New way of designing storage – Tier Less, Cache More!

The traditional way of designing storage was to create ‘tiers’ with high performance, expensive disks for critical, frequently used data and low cost , large capacity disks for less critical data.  However, over the time , data becomes more or less critical and then it has to be moved from one tier to another , which is time consuming, costly and requires change in processes.  This traditional way cannot deliver the speed of response and diverse service levels required by the business.

Flexible IT services are enabled by ‘Intelligent caching’, which enables people to better manage data with improved price/performance.

Intelligent caching lets you create a large pool of shared storage divided into virtual classes of service rather than create many hard-to-manage tiers. The cache inside the large pool of storage is dynamic, so the most important data remains in cache automatically. The cache can be set as big or small as required.

With intelligent caching, flash memory can be used intelligently to optimize performance as needed. IF flash memory is coupled with cost effective high capacity SATA drives to manage capacity requirements, then lesser number of high performance expensive disks will be required.  Moreover different levels of service can be managed virtually, which increases flexibility and  speed of response.

NEtapp is driving this initiative of Flash Cache + Sata drives.  Their finding indicate that the cost of storage capacity with Flash cache and SATA Drive configuration was lower by 56% per Terabyte than that of the baseline configuration. The performance of this combination was comparable to that provided with a  configuration  with Fiber channel disk drives.

Also the Flash + SATA combination uses 2/3 less power and 59% less rack space.

To know more, visit : Netapp - Flexible IT - Tier Less Cache More

HP Integrity Server Blades – The New Generation

HP’s new integrity server blades BL860c i2, BL870c i2 and BL890c i2 offer 2.5 times the compute density of traditional rack mount servers.  The ability to mix and match HP integrity, HP Proliant and HP Storageworks blades within the same HP bladesystem C class enclosure , increases IT effectiveness, gives a better ROI and provides flexibility to grow as per business demands.

The basic building block is the BL860c i2 which is a 2 socket server.  The blade link technology combines 2 such server blades to offer a 4 socket BL870c i2 server and four blades together to give a 8 socket BL890c i2 server.   The integrity blade link ties together all the associated blades by providing a physical inter-blade path for the QPI fabric. The blade link also provides a path for the auxiliary signals.

 QPI is a low latency high bandwidth fabric which is used to tie together each of the nodes within the server.  The Integrity server architecture also provides memory, storage and I/O that scales linearly with the compute power.

For more information visit :  Why scalable blades - White Paper

Watch the video :   

 World's first scale up blades

Cisco Borderless Network Architecture

As Cisco puts it – This is a next generation architecture that connects anyone, anywhere, on any device – securely, reliably and seamlessly.

There is a huge influx of consumer mobile devices in the business world. Cisco borderless network architecture helps IT evolve its infrastructure to deliver seamless, secure access to these mobile devices.

Traditionally, data and applications were housed on premises and the users also were generally on premises. In todays world the workforce is spread all across the globe and many workers are full time remote employees.  The applications also may be hosted off site or in the cloud.

Cisco’s Borderless Network architecture helps IT to unify its wired and wireless networks and securely deliver applications to users in a highly distributed environment.

To know more please visit :

Borderless Networks at a glance

HP P4000G2 SAN – Affordable with Enterprise level features

HP P4000G2 SAN – Affordable with Enterprise level features

HP StorageWorks P4000 G2 SANs, representing a virtualized pool of storage resources, deliver enterprise SAN functionality that enhances virtual environments, simplifies management, and reduces costs. Easy to deploy, to increase and to maintain, HP P4000 G2 SANs ensure that critical business data remain available.

They are proven for virtual servers, client virtualization, database, email and business applications. P4000 G2 SANs scale capacity and performance linearly without incurring downtime or performance bottlenecks.

The P4000 SAN/iQ Software delivers following features that makes the P4000 an affordable SAN storage with Enterprise level features .

Storage clustering for disruption free growth

Network Raid stripes and protects multiple copies of data across a cluster of storage nodes.

Thin provisioning allocates space only, reducing actual capacity requirement.

Snapshots provide instant point in time copies of data.

Remote copy replicates snapshots between  P4000G2 SANs at primary/remote locations.

Online volume migration and automated software updates.

Self healing storage - Proactive disk/volume scrubbing with automatic bad block repair.

To know more about P4000G2 SAN please visit :

HP P4000G2 SAN STORAGE

Single Mailbox Recovery Software from Netapp

Netapp’s single mailbox recovery software is a unique solution, which, when integrated with the storage system, enables you to retrieve individual messages, mailboxes and attachments without disrupting other users.

For an Exchange administrator, recovering a single message or a mailbox from the Microsoft Exchange messaging system, is a dreaded and time consuming job.  The use of SMBR software with Netapp storage eliminates the extra steps and time required to mount each backup of your exchange data for searching specific e-mails. The data can now be recovered literally in minutes, as against hours or days earlier.

With SMBR, time consuming brick level backups can be eliminated. Multiple exchange backups can be kept online with minimal disk requirement for each incremental backup. Maintaining a separate recovery server and storage to retrieve single mail box is not required. Individual Exchange items can be recovered directly to a Production Exchange server or a Outlook .PST file.

SMBR can be used to establish and verify e-mail evidence for compliance and legal requests.

To know more about Netapp Single Mail Box Recovery Software , visit : http://media.netapp.com/documents/single-mailbox-recovery.pdf

HP DL980G7 Server - Latest Entry in the HP Proliant Range of Servers

HP designed the DL980G7 server to take full advantage of Intel’s most powerful Xeon® processor 7500 series with Quick Path Interconnect (QPI). The HP DL980 G7 delivers an enhanced level of scale-up x86 performance, availability, and reliability. The HP DL980 G7 is the first server to use the HP PREMA Architecture, incorporating a node controller design with smart CPU caching and redundant system fabric.

With PREMA Architecture HP addresses customer requirements that have exceeded the performance and capacities offered by 4-socket x86 systems. The architecture supports a balanced system with more processors, more memory, and more I/O than previous generation x86 systems have provided.

The HP PREMA Architecture groups the processor sockets into multiple “QPI islands” of two directly connected sockets. This direct connection provides the lowest latencies. Each QPI island connects to two node controllers. The system contains a total of four node controllers. Each node controller stores information about all data located in the processor caches. This functionality is called “smart CPU caching.” Smart CPU caching provides significant benefits for system performance.

By reducing processor overhead, The ProLiant DL980 G7 server delivers better system performance for a diverse set of workloads than competitive 8-socket  and even larger systems. VMs, SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, and High Performance Computing applications will experience performance gains on this server.

The performance gains enabled by HP PREMA Architecture make it possible for a single ProLiant DL980 G7 server to support workloads previously running on many legacy servers. As a result you lower the space, power and cooling requirements needed to run those workloads.

To know more about the HP DL980G7 server visit : http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF04a/15351-15351-3328412-241644-4222584

To watch a video on HP PREMA Architecture and DL980G7 server , visit : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Id5HFEcg04

HP Data Protector Notebook Extension

DPNE is a new solution under HP Data Protector suite which extends backup policies to the client environment to reduce the risk of data loss due to lack of effective client backup procedures and increase in mobile users.

In each client an agent is installed. It establishes a local storage area to hold active files until the connection to the network is established.  When the connection is detected, files are then automatically transferred to a dedicated repository (Data vault) that is specific to individual clients. The overall management is done by a Central server.  Every client is continuously backed up to provide information integrity. The users can recover their files rapidly without requiring IT assistance.

Backup of selected files happens as soon as they are modified, created or downloaded. The user is completely unaware of the solution and there is no disruption to client performance.

For more information please visit : http://www.hp.com/go/dataprotector