Infortrend Adds Thin Provisioning and Remote Replication

Infortrend announced that thin provisioning and remote replication functions are now available on its entry-level EonStor DS storage systems, helping SMBs optimise storage resources and improve data protection.

                                    Comparison of Infortrend’s
                               space-intelligent Thin Provisioning

By automatically allocating system capacity to applications as needed, thin provisioning technology can help achieve up to 90 percent storage utilisation – while reducing power consumption. By creating off-site copies of data, remote replication improves data protection and gives SMBs more options for developing a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. These technologies were traditionally only accessible to large enterprises.
 
Thin provisioning technology allows users to allocate a large amount of virtual capacity for an application server – regardless of the physical capacity actually available. At initial setup, thin provisioning does not physically allocate capacity to the prescribed data volume, and the actual space is used only when data writes occur. This on-demand method for capacity allocation not only optimises storage utilisation, but also greatly simplifies capacity planning and management tasks – all while reducing power consumption. In order to help users easily monitor capacity utilisation, Infortrend’s EonStor DS systems automatically issue notifications when the total capacity utilisation is reaching the threshold set by the user. If users wish to expand capacity, they can do so non-disruptively.
 
Remote replication enables users to deploy full data copies across storage systems at different sites, either in synchronous or asynchronous mode. When source data fails due to system malfunctions or other factors, users can leverage the disk-based remote copies to quickly restart services. If operations need to be shifted back to the source, the source can be quickly synced with the remote copy by simply checking data differentials.
 
Thomas Kao, director of product planning at Infortrend, said: "Infortrend is a leader in the SMB storage market and fully understands the IT challenges faced by these users. By adding thin provisioning and remote replication functions to our EonStor DS systems, we ensure that SMBs can take advantage of all that full-featured storage systems have to offer, while staying within their limited IT budgets."
 
Thin provisioning and remote replication functions are currently available on the ESDS S16F-R2842, S16F-G2842, B24F-R2842 and B24F-G2842, and will be available on all EonStor DS models featuring 6Gb/s SAS drive-side connectivity by the end of November 2010.