Flexible server and storage pools lower total cost, simplify management, and improve
provisioning and utilisation rates
The Solutions
Server virtualisation solutions include powerful enterprise and commercial solutions from VMware. Supplying storage to a virtual server should be simple, flexible, and cost-effective. Failure to consider cost-effective storage optimisation in the planning and deployment of a server virtualisation design can simply transfer cost from servers to the storage infrastructure.
The Benefits
N series unified storage solutions uniquely complement virtualised server environments by providing:
• Flexible storage aggregation across heterogeneous storage environments
• Scalable performance that meets the increased I/O demand from virtualised servers with high utilisation rates
• Automated data protection for virtual machines with near-zero performance penalty
• Multiple Snapshot copies and hot backups of virtual servers, without adding disks or affecting servers
• Cost-efficient virtual storage, powerful thin provisioning, and simplified data protection
• Powerful unified data management solutions across NAS, Fibre Channel SAN, and iSCSI SAN
• Application integration with enterprise applications, including Microsoft Exchange, Oracle, and SAP
N series and VMware
A virtualised infrastructure from servers to storage maximises utilisation, performance, resiliency, and ROI. The benefits of VMware™ server virtualisation capabilities are uniquely complemented by N series storage across NAS, FC, and IP SANs. This server-to-storage virtualised infrastructure makes utility computing real and affordable for the enterprise.
N series provides:
• Scalable and consistent I/O performance for all ESX protocols (NFS, iSCSI, and FCP)
• Flexible, rapid, simple, and cost-efficient provisioning and data management solutions
• Best-in-class virtualised storage for thin provisioning of heterogeneous storage environments
N Series + BladeCenter Servers
N series storage complements the consolidation, flexibility, and cost-saving benefits of BladeCenter servers. N series storage solutions provide a flexible data management and protection infrastructure that supports the rapid provisioning, data availability, and performance requirements of high-density blade server environments.
Space-efficient thin provisioning capabilities such as FlexVol volumes and Snapshot copies provide blade server users the ability to test, develop, and clone blade data and applications quickly and cost effectively.
• Fast and flexible provisioning: FlexClone provides writable point-in-time images of blade data that take seconds to create and restore, without affecting server resources and I/O performance or demanding substantial additional storage.
• Performance and availability: Snapshot technology allows cost-effective and frequent point-in-time blade data backups. Unlike other snapshot offerings that degrade overall I/O performance up to 60% with every copy, resource-efficient Snapshot copies provide sustained data availability to blades with no performance impact.
• Increased utilisation: FlexVol volumes aggregate free space and physical disk I/O across all disk drive spindles,
enabling fast creation of multiple, high-performance data volumes. FlexVol volumes can be managed and moved independently from the underlying physical storage, are nondisruptive, and can be sized and resized quickly and dynamically.