA, firm SGI announced this week a new and revamped line of storage products that fly under the InfiniteStorage banner. The product line will encompass hardware and software modeled after the company’s experience in developing high-end systems that typically manipulate vast amounts of complex data.

SGI is not new to the storage scene; organizations such as the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center have long made space in their storage environments for SGI. Nonetheless, the company’s name is more synonymous with high-end graphics and complex computer modeling than storage systems.

Branching out somewhat, the company is introducing its new line of hardware that includes the InfinteStorage NAS 2000. The system is available in capacities from 48 TB to 112 TB and is capable of maximum bandwidth performance of 400 MB/Sec. The high-end Power model ships with 8 600 MHz MIPS processors, 8 GB of memory, and can be configured with up to seven gigabit Ethernet ports and up to fourteen 2Gb Fibre Channel ports.

Also joining the InfinteStorage line-up are the SAN 2000 and SAN 3000. Both models were developed to provide high availability, scalability, and file sharing among multiple operating systems. In addition to supporting SGI’s own Octane and Origin hosts, the 2000 and 3000 also plays well with Solaris 8, UNIX, and Windows (NT4 SP6 and above).

Both models offer a maximum capacity of 224 TB by employing fourteen 10,000 RPM Fibre Channel drives, each capable of storing 146 GB. The 2000 can provide bandwidth up to 400 MB per second, while the 3000 doubles that figure, reaching speeds of up to 800 MB per second.

The SAN 2000 and SAN 3000 are powered by the 64-bit CXFS file system, which can manage maximum file sizes of 9 million TB and a maximum file system size of 18 million TB. Also supported are NFS V2/V3, CIFS, and TCP. Management functions include dynamic capacity and volume expansion, performance monitoring, and virtualization options provided by XVM Volume Manager.

Software upgrades include version 3.0 of the company’s aforementioned CXFS shared file system. The software enables networked applications and users to concurrently share data without replicating files. The latest version adds Linux and AIX to the list of supported operating systems, which already included Windows, IRIX, and Solaris.

Rounding out the InfiniteStorage launch is version 2.9 of the firm’s Data Migration Facility (DMF). This data lifecycle utility virtualizes storage data and provides automatic data migration across different storage devices including online disks, near-line disks, and tape.

SGI’s line of InfiniteStorage products is currently available via SGI and its worldwide partners.

This story originally appeared on Enterprise IT Planet.

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