NEC SAN M Series Replacing D Series

NEC IT Platform Solutions, a division of NEC Corporation, announced a new range of storage solutions, the M Series.

                                   NEC M100 Disk Array

Comprising three SAN systems (M100, M300 and M500), this series is designed to deliver a scalable, economical, high-performance solution. This new range will gradually replace the D Series range from NEC.

With the exponential increase in the volume of data and its criticality, dynamic and virtualised management of these volumes has today become a priority for SMEs as well as corporations.

This new M Series range was designed
with 2 priority objectives:

• To maximise data integrity and availability for better continuity of service, and
• To reduce the acquisition and operating costs, to make savings

To do this, NEC used and developed technologies
focusing on the following 4 major areas:

• Offering a flexible and scalable range with functionalities even from the entry-level version
• Providing a high level of performance and availability
• Facilitating implementation and administration, particularly in virtual environments
• Limiting energy consumption

The M Series is suitable for virtualised environments, the cloud, databases, data centres, disk-to-disk backups and all storage applications at block level.

The storage arrays of the M Series range:

• operate on a variety of disks: SSD, SAS or NL-SAS in 3.5" or 2.5" format and
• interface: with 8 Gbps FC, iSCSI 1 or 10 Gbps protocols and soon with SAS

Thanks to the 3 base systems, M100, M300 and M500, and their granularity and scope for expansion, a variety of customised storage solutions is possible.

Each solution actually allows its initial capacity to be expanded by adding extension arrays. The M100, M300 and M500 respectively support up to 96 disks, 144 disks and 386 disks. Transparent scalability is possible within the range, in order to protect investments.

The M Series arrays benefit from replication functions from the entry-level version. For example, the M100 array supports the Dynamic Data Replication and Remote Data Replication modes, functions that certain competitors very often only offer on more expensive mid-range systems.

The use of Intel multi-core processors and SSD disks as additional caches for controllers guarantees a high level of performance. The range provides an IOPS level of performance proportional to the number of disks set up. The user can thus increase the performance of their storage system by adding disks.

In the event of hard disk failure, use of Super Phoenix technology, developed and patented by NEC, helps users reduce the amount of reconstruction by 50% and thereby improves the availability of data.

Implementing the Optimal data allocation (tiering) function, which automatically puts data on the most relevant disks (SSD, SAS, or NL-SAS) depending on their use, provides faster access to the data and also allows energy savings to be made.

With their use of the latest technologies (processors, disks, etc.) and provision of intelligent energy management functions, such as MAID (massive array of idle disks) technology, the M Series range has many automatic energy savings and consumption tracking modes as standard.

The M Series range also operates with the Thin Provisioning mode, which is interesting in virtual environments for reducing the initial investment and making energy savings.

NEC, which has expertise in power supply using Li-Ion batteries, will soon equip the M Series range with a hybrid power supply. Li-Ion batteries in disk format provide energy to cover consumption peaks, which generates energy savings and reduces costs for the company.

The Instant Building function developed by NEC allows operation to start without waiting for disk formatting to be completed, which saves an amount of time.

The Dynamic pool function allows a logical disk to be added or removed, or its capacity extended, online and at any time.

The new M Series range also supports a VAAI environment that improves performances, thanks to the reduction in network traffic and processor load.

Finally, disk encryption is also possible, strengthening data security particularly in data centres for example.

"Relevant storage solutions must combine efficient hardware with evolved logical functions in order to respond, among other things, to the issues of resource control, high availability, replication and disaster recovery plans. The M Series storage solutions offer the best customer value as SAN Fibre Channel or iSCSI and soon SAS, thanks to a peerless combination of performance, reliability, scalability, advanced functions and energy efficiency at an attractive price. With the M Series, we are particularly delighted to offer our customers storage solutions that live up to their expectations for today, but also tomorrow," concludes Thierry Marulier, Product Marketing Manager at NEC IT Platform Solutions.

Product availability:

• M100: available
• M300: 11/2011
• M500: 01/2012