Saturday, 2 June 2012

Nexenastor - A storage management tool

NexentaStor:
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 NexentaStor is a fully featured NAS/SAN software platform with capabilities that meet and exceed the capabilities of legacy storage systems.
 NexentaStor continues to build on its position as the superior alternative to expensive, vertically integrated, proprietary storage technologies, saving customers 70-80%      over proprietary solutions.
 Running on any industry standard hardware, NexentaStor helps organizations implement high-performance, yet cost-effective data storage solutions with features such as
   * inline deduplication - Inline deduplication is the removal of redundancies from data before or as it is being written to a backup device.

   Inline deduplication reduces the amount of redundant data in an application and the capacity needed for the backup disk targets, in comparison to post-process deduplication. However, inline deduplication can slow down the overall data backup process because inline data deduplication devices are in the data path between the servers and the backup disk systems.

         The main alternative to inline deduplication is post-processing deduplication. Post-processing deduplication products don't operate in the data path; rather, they deduplicate the backup data after it has been written to the backup disk system.
   
    * unlimited snapshots and cloning
    * unlimited file size
    * high-availability support

In addition, NexentaStor functionality includes full integration with virtualization approaches, even in mixed vendor environments. This solution can create shared pools of storage from any combination of storage hardware, including SSDs, and delivers end-to-end data integrity, integrated search, and inline virus scanning. NexentaStor also enables efficient one-click virtual machine and other storage provisioning.

In addition, the power of NexentaStor is extended by the use of Nexenta Plug-ins, which broaden the platform’s functionalities for specific storage systems, such as SAN. Plug-ins (such as the High Availability Cluster Plug-in,and more) provide enhanced capabilities for management and administration and integrate fully with other products, such as virtualization suites.



NexentaStor features:
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*128-bit File System:
ZFS-based technology provides the most scalable and flexible 128-bit file system.

*Unlimited Storage Capacity:
Designed for large-scale growth with unlimited snapshots and copy-on-write clones.

*Unlimited File Size:
While most legacy solutions limit the size of the file system, there are no such limitations with ZFS.

*Unified Appliance:
Support for NAS (NFS, CIFS WebDAV, FTP) and support for SAN (iSCSI & FC) means flexibility.

*Data Deduplication & Native Compression:
Inline data deduplication and compression reduce the use of primary storage.

*Hybrid Storage Pools:
Exploit I/O cache to accelerate read & write performance—SSD.

*Integrated Snapshot Search:
Perform indexing & Boolean searches from the file system to search for files within snapshots.

*Heterogeneous Block & File Replication:
Synchronous or asynchronous replication for easy disaster recovery.

*Block-level Mirroring:
Setup remote backups and disaster recovery at off-site locations

*Simplified Disk Management:
Manage disks and JBODs using either command line or NexentaStor Management Viewer (NMV).

*Total Product Safety:
Proactive, automated alert mechanisms send alerts when configuration deviates from “Golden Image” (best configuration).

*VM Integration:
VMware, XEN, Hyper-V

*End-to-End Data Integrity:
No silent data corruption.



Additional Features
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Support of metro cluster or stretch cluster deployments:
Real-time failover between active/active clusters in different geographies, up to 30 miles apart.

Reduce the amount of required storage in VDI deployments:
SCSI UNMAP as a client-side feature frees up storage in the back end, in the context of thin provisioning (a 100-to-one reduction in space for VDI when using NexentaStor).

Reserve space for future growth:
Reserve pool space, ensuring to never run out of space accidentally, allowing for work continuation without disruption. with ZFS.

Synchronization to multiple destinations:
Site-to-site replications across disparate destinations.
Improves optimization by supporting CIFS cross-forest (groups of clients) trust.

Quick replication:
Between different data centers asynchronously through the use of a new Layer 5 multi-connection, multi-destination, multi-pathing protocol.



Nexenta Plug-ins and Applications
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Cloud Archive
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The Nexenta Cloud Archive Plug-In is a NexentaStor plugin which provides backup and restore capabilities for NexentaStor volumes to and from the specified cloud storage. Cloud Archive allows you to periodically back up NexentaStor volumes and folders to one or more cloud storage areas. It also allows you to restore directly from the Cloud to your NexentaStor appliance.

High Availability (HA) Cluster
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The HA Cluster eliminates, as a single point of failure, the NexentaStor instances themselves. The HA Cluster Plug-in enables two NexentaStor instances to be configured as an active / active pair. At the same time, along with another NexentaStor instance, the plug-in provides high availability for shared storage accessible from both appliances.

The storage jointly managed via HA Cluster is configured as shared storage. You can establish RAID and replication policies to protect the data itself in a number of ways with the aid of NexentaStor. Other new enhancements include:

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