|
DNAS (Direct Network Attached Storage) is a new type storage
technology designed for the dynamic
networking environments of the coming millennium. PLUG and PLAY Storage.
All Direct Network Attached
Storage systems come equipped with a direct connection module, which
allows them to connect to your existing network, by just plugging them into your network
hub. All Direct Network Attached Storage units come pre-formatted and RAID 5 configured,
thus installation is very simple in fact a
typical Direct Network Attached Storage unit can be
set up and running in less than 15 minutes. There is no need for
client licenses
or servers.
Universal Accessibility
Virtually any type of client
can connect to a Direct Network Attached Storage unit, including PC, MAC, SUN,
HP IBM, AS400, in fact, any computer you can connect to your network can
access a Direct Network Attached Storage partition. A Direct Network Attached
Storage storage partition is the area on the the Direct Network Attached
Storage
unit which is reserved for user
data.
Enterprise
Storage Management via a Web
Browser console
The storage partition, is created and managed via a web browser based
management console. The management console is a powerful
program which allows you to administer the Direct Network Attached Storage system, and incorporates such functions, as allocating storage resources
amongst users and setting up a security regime to
restrict access based on group or user
id. The management console
manages all the Direct Network Attached Storage units connected to your network. This is a very
powerful way to manage the whole of your companies
storage resources from one management
console.
FIBRE CHANNEL SPEEDS
DNAS-FC (Direct Network
Attached Storage Fibre Channel) is the latest addition to the Direct Network Attached
Storage product
family. It delivers all the existing functionality of the Direct Network Attached
Storage
systems, but with added benefit of
breath taking speed. Fibre Channel technology supports a burst transfer
speed of 100MB/sec. Depending on
configuration typical fibre channel based Direct Network Attached Storage units reach sustained data
transfer speeds of between 45MB/sec to
60MB/sec. Because of their
remarkable speed DNAS-FC units are a natural choice for IO intensive
applications such as SERVER storage, Video editing systems and publishing
systems.
RAID 5 Data
Protection
All Direct Network Attached Storage units feature RAID 5 data protection. In addition a hot online
spare drive is provided. The system constantly
monitors the status of all drives, if it detects a drive failure, the hot
online spare is automatically activated and takes the place of the spare
drive. When the faulty drive is replaced the new drive then becomes the
online spare.
REDUNDANT
ELEMENTS TO ENHANCE FAULT TOLERANCE
Direct Network Attached Storage units feature a number of redundant elements to enhance the
operational fault tolerance of the units. These elements include redundant
hot swap power supplies, and online spare hard drives.
INFINITE
SCALABILITY
Unlike traditional RAID systems with their limitations as to cabling and
the number of PCI slots e.t.c. Direct Network Attached Storage, units can be scaled infinitely,
you can start out with 120GB unit and scale to 8000GB configuration. There
is also no limitation as to partition size, you can have a single
partition as large as 16,000GB. The only limitation is whether your
operating system can handle such large partitions.
PERFORMANCE
The systems are designed from the ground up, to optimize I/O
processing. Unlike traditional servers which are designed as general
purpose computers, and are typically running a large operating system which
has to share the workload among competing tasks, Direct Network Attached
Storage units only do one
thing: move data off the disks as past as possible. Direct Network Attached
Storage units come equipped
with multiple channels for I/O processing. The installation of a Direct Network Attached
Storage
system on a network usually leads to
improvement in general network performance as they offload a lot of
typical server processing. Direct Network Attached Storage units allow servers to concentrate on
running applications such database, messaging, rather than managing file
I/O. The network performance of Direct Network Attached Storage units can be further enhanced via the
addition of extra network ports on the Direct Network Attached Storage units. The standard ethernet
based Direct Network Attached Storage unit can have the number of network ports (NICs) increased from
1 to 16, a GIGABIT and ATM option is also available. With the Fibre
Channel Direct Network Attached Storage the transfer rate is so fast that the bottle neck in never
going to be located at DNAS-FC unit, but if required the DNAS-FC can
also be upgraded to 8 fibre channel ports, giving a theoretical bandwidth
of 800MB/sec.
|
