Quantum to Attack Isilon and Others With Scale-Out NAS
Entering in primary storage bundled with StorNext software
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on September 16, 2011 at 2:57 pmQuantum Corp. is adding new products to its StorNext appliance family.
StorNext M330
First step in Quantum’s primary storage
The expanded family will leverage the power of StorNext and hardware to offer high-performance file sharing and archiving in purpose-built configurations of metadata controllers, expansion appliances and disk, and archive enabled libraries.
The StorNext solutions will be simple to deploy and architected to deliver scalability and performance; drive lower operational costs; and provide a flexible, open system for enabling third-party applications.
The new products will also work with traditional StorNext software and partner hardware offerings to get additional options for building a shared SAN and scale-out NAS environment.
Quantum’s StorNext appliances are intended to serve a range of markets where the highest performance and lowest long-term cost for sharing big data files – such as streaming rich media content or large analytical data files – is a critical part of the operational workflow.
Quantum showcased its StorNext software and appliances at the IBC 2011 Conference held in the Amsterdam RAI on September 8-13.
High-Performance Metadata Controllers
The recently announced StorNext M330 is the first in a series of metadata controller appliances from Quantum. The StorNext M330 appliance is for midrange performance requirements in the rich media environments. Future releases will address additional performance use cases.
Metadata controller appliances serve as the foundation for StorNext functionality in a high-performance shared SAN. The appliances deliver the speed, scalability, and archive-ready capabilities of StorNext in a flexible and extensible platform.
By separating metadata from data input/output (I/O) processing, Quantum’s metadata controller appliances enable predictable enterprise scale and performance, which can be increased independently from capacity, while reducing in-house operations cost.
Expansion Appliances and Disk
These purpose-built system attachments will be designed to add performance and allow users to scale their StorNext environments.
The StorNext G300 Scale-Out Gateway Appliance with unlimited StorNext LAN client licensing will deliver streaming client performance beyond a traditional scale-out NAS solution. 1 GbE and 10 GbE models will offer performance and resilient data sharing over an IP network. A conversion kit between the 1 GbE and 10 GbE models will be available to provide investment protection.
Additionally, automated load balancing between multiple StorNext G300s will be a standard feature.
The scalable StorNext QM1200, QS1200 and QD6000 Storage Systems will be optimized, validated, and supported by Quantum for use in StorNext environments.
The StorNext QM1200 Storage System will be ideal as fast disk for metadata. The StorNext QS1200 – with its 600 GB 15K drives – is designed for small primary data pools.
The StorNext QD6000 will scale to over 1 PB of data in a single array, leveraging 3 TB drives with 180 TB per 4U – and delivering single-streaming write/read performance. Customers will also be able to use the scalable StorNext QD6000 in any storage tier to leverage StorNext Storage Manager’s automated tiering capabilities.
Fast, Economical Archives
Quantum’s enterprise StorNext Archive Enabled Library integrates policy-based data management and archiving software to automatically and continuously monitor and validate archived tape integrity. If a low quality suspect tape is discovered, the appliance leverages the power of StorNext Storage Manager to automatically migrate content from the suspect tape to a new tape, and make the content accessible.
The StorNext Archive Enabled Libraries are available with a slot-based pricing model that enables capacity growth and investment protection for future LTO tape standards such as LTO-6.
The StorNext Archive Enabled Libraries can be purchased with as few as 41 activated slots or as many as 5,000 activated slots, protecting data sets that can range from 60 TB to over 7.5 PB.
Product Availability
- The StorNext M330 Metadata Controller and enterprise StorNext Archive Enabled Library are available, as well as from its worldwide channel and distribution partners.
- The StorNext QD6000, StorNext QS1200 and StorNext QM1200 Storage Systems will be available in CQ4’11.
- The midrange archive enabled library will be available in CQ4’11, with follow-on delivery of the archive enablement feature to customers in 1H2012.
- The StorNext G300 Scale-Out Gateway Appliance will be available in CQ1’12.
Janae Stow Lee, senior vice president, Filesystem and Archive Product Group, Quantum, said: "We’ve taken our industry-proven StorNext software and incorporated it into a family of powerful scale-out appliances that can tackle the growing problem of managing big data files. The new StorNext offerings will bring greater flexibility, unparalleled high-performance, and long-term cost effectiveness to a shared SAN or NAS environment – something that no other vendor can provide."
Comments
It's the first time to our knowledge that Quantum is entering in primary storage subsystems. In term of hardware, the US company was only involved up to now in secondary storage with D2D backup and tape for backup and archiving.
To enter into this new activity, the company is betting on its StorNext SAN file sharing system, for fast access from SAN-attached servers, enabling functions such as ingest, transcoding and non-linear editing, together with the ability to share that data over fast StorNext proprietary LAN as well as standard CIFS and NFS protocols to large numbers of users. It supports Windows, Linux, Apple and Unix, and most common vendors SANs (EMC, HP, HDS, DDN, etc.) and tape libraries (Quantum, HP, IBM, Sun).
The software is particularly successful in the fast-growing "Big Data" market (media and entertainment, video, healthcare, oil and gas, etc.) where EMC/Isilon is the king.
It's also adopted by big names like Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Microsoft, NetApp, Symantec and many smaller ones, and widely recognized as one of the best one to manage metadata. It's a key product for Quantum's revival. But it's a software only solution that could be used only with storage hardware from other sources.
The idea of Quantum is to go further, a good move initiated by recent CEO John Gacek. The first step was the announcement of an hardware product last June, the metadata controller appliance StorNext M330 ($75,000), using some of DXi components. It's a head with FC to connect SANs from other vendors.
Quantum is now enlarging its offering with two new StorNext controllers in 1Q12 for LAN and unlimited number of attached clients, the G301 with 1GbE and the G310 with 10GbE, and, more than that, with several StorNext purposed-built RAID storage platforms behind these gateways to come in 4Q11:
- fast QM1200 with twelve 15,000rpm 600GB HDDs for data with 8 FC ports,
- QS1200 with the same disks with special formatting for workflow, and
- QD6000 with capacity up to 1PB utilizing from twenty to sixty SATA 3TB HDDs or maximum of 180TB in 4U racks with 8 or 16 FC ports, and the possibility to add expansion units with up to 1.08PB of raw capacity.
This global solution for Big Data from one hardware and software manufacturer seems to be unique in the storage industry. Some firms like HP and IBM have all the pieces to do it but not offering a complete integrated solution like that with the features of StorNext software.
Appliance Family and Availability
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