Nexsan and QLogic Power Virtual Enterprise

Nexsan Corporation announced a report highlighting the advantages of a virtualized Nexsan-QLogic Corp.‘s  SAN infrastructure to empower end-to-end storage visibility for virtual machines.

Published by openBench Labs, the report shows that virtualized storage environments using Nexsan’s storage platform and QLogic FC switches and adapters were shown to increase application performance while cutting management requirements.

According to the report, "The bottom line for controlling budgets rests on controlling OpEx. For storage resources in particular, OpEx dominates the TCO by an order of magnitude, which pressures IT operations to minimize resource management time while maximizing resource utilization. To address storage management issues, most SAN-storage vendors package proprietary software to create, manage, and add optional functionality to their subsystems exclusively. As a result, storage in SAN fabrics typically devolves into isolated pools of logical disks that IT can only manage as individual assets."

The testing facility determined that virtualized storage infrastructure, incorporating a combination of Nexsan storage systems with extensive API integration, QLogic FC switches and adapters, and storage management software, can deliver a higher level of value for organizations.

These benefits include:

• The ability to leverage productivity features developed by third-party vendors for end-to-end visibility of all storage resources.
• Maximization of storage density and reliability to support a range of SLA storage requirements with respect to capacity, throughput, access, and reliability.
• Reduction in SAN infrastructure costs by utilizing bothperformance FC and low-cost iSCSI paths with Nexsan and QLogic infrastructure to intelligently scale SAN storage resource connections.
• Optimization of storage performance by supporting a mix of SSD, SAS, and SATA drives to support a range of storage requirements.

Virtualized storage environments that leverage the Nexsan-QLogic solution put an end to the islands of isolated storage resources and allow companies to take advantage of third-party storage applications for greater control and efficiency. Nexsan API integration and implementation of SCSI 3 standards deliver a more flexible approach to storage management using Nexsan storage systems and software that is matched to the intended application. The result is improved operational agility that increases IT responsiveness and the ability to meet the most demanding storage challenges.

"The robust Nexsan-QLogic SAN infrastructure provides IT with an environment that satisfies a wide range of I/O metrics with respect to access (IOPS), throughput (MB per second), and capacity (price per GB), while simultaneously supporting multiple levels of resource availability and security," said Jack Fegreus, MD, openBench Labs. "By complementing end-to-end SAN visibility with high performance hardware, operating costs go down, reliability increases and overall performance is optimized."

"With the most proven FC stack in the industry, QLogic FC adapters and switches provide organizations with a platform for growth and the ability to easily migrate to a fully converged fabric topology," said Joe Kimpler, director, Alliances, QLogic. "As a result, IT can immediately leverage Nexsan storage systems to support today’s diverse application performance and capacity requirements with any combination of SSD, SAS, and SATA drives while future-proofing their investments."

"With respect to customer needs, IT professionals struggling with implementing critical business-driven initiatives powered by service-oriented computing infrastructure now have the ability to deploy a highly manageable, multi-fabric SAN infrastructure," said Don Chouinard, director of Product Marketing, Nexsan. "Nexsan’s Flexible Storage Platform and QLogic’s Adaptive Convergence Strategy empower the virtual enterprise and pave the road to cloud computing."

To download the openBench Labs report