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Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. continue to fight over purchasing 3Par Inc.to learn the latest, please go to: http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-tech-technology.html?mod=WSJ_topnav_tech_main ]]> Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:46:15 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/events.php?itemid=127 Sepaton is Hot this Summer!

10TB Enterprise Class VTL with FREE Deduplication

What you get:

BENEFITS:
• Reclaim your vanishing backup window
• Stop buying more tape drives and libraries
• Speed up your data restores dramatically
• Up and running in 2 hours in your environment
• No change in operational procedures

PROMOTION FEATURES:
• Large 100TB backup capacity with compression
• Fast xxxTB-per-hour throughput for backup/restores, best in the industry
• Reliable RAID 6 with redundant RAID processing
• Hardware Compression
• On-site installation
• 1-year on-site support
• * Free Deduplication included until Sept 30th, 2010

Sign up today for an onsite meeting!
]]> Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:44:38 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/services.php?itemid=12
TriAssist Services is an enhanced offering from TriAxis. Using our own staff, then layering in additional complementary resources from strategic business partners such as Scattered Packets, Indmax and IT Secure Services, TriAssist is positioned to assist you in three important areas: Reliability. Availability. Profitability.

TriAssist acts as your internal IT department to provide routine computer system maintenance for your existing equipment and includes unlimited technical support using our world-class remote support software. With Managed Services from TriAssist , we take responsibility for all computer-related issues by providing a single point of contact and accountability for all hardware, software and computer-related services. Every aspect of your company network can be managed through our office. Your total satisfaction is guaranteed. If at any time you are not completely satisfied with TriAssist Managed Services, you can exit the program with no strings attached. In fact, we’ll even help you make the transition. We’re confident that you will be delighted with our service.]]> Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:15:00 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/partners.php?itemid=126

	C2C Systems was established in 1992 to develop enterprise messaging solutions to enhance management of email, reduce risk associated with email and improve use of system resources. Today, C2C offers automated data archiving and management for email, files and SharePoint content. Delivering solutions for capacity, e-policy enforcement, compliance and e-discovery, C2C optimizes performance, reduces storage management costs and minimizes risks associated with content. C2C’s software utilities are implemented world-wide and their customers include Fortune 1000 companies across every industry.
	With CommVault's Simpana® software, backup is just the beginning. Simpana software’s single code base and common platform delivers the industry's only true holistic data management solutions. This revolutionary architecture enables companies to immediately reclaim space on primary storage, reduce offsite storage by up to 90 percent, and eliminate up to half their tape drives (not to mention deduplicate data across all tiers as well as archive, preserve, and search information for eDiscovery). The result? Data management cost savings of up to 40 percent, in under one year.
	Traditional storage vendors promise to reduce the amount of time and money spent on storage, but instead deliver a patchwork of complicated and inefficient point products that are difficult to learn, integrate and manage. By starting from scratch, without the burden of software legacy code and the limitations of a proprietary hardware platform, Compellent’s Storage Center was developed into an enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) designed to lower costs, reduce administration, provide high availability and enable virtualization. Compellent's solutions uniquely manage data at the block-level, maximize utilization, automate tiered storage, simplify replication and speed data recovery.
	Data Domain, an EMC company, provides deduplication storage systems that dramatically reduce the amount of disk storage needed to retain and protect enterprise data. By identifying redundant files and data as they are being stored, Data Domain systems provide a storage footprint that is 10x-30x smaller, on average, than the original data set. Backup data can then be efficiently replicated and retrieved over existing networks for streamlined disaster recovery and consolidated tape operations.
	Dell’s EqualLogic storage solutions deliver the benefits of consolidated networked storage in a self-managing, iSCSI storage area network that is affordable and easy to use, regardless of scale. By eliminating complex tasks and enabling fast and flexible storage provisioning, these solutions dramatically reduce the costs of storage acquisition and ongoing operations. With its unique peer storage architecture, the PS Series delivers high performance and availability in a flexible environment with low cost of ownership.
	ExaGrid Systems, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, with satellite offices throughout the world. The ExaGrid system is a cost effective and scalable disk backup solution that works with your existing backup application. It meets the needs of IT organizations who seek to bring the benefits of an online disk-based data protection system to their current environment while retaining, supplementing or replacing their current offsite tape strategy.
	Since 1994, IceWEB has been highly successful in the federal computing space working with unstructured geospatial data, as well as managing and storing block data as an ASP in the enterprise and federal space. The IceWEB Storage System is a high-performance unified storage platform for file and block data of all kinds that’s easy to install, and provides built-in, all-inclusive storage management features including de-duplication; unlimited snapshots; thin provisioning; local or remote, real-time or scheduled replication; capacity and utilization reporting, and VMware integration.
	If you are looking for a partner who will be an extension of your in house team, then check out Indmax. They succeed at their goal of becoming part of your in-house team to increase productivity. That’s exactly what you need in Managed Services Outsourcing framework to manage mission critical infrastructure 7x24. Indmax was started by "techies" whose experience with enterprise IT projects spans 10 countries over the last 12 years. They bring best practices driven technology and services to the table and manage mission critical (7x24) infrastructures with qualified and certified engineers. They can be your frontline soldiers with consistent 100% uptime metrics.
	Infortrend is a leading provider of cost-effective, high performance Networked Storage Solutions. Infortrend's ESVA (Enterprise Scale-out Virtualized Architecture) and EonStor RAID subsystems support all storage interfaces including Fibre, iSCSI, SAS, SATA and SCSI. Founded in 1993, Infortrend manufactures and markets feature-rich products through a worldwide network of key value added resellers that are strategically placed throughout the world. With leading engineering capabilities and years of experiences, Infortrend can provide highly-adaptive solutions which suit various needs and bring satisfying values to customers.
	Mimosa Systems, part of Iron Mountain Digital, enables enterprises to harness the value of their unstructured and semi-structured information, and improves business process performance and productivity. As the recognized visionary in enterprise content archiving, Mimosa is driving innovation in the industry and is continually delivering cutting-edge solutions to address the evolving needs of customers around collaboration, communication, productivity and social media.
	In business more than 25 years, Overland Storage delivers robust data backup solutions that are affordable, flexible, and easily integrated into existing network attached storage infrastructures. They offer a broad portfolio of tape libraries and autoloaders, virtual tape libraries, and disk-based backup systems. Overland's fast, reliable disk storage solutions include integrated data protection software, offering users the ultimate in data protection and availability, while remaining cost-conscious for today's economic environment.
	Promise Technology is recognized as a global leader in the storage industry and as an innovator in RAID technology. Everyday enterprise class data centers around the world choose Promise RAID solutions as the technology of choice to protect their critical information and to ensure continuous data availability. Their confidence in these RAID solutions is a reflection of Promise's commitment to providing the quality, reliability and support that these data centers demand. This commitment to quality is why enterprise class performance and reliability can be found in every Promise product.
	QuorumLabs' innovative solutions make it affordable and easy for any company to keep their critical business systems available. Unlike traditional backup or off-site "cloud storage," they provide an end-to-end solution that integrates everything needed to get systems running again within minutes of any storage, hardware or even a complete site failure. QuorumLabs has brought together all the elements required to bring enterprise-class business continuity to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)—in a turnkey package that is both affordable and easy to use.
	Scale Computing's architecture is robust, redundant, versatile, and scalable. From the simplest setup to one that employs thousands of bricks, a Scale storage cluster grows seamlessly, and easily managed. It’s also a self-healing storage pool, so even if you were to lose an entire brick due to hardware failure, reckless interns, or marauding ninjas, your entire data store remains fully accessible with no interruption in service. Redundant, scalable, versatile storage – at an affordable price.
	The SEPATON® ContentAware™ approach starts with an architecture that enables them to solve your business problems, from backup performance to energy consumption concerns. In addition to their unique technology, SEPATON provides deep technical and applications expertise and a focused commitment to introducing data protection solutions that enhance existing business and technology operations. SEPATON doesn't just sell boxes; they collaborate with our customers to integrate new and existing technologies to resolve business challenges.
	Spectra Logic provides automated tape backup solutions, disk and deduplication backup solutions, and general data backup solutions that will protect your data efficiently and securely. Their products include innovative features that save you time and money — such as their tape libraries with integrated data encryption, media health monitoring, low power consumption, and easy upgradability and maintenance. Spectra Logic's data protection and archive solutions are changing the world of storage.
	Billions of transactions, millions of emails, thousands of online documents: information is at the heart of a business, and growing like never before. Everything is generating data – from cell phones to PDAs and even cars. As you read this sentence, the flow of data is continuing to expand by billions of bits and bytes. Imagine a world where (1) you can share this information anytime you want, (2) information is at your fingertips, available any time you need, (3) you can save a customer’s documents, a patient’s records, and a satellite’s images – FOREVER, and (4) you can search the archives anytime you want. GridBank™ Technology allows the information and network to be used for what it’s intended – connecting people and information.
	TERiX is the leading independent provider of flexible and innovative hardware and software maintenance service offerings to more than 1,000 customers worldwide, including many of the Fortune 500. TERiXSTORAGE incorporates the same support disciplines that have created clear market differentiation for TERiX server support solutions delivered to thousands of customers since 1997. The difference is that with TERiXSTORAGE offering, there are Proactive Service options (TERiX ProServe) that can add monitoring, heartbeat, analysis and call-home capabilities to standard service level agreement (SLA) metrics.

]]> Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:01:04 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/nodisplay.php?itemid=49
C2C Systems was established in 1992 to develop enterprise messaging solutions to enhance management of email, reduce risk associated with email and improve use of system resources. Today, C2C offers automated data archiving and management for email, files and SharePoint content. Delivering solutions for capacity, e-policy enforcement, compliance and e-discovery, C2C optimizes performance, reduces storage management costs and minimizes risks associated with content. C2C’s software utilities are implemented world-wide and their customers include Fortune 1000 companies across every industry.
With CommVault's Simpana® software, backup is just the beginning. Simpana software’s single code base and common platform delivers the industry's only true holistic data management solutions. This revolutionary architecture enables companies to immediately reclaim space on primary storage, reduce offsite storage by up to 90 percent, and eliminate up to half their tape drives (not to mention deduplicate data across all tiers as well as archive, preserve, and search information for eDiscovery). The result? Data management cost savings of up to 40 percent, in under one year.
Traditional storage vendors promise to reduce the amount of time and money spent on storage, but instead deliver a patchwork of complicated and inefficient point products that are difficult to learn, integrate and manage. By starting from scratch, without the burden of software legacy code and the limitations of a proprietary hardware platform, Compellent’s Storage Center was developed into an enterprise-class Storage Area Network (SAN) designed to lower costs, reduce administration, provide high availability and enable virtualization. Compellent's solutions uniquely manage data at the block-level, maximize utilization, automate tiered storage, simplify replication and speed data recovery.
Data Domain, an EMC company, provides deduplication storage systems that dramatically reduce the amount of disk storage needed to retain and protect enterprise data. By identifying redundant files and data as they are being stored, Data Domain systems provide a storage footprint that is 10x-30x smaller, on average, than the original data set. Backup data can then be efficiently replicated and retrieved over existing networks for streamlined disaster recovery and consolidated tape operations.
Dell’s EqualLogic storage solutions deliver the benefits of consolidated networked storage in a self-managing, iSCSI storage area network that is affordable and easy to use, regardless of scale. By eliminating complex tasks and enabling fast and flexible storage provisioning, these solutions dramatically reduce the costs of storage acquisition and ongoing operations. With its unique peer storage architecture, the PS Series delivers high performance and availability in a flexible environment with low cost of ownership.
ExaGrid Systems, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts, with satellite offices throughout the world. The ExaGrid system is a cost effective and scalable disk backup solution that works with your existing backup application. It meets the needs of IT organizations who seek to bring the benefits of an online disk-based data protection system to their current environment while retaining, supplementing or replacing their current offsite tape strategy.


Infortrend is a leading provider of cost-effective, high performance Networked Storage Solutions. Infortrend's EonStor RAID subsystems support all storage interfaces including Fibre, iSCSI, SAS, SATA and SCSI. Founded in 1993, Infortrend manufactures and markets feature-rich products through a worldwide network of key value added resellers that are strategically placed throughout the world. With leading engineering capabilities and years of experiences, Infortrend can provide highly-adaptive solutions which suit various needs and bring satisfying values to customers.



Mimosa Systems, part of Iron Mountain Digital, enables enterprises to harness the value of their unstructured and semi-structured information, and improves business process performance and productivity. As the recognized visionary in enterprise content archiving, Mimosa is driving innovation in the industry and is continually delivering cutting-edge solutions to address the evolving needs of customers around collaboration, communication, productivity and social media.
In business more than 25 years, Overland Storage delivers robust data backup solutions that are affordable, flexible, and easily integrated into existing network attached storage infrastructures. They offer a broad portfolio of tape libraries and autoloaders, virtual tape libraries, and disk-based backup systems. Overland's fast, reliable disk storage solutions include integrated data protection software, offering users the ultimate in data protection and availability, while remaining cost-conscious for today's economic environment.
Promise Technology is recognized as a global leader in the storage industry and as an innovator in RAID technology. Everyday enterprise class data centers around the world choose Promise RAID solutions as the technology of choice to protect their critical information and to ensure continuous data availability. Their confidence in these RAID solutions is a reflection of Promise's commitment to providing the quality, reliability and support that these data centers demand. This commitment to quality is why enterprise class performance and reliability can be found in every Promise product.
Protocol Networks provides professional and managed services to help customers Create, Connect & Evolve their communications across their business to improve their processes and profitability. They focus, not only on getting the right resources to a problem, but also on serving you with “Old Fashioned" customer service, one of their key tenets. We are confident that once you experience their professional customer service, you will understand why we at TriAxis chose them as an extension of our own storage service offerings.
Scale Computing's architecture is robust, redundant, versatile, and scalable. From the simplest setup to one that employs thousands of bricks, a Scale storage cluster grows seamlessly, and easily managed. It’s also a self-healing storage pool, so even if you were to lose an entire brick due to hardware failure, reckless interns, or marauding ninjas, your entire data store remains fully accessible with no interruption in service. Redundant, scalable, versatile storage – at an affordable price.
The SEPATON® ContentAware™ approach starts with an architecture that enables them to solve your business problems, from backup performance to energy consumption concerns. In addition to their unique technology, SEPATON provides deep technical and applications expertise and a focused commitment to introducing data protection solutions that enhance existing business and technology operations. SEPATON doesn't just sell boxes; they collaborate with our customers to integrate new and existing technologies to resolve business challenges.
Spectra Logic provides automated tape backup solutions, disk and deduplication backup solutions, and general data backup solutions that will protect your data efficiently and securely. Their products include innovative features that save you time and money — such as their tape libraries with integrated data encryption, media health monitoring, low power consumption, and easy upgradability and maintenance. Spectra Logic's data protection and archive solutions are changing the world of storage.
Storage at enterprise data centers continues to grow. But every new technology, strategy, or process raises storage complexity, and the existing multi-vendor storage infrastructures found in most data centers compromise end-to-end visibility and control. Veritas storage software solutions from Symantec are the industry leading heterogeneous solutions to ensure data in the enterprise is protected by leveraging backup and recovery, storage management and archiving technologies.
With over 12,000 deployments worldwide, Syncsort customers include 96 of the Fortune 100 companies. Syncsort’s Backup Express (BEX) exploits unparalleled technologies to deliver the full suite of data protection capabilities needed to carry your organization well into the future, while providing numerous ways to reap returns. BEX is the only data protection solution to facilitate, in a single product, high-speed backups and recoveries with high success rates, significant data reduction, and zero-impact virtual machine protection – with no side effects and without requiring substantial hardware investments.
Billions of transactions, millions of emails, thousands of online documents: information is at the heart of a business, and growing like never before. Everything is generating data – from cell phones to PDAs and even cars. As you read this sentence, the flow of data is continuing to expand by billions of bits and bytes. Imagine a world where (1) you can share this information anytime you want, (2) information is at your fingertips, available any time you need, (3) you can save a customer’s documents, a patient’s records, and a satellite’s images – FOREVER, and (4) you can search the archives anytime you want. GridBank™ Technology allows the information and network to be used for what it’s intended – connecting people and information.
TERiX is the leading independent provider of flexible and innovative hardware and software maintenance service offerings to more than 1,000 customers worldwide, including many of the Fortune 500. TERiXSTORAGE incorporates the same support disciplines that have created clear market differentiation for TERiX server support solutions delivered to thousands of customers since 1997. The difference is that with TERiXSTORAGE offering, there are Proactive Service options (TERiX ProServe) that can add monitoring, heartbeat, analysis and call-home capabilities to standard service level agreement (SLA) metrics.
Waterford Technologies is the only company that offers Email and File Archiving and Management solutions that are truly easy to install, deploy and use. Since 2001, they have brought to market MailMeter Insight, MailMeter Archive, MailMeter ISR, MailMeter Investigate, MailMeter Storage Manager, MailMeter Compliance Review and, in 2008, MailMeter File Archiver. This expanded the storage savings and management to network file servers. IT departments can automatically monitor and manage the huge amount of individual files across all file servers. It is available for Exchange and Notes environments.]]> Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:00:00 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=124
Sepaton is positioning Secure Erasure – an optional software feature priced at $5,000 per node – as a cost-effective way to comply with data destruction policies.Shredding a physical tape cartridge or zapping it with a magnetic field are sure-fire ways to erase data in compliance with organizational policies or federal regulations but, in the world of disk-based backup, a different set of rules apply. To that end, virtual tape library (VTL) vendor Sepaton is now offering Secure Erasure, a licensed option for its S2100-ES2 data protection appliances that guarantees the erasure of information on virtual tape cartridges.

Sepaton is positioning Secure Erasure – an optional software feature priced at $5,000 per node – as a cost-effective way to comply with data destruction policies.

"A lot of people want to keep [all their data] forever now that 2TB disk drives cost a little more than $100," says Jay Kramer, Sepaton's vice president of worldwide marketing, "but having deletion policies in place is bubbling up as a significant part of an overall information asset management and data protection strategy."

The Secure Erasure option handles the grunt work. The software manages tape selection, scheduling and reporting via the GUI and eliminates the manual steps required to remove, reinsert, or transfer media. Secure Erasure then generates audit reports for each erased cartridge and e-mails them to an organization's compliance officer.

"There is no way that anyone applying forensic procedures to a virtual tape [that has been erased using Secure Erasure] could recover the data," says Peter Quirk, Sepaton's director of product management.

Quirk says Secure Erasure also helps stem the tide of eco-waste created by the destruction of physical media because, unlike physical tape, virtual tape cartridges are useable after the data is overwritten.

Each node of a Sepaton S2100-ES2 disk-based backup appliance can be configured with up to 96 virtual devices as either a virtual tape library or a virtual tape drive (up to 768 per system) for a maximum of 5.3 million virtual tape cartridges and 1.6PB of data per appliance.

by Kevin Komiega

Note: to see this article in its original state, click here.]]> Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:35:18 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=123
At EMCWorld, the company announced VPLEX.VPLEX, a set of external, special-purpose hardware appliances that create a heterogeneous storage pool to enable shared access to local and remote SANs and non-disruptive volume migration between them. On his blog, storage analyst Greg Schulz (Twitter @StorageIO) offers a really detailed explanation of VPLEX. Bas Raayman (@BasRaayman) provides some good links for additional reading over on his blog.

A quick glance at available specs tells me it’s not for small or most mid-sized enterprises. VPLEX uses a half or full rack of multi-CPU servers which are inserted between all SANs and servers. An entry level high availability VPLEX system includes total of eight quad-core XEON CPUs, 128GB of cache and 128 8Gb FC ports to connect all front end servers and back end SANs.

The VPLEX software interface comes from EMC’s YottaYotta acquisition and includes a mix of command-line, GUI and custom application tools. You could say there’s a lotta bang for a lotta bucks. This is great news for customers with EMC Symmetrix-sized budgets. However, enterprises facing flat or declining budgets may want to understand the real costs and consider alternatives that are more cost-effective with features and functions that customers will use without adding significant footprint to their data center.

Several folks have pointed out the similarities between VPLEX and Compellent’s Live Volume technology. Both solutions tackle the problem of non-disruptive volume migration, which is very useful in disaster avoidance, load balancing or maintenance situations. The end-user’s storage stays online and the IT department has a lot more flexibility. However the similarities end there as EMC’s VPLEX and Compellent’s Live Volume approach volume migration in entirely different ways.

I sat down with Bob Fine, director of product marketing, to analyze the VPLEX announcement and clarify how it differs from Live Volume. Bob also recaps the difference between Live Volume and VPLEX in a short video clip, below.

LN: What is the VPLEX Hardware?

BF: VPLEX is a rack mounted hardware system that sits in‑band between heterogeneous storage arrays and servers. A VPLEX system can support one, two or four VPLEX engines. Two VPLEX engines are required for each SAN for high availability. Each VPLEX engine has:

<> Two quad-core XEON processors
<> 32GB of cache
<> 32 x 8Gb FC ports

LN: What about cost?

BF: Based on our research, VPLEX starts at about $77,000 for a local-only interconnect system. A high end VPLEX system can scale to over $500,000. These prices do not include the SANs themselves, professional services, the expense of rewiring the data center or the cost of the additional switch ports required for the new high port count devices.

I also wonder about the potential hidden costs because not much is known yet whether VPLEX supports true thin provisioning, RAID6, SSDs, FAST, or other complementary next-generation storage virtualization features.

LN: What are the use cases for VPLEX?

BF: EMC is advocating a high level, “data everywhere and anywhere” storage federation message but the products planned for this year are limited to data center or metro distances. The EMC solution requires multiple high end VPLEX hardware engines and many high bandwidth, low latency network connections. That’s the biggest difference between Compellent and EMC VPLEX. Compellent’s focus is on integrating a software solution that scales. EMC has a significant focus on high-end bandwidth, and all that comes with a hefty price tag. VPLEX uses a great deal of high end hardware to bring several of the Live Volume features to the EMC platform.

LN: Zero downtime maintenance and non-disruptive change management are solid benefits provided by VPLEX. What are the limitations?

BF: VPLEX is not part of the EMC SAN products themselves, but instead is designed as an add-on set of rack mounted servers. VPLEX requires the overhaul of the data center topology and the creation of a new in-between configuration. EMC’s hardware-heavy response is in stark contrast to the Compellent Fluid Data architecture, which enables to non-disruptive data migration to be delivered relatively inexpensively in a software-only configuration. EMC’s technology requires a large complement of dedicated, single-purpose special hardware to deliver the same kind of distributed storage capabilities. Other considerations:

<> Requires major hardware investment at each site with one or more high end VPLEX servers for each site plus additional local and remote switch ports
<> Major changes to system topology with all SAN and server connections routed through VPLEX
<> Write performance decreases with distance and latency
<> Conversion of Virtual Machines to VPLEX is not automatic, and requires either additional storage or for the applications to be shut down to complete the process
<> Software interface is not integrated with the Clariion software, many features require a command line, others use “AccessAnywhere” or GUI

LN: So what is Compellent Live Volume?

BF: A software feature in the Compellent Storage Center SAN, Live Volume is a virtualized storage application that provides non-disruptive storage migration between SANs in an integrated environment. Live Volume enables on‑demand volume migration, zero downtime maintenance and disaster avoidance capabilities at a fraction of the price of EMC’s VPLEX and requires no hardware, no outages and no system reconfigurations. The Live Volume solution supports any Storage Center configuration or network connections, including iSCSI and Fibre Channel. Live Volume can leverage existing network connections without impact on write performance.

Compellent has made Live Volume to select customers since Q1 of 2010, available with Storage Center 5.1 or later.

Additional features:

<> Live Volume is a software-only upgrade and supports all Storage Center models and configurations
<> Software is tightly integrated in both Enterprise Manager and the Storage Center GUI
<> Asynchronous interconnect is less expensive and enables full performance data writes -- write performance is not dependent on network latency or distance
<> Flexible configuration enables unlimited number of Live Volumes between systems, and point-to-point volume migration between more than two data centers
<> On-the-fly conversion enables non-disruptive conversion of any volume to a Live Volume—any Compellent system can add Live Volume functionality at any time

Compellent Live Volume

LN: So what’s the starting price for Live Volume?

BF: Live Volume licenses start at under $5,000. As you know, pricing is available from our channel partners and can depend on maintenance and software support options.

LN: Can you summarize Compellent’s point of view on data migration?

BF: From our perspective, data migration capabilities should be built into the architecture itself to reduce complexity, overhead and cost. EMC’s response to Live Volume non-disruptive data migration capabilities further validates Compellent’s vision for a global, shared storage network. The difference is in the implementation. The EMC approach is an external add-on model and is very expensive. The Compellent approach is dramatically more efficient as the core engine is built into the Fluid Data architecture itself.

Comparing CML Live Volume and EMC VPLEX

Additional links:

<> Greg Schulz blog
<> Bas Raayman blog
<> YouTube clip of Compellent VP of Technology and Services Marty Sanders describing Live Volume at C-Drive 2010 can be found here.
<> Bob recaps the difference between Live Volume and VPLEX:

by Liem Nguyen, Director of Corporate Communications — May 12, 2010

Note: this article can be found in its original location here]]> Fri, 21 May 2010 15:51:47 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/library.php?itemid=122
Talk about fighting a tough battle. As data center managers continue to seek ways to work within increasingly shrinking budgets... ...the data entering their environments continues to expand. Short of closing up shop altogether, there’s no way to stop that data from pouring into the data center, regardless of the storage budget’s size.

“Most data center managers consider storage to be their most critical asset,” says Mike Smith, vice president of product marketing at Solarflare Communications (www.solarflare.com). “In many cases, the business runs on data, so protecting it and making sure users have access to it is almost always a top priority. As a result, data center managers are very conservative with storage relative to other areas of the data center. At the same time, performance and cost effectiveness can provide competitive advantages, so these can’t be ignored.”

Making the most of your storage budget doesn’t necessarily require fancy tricks or creative manipulations of investments or hardware. Instead, experts advise to step back and look at the bigger picture before plowing forward with changes.

Inside Knowledge
The first step to optimizing your storage budget and making smart investments is gathering a better understanding of your specific storage pain points, explains Bradley Brodkin, president of HighVail Systems (www.highvail.com). If you’re looking to buy new equipment, you should have a good idea of what you already have, how new systems compare to your existing equipment, and what might be missing in your current environment. This approach can help you improve your storage efficiency without burdening your budget with unnecessary costs.

“While storage demands are increasing, data center and IT managers shouldn’t just buy new equipment,” Brodkin says. “They must also look outside of the box and consider new and alternative technologies like virtualization, deduplication, and thin provisioning and how they can help them do more with less. Also, by understanding their total cost of ownership—and not simply the [dollars per terabyte]—for storage tiers and analyzing work patterns, they can focus their storage dollars where they make the most sense for the business.”

However, managers should still be cautious when considering the move to a new technology. Kelly Lipp, CTO of STORServer (www.storserver.com), recommends determining your business requirements before looking at any storage technology because it’s easy to become enamored with something new and forget that you’re trying to solve a business problem. Although technology companies introduce new products and change existing products often (and for good reason), it’s not in a data center manager’s best interest to simply follow every trend. Instead, be wary, Lipp says.

Smart Scaling
When existing equipment (or changes to that equipment) won’t suffice for increasing storage demands, managers must determine how best to add to their storage architectures. Scalability remains a big part of storage budgeting, and Brace Rennels, project manager at Double-Take Software (www.doubletake.com), notes that disk space is cheap and that you should forecast your storage requirements for the next two to three years. A successful forecast depends on your ability to accurately gauge the scalability of your current hardware.

“You must also consider if another disk array can be added to the existing one, if the size of the drives can be updated to a larger capacity, and if there is enough power and/or Ethernet or SCSI connectors available in the rack to expand,” Rennels says. “Part of the capacity planning should include future storage requirements and also determining if the required infrastructure is in place to accommodate that future expansion.”

Extend Your Storage Strategy
Getting a better handle on your storage budget shouldn’t be a one-shot deal, but instead an evolution that rolls with the changes of your storage architecture. Because your storage needs can change throughout the year, it’s wise to track those changes to ensure you are making the right investments that can accommodate increased storage needs when necessary without overshooting your budget. One way to track your storage is through auditing, which can identify opportunities for improvements where needed.

“Data center and IT managers should have data classification initiatives to audit their systems and allow the right placement of data,” says Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, managing principal, consulting services, SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com). “Organizations need to ‘right-size’ their storage environment. Data can be moved to less-expensive SATA or tape storage. . . . Improvements can often be made by knowing what has to be backed up to the most expensive disk files and removing or cleaning up what is currently considered lower-tiered data.”

Finally, don’t disregard perhaps the ultimate budget-saver when it comes to storage: the DELETE key. “The cheapest storage is that which we don’t actually consume,” Lipp says. “If [data] has no value to the organization, get rid of it. Storage bloat is probably the No. 1 problem in data centers today. In many cases, we capitulate to the notion that it is just too expensive to find and remove data that we don’t require. This may be true for those with unlimited budgets, but for the rest of us, it probably isn’t.”

by Christian Perry

Note: to view this article in its original state, go to http://tinyurl.com/29rjgxv]]> Fri, 21 May 2010 15:27:53 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/events.php?itemid=101
Check back for updated calendar
of technical events!We are working closely with both our customers and our vendors to put together a series of timely educational events that will be worthwhile. Your host for these events will again be Tom Mumford, as he brings his decades of experience into the mix, ensuring that the information is relevant. This schedule should be finalized soon -- stay tuned.]]> Thu, 20 May 2010 08:20:00 -0400 http://www.triaxisinc.com/content/news.php?itemid=121
Next-generation file storage offers fluid integration between SAN and NAS to consolidate data management.Compellent expands its unified storage offerings with the Compellent(R) zNAS(TM) (network-attached storage) solution, which consolidates file- and block-level storage on a single, intelligent platform based on the ZFS file system. With its Fluid Data(TM) architecture, Compellent zNAS can actively manage and move data in a virtual pool of storage, regardless of the size and type of block, file or drive. As a result, enterprises can simplify management, improve performance for critical applications and reduce complexity and costs.

According to the "Unstructured Data in 2010: Trends to Watch" report issued by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), the rise in unstructured data, such as office documents, digital images and video, will account for the bulk of growth within the data center, driving IT to consider unified platforms to alleviate the strain. Compellent customers can now benefit from consolidating multiple file servers along with block data onto a single Compellent zNAS system, reducing hardware, administrative overhead and associated IT staff costs in the process.

Fluid Data Architecture Enables Superior Utilisation and Efficiency

-- Compellent unified storage with zNAS offers a single interface to streamline management of heterogeneous Unix, Linux and Windows file and block data.

-- Fluid Data architecture increases storage efficiency and utilisation by automatically tiering file storage at the block-level, intelligently thin provisioning storage for unstructured data and delivering rapid data recovery and thin replication.]]> Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:17:35 -0400