Aberdeen Helps Out The River City Internet Group

The AberSan Z-Series from Aberdeen LLC is designed to provide SAN
enterprise storage environments with a scalable storage system that’s as
intuitive to use as network-attached storage. The file storage appliances can
scale beyond 1PB and can be managed through a single Z-RAID array.

River City
Internet Group recently selected the AberSAN Z30 to help it keep up with the
I/O demands of multiple virtual host machines that are constantly reading and
writing production data.
River City Internet Group was working with a hosting company
that was looking for a high-performance storage system that’s designed to be
used with a server farm. Another goal was that the virtual server farm needed
to be flexible and cost-efficient.

"We have found the AberSAN
Z30 to be exactly what we needed," says Jeff Laird, systems architect for
River City Internet Group. "It cost us 60% of what a similar system from
another manufacturer would have cost, and it is providing us with performance
we have not seen before from a storage system."

The Z30 combines FC and iSCSI block-level connections with multi-user network sharing to
overcome storage and partition-size limitations.

The Missouri-based company needed fast drives in order to
handle the potential I/O load predicted in developing a multinode virtual
machine farm. The AberSAN Z30 can be built with hardware and Stripe, Mirror,
RAID-Z1 (single parity), RAID-Z2 (double parity), and combinations of these.
The Z30 can also be built using single, double, or triple parity with hot
spares. Multilevel data protection prevents silent data corruptions and supports
block- and file-based replication. The AberSAN Z30 is also capable of scaling
to work with the growth of disk-based storage. For example, the Z30 uses the
ZFS file system, which allows for unlimited snapshots, making it easy for you
to back up stored data more often and, if necessary, restore files quickly.
Incremental data backups use less network bandwidth than large daily updates.

For speed, the AberSAN Z30 can use dual Intel Xeon 5600 or
5500 series processors and up to 192GB of memory. The Z30 can reach up to 48TB
of raw capacity without using any storage expansions. The AberSAN also meets
the needs of River City Internet Group’s virtual machine farm through inherent
I/O virtualization. There are hybrid storage pools with SSDs, as well as
options for thin provisioning and cloud-ready storage capabilities. Also,
unlike traditional solutions, IT staff will enjoy unlimited file system size.

The AberSAN Z30 also comes with the NexentaStor plug-ins.
"The Nexenta software is very flexible and has allowed us to allocate and
modify settings easily based on changing customer requirements," Laird
says. "It was also easy to learn and provides excellent informational
feedback." The NexentaStor software provides features
of the ZFS file system, including tools for in-line deduplication, data
mirroring, WAN-optimized IP replication, and high-availability clustering.

The NexentaStor plug-ins are one of the main reasons that
River City Internet Group selected Aberdeen.
"[Aberdeen]
offered a unique method for organizing and partitioning drives via the Nexenta
software, which immediately made sense to us," Laird says. NexentaStor’s
VM Data Center plug-in simplifies the management of storage for a
variety of environments, including VMware vSphere, Citrix Xen, and Microsoft
Hyper-V. Companies can even create replication policies for each VM and perform
most common management tasks through the plug-in.

Delorean is another helpful NexentaStor plug-in that allows
companies to create ZFS-powered Windows backups. IT staff can use the 100
client licenses in Delorean to select local files and folders they want to
protect, which means they’ll be further replicated and protected through
AberSAN.

Cost was also a major factor in the decision making process
for the River City Internet Group. "The ROI for this project was unknown
going in, and Aberdeen
provided the best value for the equipment we needed," Laird says.

Z30 Performance Options
The Z30 allows to scale the hardware by increasing
memory available or CPU performance to the number of targets available. With
the 3U, 19-inch rackmount, "We chose to go with 10GbE fiber networking for
its tremendous throughput capabilities and chose the fastest drives we could
order so that the system could be used with an ever-expanding front-end
environment," Laird says.

Variety of NexentaStor plug-ins can
be selected
to improve the capabilities of the storage system:

• Delorean. This is a backup utility for Windows that
  functions as a backup, restore, and search tool. It includes a client that runs
  on all user machines and the company servers, while the plug-in delivers the
  same features to the AberSAN Z30. Delorean supports combined backup and
  snapshot capabilities, as well as Windows VSS and other backup schedules.
• HA (High Availability) Cluster. The AberSAN Z30 can use the
  HA Cluster plug-in to create two AberSAN instances that will be configured as
  an active pair. Each instance of the AberSAN provides you with high
  availability, and the shared storage is available from both appliances. If you
  want to protect your data, the HA Cluster plug-in can work with RAID and
  replication policies.
• metaSAN. This management software provides high-speed file
  sharing with cross-platform workgroup collaboration. Multiple users can share
  data files, which is ideal for film and video editors, healthcare specialists,
  and other environments where there’s a need to access a common pool of data
  files.
• Target FC. This plug-in is designed to use the AberSAN Z30
  as a block-level target when working only with FC. Target FC can
  also create logical groups of initiators and targets. For example, a common
  block management could allow a ZVOL or virtual block device to inherit the
  storage management policies unique to the ZVOL or protection scheme.
• VM Data
  Center. The VM Data
  Center plug-in makes it easier to set storage policies for virtual environments
  and perform storage tasks, such as starting a VM. It can also help you discover
  all ESX or Xen servers on the VMs in the servers. The AberSAN Z30 and VM Data
  Center can close through the template function, which can quicken provisioning
  of identical VMs.
• WORM. With this utility, IT staff can make any data
  folder into a Write Once, Read Many mode. The WORM utility works with all
  network content, including files, directories, and subfolders.