iSCSI Universal Storage Appliance by Datastor Australia

Datastor Australia has unveiled a NAS/iSCSI solution that leverages the benefits of iSCSI and virtualisation technology to allow serverless backups to hard drive and tape. The company looks upon it as a Universal Data Storage Appliance.

Tandberg Data Viking FS-1610 NAS

Based on a Tandberg Data Viking FS-1610 NAS, powered by Microsoft iSCSI Target on Windows Unified Data Storage Server (UDSSD), the solution is driven by the new Alacritech iSCSI/IP card. Datastor has achieved throughput speeds up to 200 Mb/s with this configuration.

The solution can provide storage to virtualised storage devices or application servers via VMware ESX. If a server needs additional storage, this can be provisioned using iSCSI. The solution also allows snapshots with iSCSI, centralised serverless backups, or backup up to a preferred medium.

The distributed Alacritech accelerator card speeds up processing by up to 30-40 per cent with TOE technology (TCP Offload Engine) accelerating IP and iSCSI. The Tandberg Viking SAN has RAID 6 capability plus the ability to manage it either through a web browser or remotely. This flexibility can be invaluable for maintenance.

Datastor runs applications on the Tandberg Viking, allowing it to backup physical and virtual hosts. Providing storage to VMware ESX servers via iSCSI, allowing a user to plug into any environment. The setup can provide image-level hot backups of virtual or physical machines, while those machines are running. They can move disk to tape for offsite backup, or offer total protection either on or offsite.