December 17, 2009
Here’s what storage expert Jim Addlesberger had to say about the Voyager IP SAN in his recent blog post:
In direct competition with Equallogic the Voyager IP SANs are designed to offer active/active controllers, improved redundancy, high-availability and fast performance – at a lower price point. Using high-performance storage interconnects, the Voyager product family is designed for enterprise environments looking for a versatile SAN for primary and secondary storage applications.
With support for SAS, SATA, and SSD drives for online transaction processing, database, email, disk based archives, disk to disk backup, virtual servers and other core applications. The cornerstone of the Voyager is their storage virtualization engine, which offers quad-core processing power, dedicated iSCSI Cache, and our StoneFusion storage management operating system.
Don’t believe us, read what Reuters had to say in March of 2009. And at 10Gb speeds the Voyager is a screamer.
Speaking of 10GB you should let us tell you about H3C a division of 3COM. Combining the Voyager and H3C’s 10GB switches gives you a very economical, performing and secure solution.
The Voyager not only supports 10GB but also Solid State drives as well.
Allow us to arrange an informative conference call to tell you more.
NavigateStorage 978-318-9000
For more information about the Voyager, sign up for our Wednesday webinar.
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10GbE, IP SAN, StoneFly, iSCSI, virtual servers | Tagged: IP SAN, ip storage, iSCSI, iscsi san, solid state disk, SSD, storage solutions, voyager | 
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Posted by tymikamorrison
December 10, 2009
We just announced that the Voyager, our highest performing IP SAN appliance, achieved “Solaris™ Ready” certification with Sun’s Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) on SPARC® and x64/x86 platforms.
Voyager joins other Solaris Ready certified StoneFly IP SANs such as the Integrated Storage Concentrator (ISC) and OptiSAN product lines. With StoneFly’s complete line of IP SAN products supporting Solaris 10, our customers now have a wide range of storage systems to utilize with a proven, industry-leading operating system. To read more about our new Solaris Ready certification, check out the news release.
Leave a Comment » | IP SAN, News and Press Releases, StoneFly | Tagged: IP SAN, open solaris, Solaris, Storage, storage solutions, storage virtualization, virtual server, virtualization, voyager | Permalink
Posted by tymikamorrison
November 23, 2009
We just introduced RAIDML™, a new multi-level (ML) approach that provides the highest levels of data protection for mission-critical files and applications. RAIDML is now an integrated part of StoneFly’s Voyager HA IP SAN, which offers the ability to create No Single Point of Failure (NSPOF) volumes as well as RAID 5 or 6 protected volumes. Both NSPOF and traditional RAID sets with comprehensive auto fail-over and fail-back capabilities are protected. The creation of RAIDML saves costs and reduces the need for doubling drives to meet NSPOF requirements. Use our RAID calculator to help choose the RAID level that’s right for you. To read more about our new RAIDML features, check out the news release.
Leave a Comment » | 10GbE, IP SAN, News and Press Releases, StoneFly, Storage, iSCSI | Tagged: data protection, hardware raid, IP SAN, iscsi san, NSPOF, RAID, RAID 5, RAID 6, raid calculator, RAID storage, RAIDML, voyager | Permalink
Posted by tymikamorrison
November 18, 2009
John Savill, author on WindowsITPro.com, posted a great Q&A on 11/12/09. The question: “Which is better: a 10Gb Ethernet connection to IP storage or an 8Gb Fibre Channel (FC) connected to a SAN?”
John makes a great point that even though FC might outperform IP for large block I/O, IP can still take the lead in virtualization loads that consist of lots of small block, random I/O. Another good point he makes is IP requires less complex hardware than FC, making it feasible for more and more organizations to make the move to external storage.
We have been testing our Voyager on 10GbE vs. 8G FC array in our labs, stay tuned for updates on the results.
Leave a Comment » | IP SAN, StoneFly, Storage | Tagged: ethernet connection, external storage, fc, fibre channel, ip, ip storage, SAN connection, StoneFly, voyager | Permalink
Posted by Nancy Smith
November 11, 2009
We just unveiled StoneFusion 6.3, a virtualization-focused upgrade to our intelligent network storage platform. The StoneFusion OS is integrated into all StoneFly IP SANs, and offers block-level provisioning and centralized storage management, control and monitoring of logical storage volumes.
Here are some of the key updates:
- Compatibility with StoneFly’s new Storage Concentrator Virtual Machine (SCVM™), which provides comprehensive disaster recovery capabilities and enhanced support for leading virtual machine guest operating systems (OS)
- Improved system management with Quick Sync™ and Pass-thru Copy features
- Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) support for all IP SANs
Interested in a demo of StoneFly’s IP SANs utilizing the StoneFusion OS? Sign up for our Wednesday webinar. For more information on the update, check out the news release.
Leave a Comment » | 10GbE, IP SAN, News and Press Releases, StoneFly, Storage, iSCSI, virtual servers | Tagged: server virtualization, iSCSI, vmware, server consolidation, IP SAN, citrix, Microsoft Hyper-V, storage consolidation, stonefusion, scvm, storage virtualization, quick sync, pass-thru copy, UPS | Permalink
Posted by Shonal Narayan
October 29, 2009
Are you using Windows Server 2008’s iSCSI initiator? Do you know what connection policy you have?
If you said “no” to the last question, you may need to check out this TechRepublic article which explains the multiple connected sessions (MCS) policies.
Here are the 5 policies defined:
- Round robin (default): This policy attempts to evenly distribute storage traffic to all available processing paths.
- Fail over only: This policy designates one active (primary) path to the storage resource; the remaining paths are assigned to a standby role. If the remaining paths are engaged for active storage, they will attempt to come online with a round robin policy until one is available.
- Round robin with subset: This policy runs round robin on active paths and has standby paths that are available via round-robin if the active paths fail.
- Least queue depth: This policy attempts to distribute loads based on I/O requests and the associated queue length. The round robin policy simply processes each request equally, with no regard to the load associated with the I/O task on the path.
- Weighted paths: This policy designates a path to have a low number (priority) to a path
Share your experience with MCS policies, drop a line.
Leave a Comment » | IP SAN, StoneFly, iSCSI, virtual servers | Tagged: failover, iSCSI, iscsi initiator, iscsi processing, iscsi san, multiple connected sessions, networking iSCSI, round robin, windows iscsi initiator, windows server 2008 | Permalink
Posted by Shonal Narayan
October 15, 2009
Here is yet another example of what can happen if you neglect to backup your data. For all you T-Mobile users out there, you probably know that the Sidekick stores all of your critical data in a network datastore and not within the physical device. If something were to happen to any of those servers holding your data, you would lose your data. Scary thought, huh? Well, that is exactly what happened.
Michael Sheehan believes that during hardware upgrades, there was a failure that occurred. Since the upgrade of the SAN proceeded without data backup the result was thousands of Sidekick users stuck without their data. Here are five tips he presents in his blog post, that are critical for any IT department to remember:
Backups – Back up often. Set up automatic as well as manual backup procedures. Store your data locally AND somewhere completely geographically distinct from your infrastructure. *Check out the SAN backup features on the StoneFusion OS.
Redundancy – Physical servers AND virtualized servers do encounter issues. You would never put all of your eggs in one basket so why do it with your infrastructure! You should ensure that you set up a “high availability” (HA) infrastructure where you have 2 (or more) of everything, whether they be all active or as hot or warm standbys. *Check out the fully redundant, HA Voyager IP SAN.
Failovers – Most people, unless they are hugely successful, decide to put off setting up a Disaster Recovery (DR) environment due to costs and the time it takes to do so. That is, until their primary site goes down for hours or days, then DR suddenly moves to the top of the list. *Learn about StoneFly’s Data Continuity.
“Hybrid Hosting” – By setting up your front-end environment using the cloud (scalable, dynamic, elastic, etc.), you can optimize your web server environment for traffic and redundancy. Using physical boxes in the backend allows you to have additional services (like managed backups or security enhancements), thus making your infrastructure more secure and reliable. *Stay tuned for more info on this coming soon.
Due Diligence – Regardless of your infrastructure, datacenter or hosting environment, take some time right now to figure out your IT strategy and Best Practices.
Leave a Comment » | IP SAN, StoneFly, Storage, backup, datacenter | Tagged: datacenter, data protection, microsoft, data backup, data corruption, storage area network, high availability, hardware failure, storage protection, failover protection, t-mobile sidekick, redundancy, failover | Permalink
Posted by dnfmarketing
October 12, 2009
What does “No Single Point of Failure” (NSPOF) really mean? If you read it at face value, you may conclude that it is the highest level of data protection. There are several ways to achieve NSPOF on your volumes: mirroring ( RAID 1); mirroring and striping (RAID 10 or 0+1); complete subsystem mirroring (RAID51 or RAID61); or host based applications that manage mirroring. With these conventional NSPOF methods, you are only doubling the disk count, and essentially doubling the entire subsystems cost.
With StoneFly’s new RAIDML configuration, you can create NSPOF volumes and purely RAID5 or 6 protected volumes, and do it in a single storage unit or across multiple storage units.
Here is a highlight of the benefits:
- Flexible expansion at RAID and iSCSI volume levels
- Targeted NSPOF iSCSI volume(s) coexist with standard RAID5 and 6 iSCSI volumes
- Auto fail-over and fall-back protection
- No 100% drive count penalty
- Advanced StoneFusion volume management
To learn more, read the RAIDML tech brief.
Interested in a technology demo? Contact our sales team.
Use our new RAID calculator to help choose the RAID level that’s right for you.
Leave a Comment » | IP SAN, StoneFly, Storage, backup, iSCSI | Tagged: disk failure, failover protection, file storage, hardware failure, iscsi RAID, mirroring, NSPOF, RAID, RAID 5, RAID 6, raid calculator, RAID storage, RAIDML, storage protection, storage solutions | Permalink
Posted by Shonal Narayan
September 28, 2009
StoneFly’s Voyager IP SAN appliance is a featured product in this month’s Processor. Read the full article. If you receive a hard copy of Processor, look for the article on page 20 (vol.31 issue 24).
To learn more about the Voyager, visit the product page.
Leave a Comment » | 10GbE, IP SAN, News and Press Releases, StoneFly, Storage, datacenter, iSCSI, virtual servers | Tagged: datacenter, ip storage, IP SAN, news, StoneFly, storage area network, voyager, high availability, stonefusion | Permalink
Posted by Shonal Narayan
September 3, 2009
A follow-up to last month’s article about virtualization for small businesses, here is the latest virtualization platform from VMware, called VMware Go™ which is ideal for small and midsize businesses. The web-based service simplifies the virtualization process by automating the VMware ESXi hypervisor installation and setup, without needing expert IT resources.
Currently in beta-version, VMware plans to release the free VMware Go in 2010. Sign up to receive the beta-version.
Leave a Comment » | IP SAN, StoneFly, Storage, datacenter, iSCSI, virtual servers | Tagged: hypervisor, smb, smb storage, virtual infrastructure, virtual server, virtualization, virtualization management, vmware, VMware ESX, VMware Go, vmworld | Permalink
Posted by Shonal Narayan
