Next Generation SAN From Compellent

Compellent Technologies, Inc. announced the Storage Center, building on its Fluid Data architecture to dynamically scale storage resources and provide continuous access to data while laying the foundation for a grid of Compellent arrays operating as one.

The new Storage Center 5.4 features storage hardware, integration with server virtualization technologies and software that allows IT to automatically shift storage resources on-demand, non-disruptively to avoid downtime and maintain real-time availability. Enterprise customers can scale up capacity and functionality with a new controller platform that supports a wide range of emerging technologies from FCoE to 10Gb iSCSI and from 6Gb/s SAS drives to a 2.5-inch 24-bay enclosure. New Live Volume software delivers scale out capabilities and business continuity through the fluid movement of storage volumes between Compellent arrays.

Live Volume:
Beyond Disaster Recovery to Dynamic Business Continuity
Live Volume allows enterprises to architect a grid of shared storage that can be managed and optimized as one, providing storage agility and high availability while eliminating the islands of storage typical with rapidly growing IT infrastructures. Live Volume acts as a storage hypervisor, actively presenting storage to two Compellent arrays at the same time, allowing organizations to shift volumes between systems to provide continuous data availability. This solves multiple data mobility issues facing IT today, including moving storage for application changes, maintenance, planned outages, load balancing and disaster avoidance.

When virtual machines are moved using technologies such as VMware vMotion or Microsoft Live Migration, Live Volume automatically moves the associated storage volume. Data is no longer physically bound to a particular array or data center. Instead, storage can be accessed and shared from multiple locations, making Live Volume a key enabler for enterprise scale out and IT clouds. Live Volume works with multiple hypervisors, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

Live Volume is a fraction of the cost of other solutions as it does not require an external appliance or server agents and does not impose a limit on the quantity of Live Volumes that can be created, deleted or updated. All this is done without performance impact to virtual servers. And as it is fully integrated with the Fluid Data architecture, every Live Volume is automatically thin provisioned and can be automatically tiered.

Enterprise Manager Provides
Multiple Points of Virtualization Integration

• Enterprise Manager is the Compellent multi-site management tool that enables IT to oversee multiple storage arrays in any number of physical locations. Customers can initiate replication between arrays, access server virtualization infrastructure and manage any number of Live Volumes between Compellent systems. Compellent continues to enable dozens of points of integration with the leading technology platforms, offering flexibility and choice in how IT administers resources.

New Enterprise Manager capabilities include:

• Manage all Live Volumes through a single interface, empowering customers to easily administer multiple data centers in a virtualized grid of storage arrays.
• New VMware vSphere 4.1 client plug-in allows VMware users to manage Compellent storage through the vSphere interface.
• The Storage Adapter for Citrix StorageLink enables IT managers to create and recover storage for Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer virtual machines. New integration with Citrix StorageLink Site Recovery dramatically simplifies the setup and configuration of disaster recovery protection of Hyper-V workloads through integration with Compellent thin provisioning, snapshots and thin replication.

Next-Generation Hardware
Delivers Scalable Enterprise Storage
Enterprise scale-out requires an underlying hardware platform to deliver flexible scale up capabilities that can keep pace with data growth without requiring a costly rip-and-replace upgrade. With Compellent perpetual software licensing, customers can upgrade controllers without incurring additional software licensing fees.

New hardware features designed
to increase scalability and performance
for the enterprise include:

• Series 40 controller with Intel Xeon quad-core processors has six slots to provide increased scalability and is the cornerstone for future enterprise enhancements.
• 6Gb/s 2.5-inch SAS drives are two-thirds smaller and twice the speed of 3Gb/s 3.5-inch SAS drives and use 30 to 40 percent less power. Up to 24 2.5-inch drives fit in one 2U enclosure, with each drive providing four 6Gb/s lanes, representing a significant performance increase in a smaller physical footprint.
• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCOE) and 10Gb iSCSI support, including the Cisco converged network architecture and Nexus multi-protocol network switches, provides front-end connectivity choice and agility as storage needs change over time.

Phil Soran, president and CEO, Compellent, said: "As the industry continues its shift to cloud computing and virtualization, enterprises require a storage platform that can readily adapt to changes in their businesses by scaling with their growth while protecting their data and optimizing their major financial investments made today. This launch is the first in a series of product innovations we believe will deliver exactly the scale-up and scale-out companies require as they grow and change."

Craig Miller, senior infrastructure manager, BioWare, said: "BioWare is a 24/7 business with automated processes that are happening every hour of the day. So, downtime is out of the question. Within a couple days of running Live Volume, I moved terabytes of data in several existing volumes from one array to another without an outage or impact to our applications. Live Volume revolutionizes how IT management and maintenance is done for our company. It’s not about IT management – it’s just business."

Noemi Greyzdorf, Research Manager for Storage Software, IDC, said: "Our research shows that in 2011, businesses will continue to seek ways to employ virtualization solutions to efficiently meet business demands. Flexible infrastructures, like those built on the Compellent Fluid Data architecture and Live Volume, will be valuable in the coming year as an enabling technology to help reduce complexity, improve operational efficiency, and deliver a scalable, persistent storage resource."

Pricing and Availability
Available exclusively through Compellent’s global network of channel partners, Storage Center 5.4 offers enterprise features in a single system that can scale from terabytes to petabytes of storage.

Excluding maintenance and services, a typical Storage Center 5.4 configuration starts at $73,000 and includes:

• Clustered Series 40 controllers
• Fluid Data software licenses including Live Volume, Enterprise Manager, Data Progression tiering and Remote Instant Replay replication.
• Approximately 6 TB of tiered 2.5" 6Gb/s SAS storage