Compellent Storage Center 4.0 Supposed to Reduce HDD Usage

Compellent Technologies,
Inc. announced a new release of its storage area network (SAN), offering several
industry-first technologies that can reduce the number of disk drives
required by up to 80 percent.

Compellent Storage Center 4.0 is the first networked storage system
to manage data inside the volume to automate tiered storage within
every drive, amplify the storage utilization benefits of thin
provisioning and reclaim unused disk space. New software applications
like Fast Track, Thin Import and Free Space Recovery help eliminate
disk drives from the data center, effectively reducing total cost of
ownership and energy consumption for mid-sized enterprises.

"Compellent is ushering in a new era of efficiency for networked
storage systems," explains Bruce Kornfeld, vice president of marketing,
Compellent. "From software innovations like Fast Track to our
third-generation controller, we framed the release of 4.0 around the
business impact it would have on our end-users. By focusing on
improving utilization and performance, we’ve delivered a storage
platform that can significantly reduce disk drive requirements, and as
a result cut power and cooling expenses. It’s the new TCO equation for
the new data center."

New features in Storage Center 4.0 include:

• Fast Track: Dynamically placing active data on the outer
  tracks of a disk drive can speed access to information while decreasing
  costs as fewer high-performance drives are needed. Unlike competitive
  offerings that only place entire volumes on perimeter tracks, Fast
  Track only moves frequently accessed data from the entire system to
  these tracks. As a result, performance is accelerated and disk drive
  requirements are reduced by up to 30 percent.
• Thin Import: As existing data is copied to a Compellent SAN,
  Storage Center 4.0 converts the data into thin-provisioned volumes.
  This feature can reduce disk drive requirements by up to 50 percent and
  help IT departments reclaim storage resources previously wasted in
  their legacy systems.
• Free Space Recovery: After Windows files are deleted from a
  thin provisioned volume in other SANs, the operating system will
  continue to report that the space is unavailable. Free Space Recovery
  enables this unused space to be utilized again, thereby making
  Compellent’s advanced thin provisioning technology one of the most
  efficient in the industry.
• Application Optimizer: Typically not available with
  traditional SANs, Application Optimizer tunes storage performance
  depending on the application being used. End-users can set the size of
  data transfers within the SAN to match I/O performance for different
  applications such as video imaging, e-mail and databases.
• Third-generation Controller: The new Series 30 controller
  offers increased performance for enterprise applications and is
  backwards compatible, eliminating the need for "forklift" upgrades.

"Thin Import might be one of the coolest applications of storage
technology I’ve ever seen. Imagine being able to pull all the
over-provisioned, over-allocated and under-utilized capacity off of
your old expensive arrays and instantly apply just-in-time thin
provisioning to those volumes," said Steve Duplessie, founder and
senior storage analyst at Enterprise Systems Group. "It is tantamount
to taking your 25 percent utilized storage infrastructure to 80 percent
in one fell swoop. Think of what that would mean for everything from
footprint to backup—the ramifications are staggering."

Compellent’s sophisticated data movement engine with Fast Track can
optimize performance based on actual usage patterns. This feature
influenced the decision of Ares Management LLC, a global investment
management firm with offices in Los Angeles, New York and London, to
invest in a Compellent SAN.

"When we sat down with the Compellent team and did the I/O
calculations for Fast Track, our engineers were just blown away,"
explained Ping Ooi, associate vice president, Ares Management LLC. "The
expectation is once the active data is on the outside edge of the
drives, any large-scale report we access will run in under 20 minutes,
down from 30 minutes. We’re talking about a 33 percent reduction in
time and we’re only going to continue to see improved efficiency as we
fully utilize Fast Track."

A
richly configured Storage Center 4.0 QuickStart ILM Bundle starts at
approximately $57,200 with 7.2 TB of storage, a single controller, Fast
Track, Thin Import and Free Space Recovery, among other software
licenses.

Compellent Technologies,
Inc.