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Sanbolic software provides advance storage management capabilities for Windows server deployed with any industry standard SAN hardware. This can simplify storage provisioning and management, reducing cost of ownership, while improving application availability and performance. Sanbolic’s products are now sold as products suites which utilize a single “next-next-next” installer and allow customers to chose which features they utilize based on the license key they purchase.
LaScala volume manager can be used to aggregate multiple heterogeneous iSCSI or Fibre Channel storage arrays, and centrally configure and assign logical volumes from the resulting storage pool. These volumes can be dynamically expanded, and the data protected using RAID 1 (software mirroring). Within this SAN, managers can flexibly reassign storage as required and automate file migration based on storage policy. Melio file system enables active-active access to shared files on SAN storage providing improved architectures for availability and scale out. Storage I/O and transaction performance can be monitored at each node and Quality of Service priorities set on a per server or per process basis. All of these features are included with Sanbolic’s Data Center Product Suite.
Sanbolic’s software supports Microsoft Active Directory and Windows Security, Network Load Balancing, and Distributed File System, further simplifying application deployment
Advantages of using Sanbolic’s Melio Data Center product suit in Windows data centers:
- Aggregate multiple modular storage arrays into a single pool of storage.
- Simplify administration by elevating storage pool management to volume level instead of using zoning and LUN management.
- Create volumes, volume sets, and stripe sets using an intuitive GUI that allows all servers to see the common storage pool.
- Use native Windows security permissions to assign volume access rights to any user account.
- Non-disruptively expand volumes while storage remains accessible.
- Remotely manage the volume structure via a VPN
- Protect data volumes using RAID 1
- Using Melio FS, there is Active-Active access to all data on a SAN, permitting improved application availability
- architectures.
- Windows Active Directory, DFS, and clustering features are supported.
- Reporting on storage I/O and transaction performance facilitates optimization of storage intensive workloads. The file system also incorporates quality of service assignment to allow prioritization of defined workloads in storage bandwidth-constrained environments.
- Sanbolic’s product suite includes the clustered file system and volume manager, is very easy to install and manage, and can be used with any industry standard iSCSI or fibre channel storage hardware.
- Sanbolic Software takes advantage of inherent redundant paths to data provided by SAN Fabric - any server can be given access to any data on the SAN. A single server can back up all data on the SAN while maintaining the file system architecture.
- Sanbolic’s Simple Information Lifecycle Manager utility (included in all product suites) provides a tool to manage policy based file migrations or copies, giving administrators flexible control over data replication and lifecycle management.
SAN hardware has increasingly become a cost effective option for even small organizations to consolidate their storage centrally, and are often deployed during server virtualization initiatives. SANs provide high performance and high reliability, and facilitate adding storage as an organization’s needs grow.
SANs also present a management challenge to many organizations. While management utilities for storage arrays have been improving, each vendor has their own interface, so typically each arrays needs to be managed separately. Furthermore, each server needs to be provisioned with storage from the array that it uniquely accesses (a LUN), and then create a logical volume structure on that storage. Reassigning or adding storage can be a complex task, requiring the administrator to manage LUNs on each array, zoning on each switch, and volume structure on each server as a separate process. These inflexible storage LUN-server silos always complicate data and application availability since it is often a cumbersome process to reassign access to the LUN if a server fails, and many back up tools require that each server be backed up individually.
Because Sanbolic’s software is designed to manage shared SAN storage, the SAN consolidation and management process can be greatly simplified. An administrator can centrally manage storage spanning multiple arrays as a single pool of storage, flexibly reassign storage as required, and automate file migration based on storage policy. Sanbolic’s software also supports remote storage management, so that an administrator can log into a SAN at a remote office over a VPN and configure, assign or reassign logical volumes among the servers at that site. Administrators can set security and user access rights globally for the SAN, so that a given user will have the same access rights to volumes and files from any server or workstation on the SAN.
Sanbolic’s software allows better utilization of the inherent redundancy in a SAN, and provides an improved set of options for backup as well as server and storage failover. This gives administrators the ability to better match high availability architectures with application requirements, and significantly reduce the cost and complexity typically associated with high availability solutions.
In virtualized data centers the server resources are often quite easily managed, but SAN storage can still be complex and inflexible, since storage LUNs need to be uniquely mapped to a given virtual server. Sanbolic’s software suite overcomes this limitation, and enables the storage resources in a virtualized data center to be centrally managed and flexibly assigned as well.
Sanbolic’s shared storage software can improve data protection and system availability solutions along several dimensions:
- LaScala can quickly reassign a volume (including NTFS volumes) to any sever on the SAN for data access in the event of a server failure, or for a manually administered backup operation.
- LaScala provides RAID 1 (software mirroring) protection of data volumes
- Melio FS allows all servers to be given access to data on a SAN, taking advantage of the inherent path redundancy of a SAN infrastructure. Melio includes a VSS based distributed snapshot capability, so snaps can be taken from an server in the storage cluster, and can work with any VSS-based backup software.
- This Active-active access to shared files on SAN storage provides additional options for maintaining availability in the event of server failure.
Allowing Active-Active and N+1 Clusters
Typical active-passive failover clusters use specialized software to ensure that only one server accesses a volume at a given time, but then a redundant server can be given access to the data in the event that the primary server fails. This adds complexity and leads to low server utilization.
In contrast, Sanbolic’s software allow many types of applications (such as file serving) to have concurrent access to shared data. All servers can be actively supporting the application under normal operations, reducing the number of servers required. Should a given server fail, the other servers running the application continue to function, maintaining application availability, although at a reduced capacity.
For applications that do not permit multiple application servers to share concurrent access to the data (for example, most databases, including SQL Server), Sanbolic’s software still provides improved availability options. Melio allows all databases to be contained in a single LUN mounted by all data base servers. Sanbolic’s AppCluster (included in the Data Center Suite) enable users to configure and manage large SQL Server clusters which enable databases to be rapidly moved between SQL Server instances for availability or load balancing.
Backup Since all servers can share access to the file system, the file system can be backed up from a single server, requiring only a single copy of backup software. The file system also now includes a VSS-based distributed snapshot capability which enables snapshots of the entire file system or any specific file from any server in the storage cluster. Unlike SAN-based block data backup, the file system structure is retained, facilitating data recovery in the event of storage hardware failure. Users can utilize a single back up application license and flexibly back up any set of data of any SAN connected server, at any given time with no disruption or downtime. They can also take full advantage of the high speed FC connectivity and removing the slow process of coping data through the Ethernet network.
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