Compellent Adds SAS HDDs, RAID-6 and Portable Volume DR

Compellent Technologies, Inc. announced the availability of Storage Center 5, designed to simplify disaster recovery and enable automated tiered storage for any sized budget.

Built on its Dynamic Block Architecture, Storage Center 5’s new features include: Portable Volume replication, scalable SAS storage, automated tiered storage with RAID 6 protection, Virtual Ports I/O technology, Server Mapping provisioning and space-efficient Consistency Groups. With Compellent’s persistent, scalable design and block-level virtualization, end-users can mix different storage tiers from SAS to SSD in a single, virtualized pool of storage as the core of a fluid data environment.

Portable Volume – reduces the time, cost and complexity of replicating data for disaster recovery purposes. Customers replicate data to portable external hard drives and Compellent’s Enterprise Manager software automates the entire process, with no training or services necessary. Protected by 128-bit encryption, the drives can be shipped overnight to remote sites, which is less expensive and faster than shipping entire arrays or leasing high-performance bandwidth.

Scalable SAS Drives – lower the disk cost for remote replication and automated data tiering while providing enterprise performance. Storage Center 5 can scale from as few as six SAS drives up to 384 SAS drives with a mix of capacities and speeds within the same enclosures, supporting FC or iSCSI front-end server connectivity.

Automated Tiered Storage with RAID 6 – combines cost savings, efficiency and fault tolerance with the highest levels of overall system performance. Compellent first stores written data on fast storage configured with RAID 10 and then dynamically migrates the least active portions to RAID 6 for high availability and protection, without requiring manual intervention or services.

Virtual Ports – simplify configurations and lower hardware costs by reducing the number of physical I/O ports required in network switches and Compellent controllers by 50 percent. The ports are virtualized and FC or iSCSI connections can be shared or moved using software to provide more flexibility while enabling high data availability for both entry-level and enterprise configurations.

Server Mapping – automates deployment of virtual servers and clusters, combining the power and precision of scripting with the convenience of a GUI. Server mapping enables simultaneous setup and configuration of identical thin-provisioned volumes for many physical and virtual machines, adding and removing servers on the fly.

Consistency Groups – enable fast, accurate data recovery of enterprise applications such as databases. The space efficiency and speed of Compellent’s implementation supports snapshots of up to 40 separate yet related volumes at the same time without requiring special planning or system tuning.
    
"Compellent continues to innovate in areas of automated tiered storage and disaster recovery as a direct response to our customers’ feedback and the needs of all businesses to access data instantly," said Andy Hardy, managing director of international sales, Compellent. "Storage Center 5 enables customers to easily future-proof their data centers with the most efficient, fluid data management."

"The ease-of-use and absence of a costly licensing structure for global replication made Compellent’s Storage Center 5 an easy choice for initiating our disaster recovery strategy," said Jack Fleming, infrastructure manager, Appleby, a global offshore law firm. "Portable Volume eliminated the need for temporary bandwidth, saving us $30,000 in replication costs, and allowed us to sync the SANs in our Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Jersey offices in less than 24 hours. Additionally, easily integrating SAS to our existing SATA and Fibre Channel drives provided cost-effective base for our Compellent automated tiered storage."
   
Pricing and Availability
Available immediately exclusively through Compellent’s global network of channel partners, Storage Center 5 can scale from entry-level to enterprise systems with fully customizable configurations.

• A typical entry-level configuration starts at $21,100 and includes dual clustered controllers, 10TB SAS storage and the following bundled software: Storage Center 5 Core with Virtual Ports, Server Mapping, Consistency Groups, Dynamic Capacity thin provisioning, Fast Track data placement, Data Instant Replay snapshots, and Enterprise Manager storage resource management.
• A configuration with automated tiered storage and replication starts at $38,100 and includes dual clustered controllers, 8.7TB SAS (six 1TB 7,200 RPM and six 460GB 15,000 RPM) drives, the same bundled software plus Data Progression tiering and Remote Instant Replay replication licenses.
• The optional Portable Volume Kit with two 2TB drives starts at $1,250.
•  All prices exclude maintenance and services.

   
To read more one Storage Center 5 in a white paper ‘4 Ways to Lower the Costs of Replication‘ (you need to register)