Open-E Storage Software V7 With iSCSI Active-Active Failover

Open-E, Inc. introduced iSCSI (SAN) Active-Active Failover Cluster Feature Pack addition to their Storage Software (DSS) V7 has achieved up to 600% performance improvement over existing active-passive failover implementations.

The Active-Active Failover Cluster feature for iSCSI implementations is a storage functionality targeting applications in HA, cloud storage, virtualization and BC environments requiring performance and data security. 

The 600% performance improvement using an Active-Active, load balanced cluster topology is due to a refinement in the software’s algorithm resulting in a significant decrease in system latency and 100% utilization of a system’s storage resources.

Balancing the workload not only prevents storage overload so the QoS does not deteriorate, but also allows the system to achieve maximum performance, resulting in the cluster’s ability to process a high number of read and write operations even faster. The new addition enables users to simultaneously run volumes in the active mode on two nodes – providing HA of data. If one node fails, the other one takes over automatically and all application services continue to run without interruption. Once the failed node is available again in the resource pool, the storage administrator can move the activity of selected volumes back to the node of choice. As a result, the Active-Active functionality improves overall cluster performance since the read, write and replication traffic can be balanced on both nodes.

DSS V7 Active-Active Failover Cluster Advantages.

• Doubles the overall performance in most storage cluster configurations.
• Eliminates any single-point-of-failure by configuring Active-Active clusters without shared (common) disks, affording higher data security in HA environments.
• Offers simplified iSCSI failover configuration with helpful status icons in DSS V7.
• Provides Self-Validation of the system. It DSS V7 checks all critical settings on each node, thus clusters cannot be started if they are configured wrong.
• Improves cluster security, allowing to configure as many auxiliary paths as warranted, based on the number of network connections in the storage network.
• Offers increased sensitivity to network failures by providing the ability to configure Ping Nodes.
• Speeds up networking connectivity since I/O traffic is equally balanced on two nodes.
• Utilizes all processing power on both cluster nodes.
• Eliminates waste of hardware resources by providing more efficient storage usage.

"Other competitive offerings can give users Active-Active solutions or offer a reasonable price and configuration, but very few can deliver both at the same time," said Krzysztof Franek, CEO and president of Open-E. "Our Open-E DSS V7 Active-Active Failover Cluster provides superior performance, security, and scalability at a fraction of the cost of alternative storage solutions. Moreover, the flexible design of Open-E DSS V7 enables organizations of all sizes to create effective iSCSI solutions that can adapt to and meet the simplest to the most complex enterprise storage needs."

Open-E has over 27,000 worldwide installations in Fortune 500 organizations in over 100 countries for over a decade.