FastScale Announces Automated Server Provisioning Tool for Physical and Virtual Environments
FastScale Technology, a provider of software virtualization and provisioning solutions, announced the newest release of its flagship product, FastScale Composer Suite. FastScale Composer Suite automates the process of building, managing and deploying server software environments for enterprise data centers and Web farms, for both physical and virtual infrastructures.
The new release extends FastScale's software management solution to Windows Server 2003 as well as the later versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, 4.6 and 5.2. "Now we have the ability to handle people with either one or the mix - both on physical and virtual machines," Jerry McLeod, vice president of marketing, FastScale, told 5 Minute Briefing.
In addition to the support of heterogeneous server environments, the new FastScale solution builds on the company's “Application Blueprinting” technology and its "minimalist" operating system deployment model to deliver lightweight, just-in-time provisioning of the application layer. For large, modular enterprise applications, the entire software stack can now be streamlined automatically based on workload requirements, with only the necessary files provisioned.
Any files not included in the lightweight provisioning remain available in FastScale's software component repository to be used at any time, said McLeod. "Now we are virtualizing the complete application stack, saying: What you really require to run is on the machine in a lightweight provisioned environment, and if by chance you need something else it is fully available to you on the repository."
The new lightweight application provisioning offers a number of benefits, according to the company. It enables the deployment of the smallest possible software stack, decreases memory requirements, supports stateless server configurations, and increases virtual server density by 3X or more.
Additionally, the new release adds enhancements for increased scalability and usability, with streamlined configuration settings, enhanced Web and command line interfaces, and easier navigation for large enterprise deployments. "The trend is that everybody wants to be save money, be more efficient," said McLeod, noting this includes using their resources and administration time to best advantage. For more information, go here.
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HP and Sony Collaborate to Improve Capacity and Performance of DAT Drives
HP and Sony Corp. have agreed to create the next-generation Digital Audio Tape format - the DAT 320 - aimed at providing improved performance and capacity over existing DAT drives. HP and Sony are jointly developing the DAT or Digital Data Storage (DDS) standard, but will separately offer their own DAT 320 tape drives and cartridges. As with previous generations of DAT/DDS, the DAT 320 will be an open standard.
"Tape still has a definite role to play in any kind of backup scenario because it really provides the last line of defense. It provides protection against more kinds of data loss than any other kind of data protection technology," Simon Watkins, product marketing manager for HP StorageWorks division, told 5 Minute Briefing. Tape offers the advantages of being easily removed offsite, affordable in terms of media cost and in terms of archiving, and it has got a long data retention periods as well - "so tape is very much a viable technology going forward," he said.
However, while DAT tape drive users are satisfied with the affordability and reliability of the DAT format, some of those customers are now outgrowing the capacity and performance of their existing tape drives, Watkins noted. "The new DAT format, generation 7, will offer twice the capacity and almost twice the performance of any other data tape drive," he said.
With backup speeds of up to 86GB per hour with 2:1 data compression, the DAT 320 will offer up to 320GB of capacity on a single cartridge - compared with 160GB, available from the current DAT 160 format. The DAT 320 also will consume fewer watts per GB than previous generations and will be backwards compatible with the DAT 160. "It is really meeting customer needs for more capacity and performance in data storage as well as the existing reliability and affordability," said Watkins.
HP and Sony will offer the same base hardware for the DAT 320, but will develop unique features within the firmware configuration to sell the DAT 320 tape drives and media through their own branded and OEM business channels. General availability is expected in 2009. For more on Sony, go here. For more on HP, go here. For more on DDS format DAT technology, go here.
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Bus-Tech's Mainframe VTL Available through Hitachi Data Systems
Bus-Tech, a provider of mainframe tape-on-disk controllers and data center connectivity products, announced that its Mainframe Data Library (MDL) controller is now available through Hitachi Data Systems. Customers can purchase complete Bus-Tech mainframe tape-on-disk solutions designed for the Hitachi high-performance NAS Platform and Hitachi Content Archive Platform directly from Hitachi Data Systems.
"This is really an endorsement of our product as the premier VTL in the mainframe space today," Jim O'Connor, director of product marketing, Bus-Tech, told 5 Minute Briefing. "Right now we are in about 350 installations in 17 different countries because of these various partnerships."
The new partnership provides Hitachi customers with a single source to deploy an end-to-end Mainframe VTL solution. According to the vendors, the combined solution set will provide enterprise data centers with lower tape processing costs, faster backups and restores, improved business continuity and disaster recovery and the ability to include compliant storage in their mainframe environment.
The Bus-Tech's MDL uses a modular approach for scalability and high-availability. Additional capacity can be added to handle unexpected changes in a customer's tape processing requirements.
Bus-Tech's MDL combined with Hitachi's Network Attached Storage (HNAS) can help customers reduce their dependence on large-scale tape subsystems by providing low-cost disk-based backup solutions utilizing disk storage to replace mainframe tape / optical storage, according to the vendors. Bus-Tech's MDL combined with Hitachi's Content Archive Platform (HCAP) provides an online enterprise archive environment for mainframe applications requiring long-term archival. Customers with applications that write to standard mainframe tapes are able to take advantage of the Bus-Tech/HNAS or Bus-Tech/HCAP integration.
The Bus-Tech MDL contains multiple independently operating tape-on-disk controllers that attach directly to the mainframe FICON or ESCON input/output channels. They use standard Gigabit Ethernet IP to attach to the Hitachi High-performance NAS and HTTP to Hitachi Content Archive Platform storage systems. To the mainframe they emulate 3480/3490/3590 tape drives, allowing mainframe-based applications to transparently store data by writing files to an emulated tape device. For more information about Bus-Tech and its products, go here.
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ONStor Announces New Cougar Line of Data Center-Class Content Storage
ONStor, a provider of clustered NAS solutions, has announced the launch of the Cougar 6000 series NAS gateway, a data center-class clustered storage that aims to affordably deliver the scalability, data availability, and high performance required by large enterprises and data-intensive environments. Cougar is intended to lower the total cost of managing unstructured data, enabling more data to be managed with fewer resources. According to the vendor, Cougar expands ONStor's market addressability to now include everyone from mid-range to high-end enterprises. "What Cougar allows us to do is scale up as well as scale out," Narayan Venkat, ONStor's vice president of marketing, told 5 Minute Briefing.
"Cougar is the third generation of our product and what Cougar allows us to do is deliver a very compelling NAS solution, not just from an integrated NAS standpoint, but a NAS gateway standpoint, that delivers phenomenal performance in a very small power- and cooling-efficient footprint," said Venkat.
The Cougar line is an open data center networked storage solution that can scale up to four petabytes and 400K+ SpecSFS Ops in a cluster. According to ONStor, it offers nearly twice the price/performance efficiency as compared to systems from the competition - 1.6x better on cost per IOP and 2x better on cost per MB/s.
The Cougar line offers heterogeneous storage virtualization, enabling consolidated management and provisioning of multi-vendor storage, so customers can use the storage they already have, protecting their existing investments, while adding storage from other vendors or from ONStor.
Cougar is built on the EverScale system architecture, a scalable redundant modular architecture enabling independent scalability of performance and capacity with high data availability and near-zero downtime, according to the vendor. Cougar’s multi-core storage network processors are built into a highly available "cluster-in-a-box" design, offering 18 cores per filer, which results in high throughput, small footprint per rack unit, power and cooling efficiency, and low cost per terabyte. Additionally, this design offers the high availability organizations need to meet strict SLAs. For more information, go here.
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IBM Introduces the “Industry's Fastest” One-Terabyte Storage Tape Drive
IBM introduced what it calls the industry's fastest one terabyte (TB) storage tape drive, which will enable clients to protect and archive more information with less cost and less energy usage - the highest capacity and performance of any tape drive in the market.
The new IBM System Storage TS1130 Tape Drive will be able to store up to one TB of uncompressed data per tape cartridge and with a native data rate of 160 megabytes per second (MB/s), storage backups can be completed up to 54 percent faster than the previous generation drive.
Equivalent to storing the text of one million books on a single tape cartridge, the IBM System Storage TS1130 Tape Drive is ideal for mid-sized to enterprise clients across financial, life sciences and public sector industries looking for massive data protection, compliance and archive solutions needed over the long term. Coupled with IBM's tape virtualization offerings, large, scalable automation, and tape drive encryption, customers can benefit from the low cost of tape solutions that are highly secure, while simplifying the management of backup and archive operations.
"IBM is committed to tape storage as part of a tiered information infrastructure and today we offer the fastest, highest capacity drive in the market," said Cindy Grossman, vice president of tape and archive for IBM System Storage. "Tape storage is the most green and cost-effective form of data storage available, and the IBM TS1130 Tape Drive will enable clients to address their growing needs for affordable and robust data solutions by storing more data on fewer cartridges, which will save clients valuable time, space, energy and money."
The IBM System Storage TS1130 uses a high technology Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) head design that incorporates a more sensitive read-write head for the magnetic tape system, which results in fewer data read errors helping to provide greater data integrity and subsystem reliability. It also features a special head overcoat technology that helps increase the overall life expectancy of the product.
Additionally, the TS1130 uses existing 3592 rewritable and WORM cartridges. It offers backwards compatibility with support for Gen 1, 2 and 3 formats supporting both read and write for Gen 2 and read only for Gen1 helping to protect media investments and lower costs. The TS1130 Tape Drive also supports drive-based data encryption to help protect data. The TS1130-based encryption and associated Encryption Key Manager component are supported in a wide variety of operating system environments.
The new IBM System Storage TS1130 will be available worldwide on September 5, 2008 with a starting price of $39,050. IBM is also offering an upgrade from existing drives for $19,500 and backward media compatibility for investment protection. For more information about IBM System Storage, go here.
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