Enterprise Storage Snapshots

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Enterprise Storage Snapshots offers a weekly wrap-up of what’s going on in the storage industry.Here are our storage news highlights for the week of SNW Spring 2004: NEC debuts a Disaster Recovery solution, Isilon introduces a pair of Isilon IQ Clustered Storage systems, SGI previews its InfiniteStorage Data Lifecycle Management server at SNW, STORServer is set to launch a Lifecycle Management appliance as well, and Spectra Logic ships a new automated tape library.

NEC Debuts Disaster Recovery Solution

NEC has jumped head-first into the enterprise disaster recovery scene with the introduction of its Disaster Recovery Fault Tolerant (FT) Solution, a product designed to help companies recover from virtually any infrastructure system failure while ensuring the ongoing availability and integrity of mission-critical resources.



NEC Disaster Recovery FT Solution

NEC Disaster Recovery
FT Solution


The solution combines NEC’s Express5800/320Lb server and S1300 storage platforms with its EXPRESSCLUSTER software, a scalable and flexible clustering software solution that provides automatic recovery.

The company touts its comprehensive DR solution as offering the following benefits: “Five 9s” hardware availability, automatic failover via WAN, node heartbeat monitoring for assisting in ensuring Disaster Recovery in minutes, data mirroring technology for data integrity, high-performance storage that provides nearly 4TB of capacity, and both Active/Active and Active/Passive configuration options.

“The primary objective of a disaster recovery plan is to enable an organization to survive a computer room disaster and to re-establish normal business operations in just a few minutes,” says Larry Sheffield, senior vice president of the Solutions Platform Group for NEC Solutions America. “NEC’s Disaster Recovery FT Solution is designed to minimize the duration of a serious disruption to business operations, facilitate effective coordination of recovery tasks, and most important, reduce the complexity of the recovery effort.”

NEC’s Disaster Recovery FT Solution is currently available in multiple configurations, with pricing starting at $99,000. [Additional information]

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Isilon Intros Isilon IQ 1440 and 2250 Clustered Storage Systems

Isilon Systems has announced the addition of two new solutions to its Isilon IQ digital content storage line.

The Isilon IQ 1440 and Isilon IQ 2250 were unveiled at this week’s Storage Networking World Spring 2004 show in Phoenix, Ariz. The new systems double the total aggregate throughput of Isilon’s previous generation of products, delivering more than 20 Gbps of total throughput from a single file system and providing modular building blocks that create scalable, fully distributed storage clusters.

“Isilon is taking a very interesting approach to storage by combining high performance and capacity with management simplicity, eliminating the complexities of growing terabytes of digital content,” says Jamie Gruener, senior analyst, the Yankee Group. “The new Isilon IQ platform separates intra-cluster communication from that on the network, which is a great advantage and a no-brainer for customers.”



Isilon IQ 1440 and IQ 2250

Isilon IQ 2250


“Companies should look at industry-standard building blocks for deploying and managing storage, such as modularity, common management, high availability and a simplified architecture in a grid storage-like architecture, which is exactly what Isilon IQ delivers,” continues Gruener.

The Isilon IQ 1440 contains 1.44 terabytes of capacity in each node and, according to the Seattle, Wash.-based company, is best suited for applications that require the highest total throughput. The Isilon IQ 2250 contains 2.25 terabytes of capacity in each node and is designed for applications that require maximum storage capacity and lower acquisition cost per terabyte.

“Our new Isilon IQ 1440 and 2250 products extend Isilon’s leadership position by providing customers additional business benefits and accelerated
return on their investments,” states Sujal Patel, Isilon founder and chief technology officer. “Customers are telling us that Isilon IQ 1440 and 2250 deliver benefits they just can’t achieve from other storage technologies.”

The Isilon IQ 1440 and 2250 solutions will be available this month, with base pricing starting at $49,950 for a complete system, including all software and hardware. Additional information is available on Isilon’s web site.

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Additional Briefs for 4/9/04 on Page 2:

SGI Previews InfiniteStorage DLM Server Solution

STORServer Set to Launch Lifecycle Management Appliance

Spectra Ships T120 Tape Library

 

Additional Briefs for 4/9/04 on Page 1:

NEC Debuts Disaster Recovery Solution

Isilon Intros Isilon IQ 1440 and 2250 Clustered Storage Systems



SGI Previews InfiniteStorage DLM Server Solution

SGI previewed its new Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) Server at this week’s SNW conference in Phoenix. The DLM Server automatically implements and manages customers’ DLM policies while ensuring data is cost-appropriately stored based on its changing value over time.

The server ensures data is always available to users, applications, and administrators without the complexity and delay of traditional archiving approaches, “and at a much lower cost than high-performance storage alone,” according to SGI.



SGI InfiniteStorage Data Lifecycle Management Server

SGI InfiniteStorage DLM Servers

“For years, SGI has been solving the DLM challenges in the most data-intensive environments,” says Gabriel Broner, senior vice president and general manager, Storage and Software Group, SGI. “The Data Lifecycle Management Server brings superior capabilities as well as seamless integration with SGI’s storage offerings with support for all major platforms in a single DLM solution.”

The Mountain View, Calif.-based firm already counts a number of companies as DLM customers, including NASA Ames, UCLA LONI, Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center, The Scripps Research Institute (TRSI), and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

“As an established vendor in the High Performance Computing (HPC) market, supplying both server and storage technologies, SGI is uniquely positioned to offer customers tailored data lifecycle management solutions for data intensive environments,” says Joseph Zhou, senior analyst, D.H. Brown. “In addition, SGI DLM Server is optimized for specific application environments rather than operating systems, which differentiates it from proprietary solutions from other vendors.”

The DLM Server integrates with SGI’s complete line of InfiniteStorage solutions and products, which includes scalable, high-performance NAS and SAN appliances as well as backup, high-availability, and disaster recovery solutions. The server is also compatible with additional InfiniteStorage backup capabilities including Serial ATA (SATA), Fibre Channel disk storage and tape library products.

The SGI InfiniteStorage DLM Server is available immediately, with configurations starting at one terabyte and expanding to multiple petabytes, and with pricing starting at $89,140. [Additional information]

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STORServer Set to Launch Lifecycle Management Appliance

STORServer is set to launch its own Lifecycle Management appliance for delivering compliance, repository, and data retention capabilities. The STORServer Lifecycle Management (LM) Appliance is designed to help firms comply with regulations such as such as HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, and DOD 5015.2, and complements the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based company’s existing suite of Business Continuity appliances.



STORServer LM Server

STORServer LM Servers


“Our LM Appliance complies with the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) acceptable definitions of industry standards for managing data through its life cycle, so data can be easily found when and where it is needed,” says Bill Smoldt, executive vice president of STORServer.

“All of these types of data don’t need to be accessible at all times,” Smoldt continues. “The STORServer LM Appliance manages and prioritizes that data flow.”

The new Lifecycle Management is designed to handle the various processes and technologies involved in Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) strategies, including managing non-erasable, non-rewritable data for compliance; fixed content or archived data for retention-managed storage; non-managed static data; dynamic data; and data for backup and Disaster Recovery.

“The STORServer LM Appliance allows our customers to host lifecycle management-driven data, acting as a repository to accept content and lifecycle management software solutions,” states STORServer President John Pearring. “The STORServer LM Appliance helps companies ensure they are in compliance with retaining and managing large amounts of data so that it is kept and not altered for the mandated period of time.”

Pricing for the LM Appliance remains “to be announced,” according to STORServer, as the company is in the process of configuring several different levels of service and modules.

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Spectra Ships T120 Tape Library

The latest automated tape library from Spectra Logic, the Spectra T120, provides “incredible storage density” and capacity (up to 156TB) in only 14U of rack space.

The new T120 tape library holds 30 to 120 tapes and scales to six full-height drives or ten half-height drives. It stores up to 48TB compressed with LTO-2 tape drives or 156TB compressed with SAIT tape drives.

The Boulder, Colo.-based firm also touts its new library as offering several unique features, including being the first library to offer TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) technology for enabling Ethernet protocols such as iSCSI and NDMP to run at full-line transfer rates, as well as standard features such as remote management, library partitioning, mixed media, Capacity on Demand, and hot swappable drives and controllers.

“The T120 is the perfect complement to Spectra Logic’s growing line of smart, well-engineered tape automation solutions, and [is] a solid entry in the intelligent storage solutions space,” says Jon Toigo, CEO of Toigo Partners International LLC. “The engineering is top-notch and proves that you can deliver affordable storage without compromising performance or business value.”

The Spectra T120 is currently available, with pricing starting at $16,600. Additional information is available on the Spectra Logic web site.

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