In an IP SAN, client server data is backed up to
logical volumes presented by the storage provisioning appliance.
As an added bonus, the system administrator has complete control over configuring the size and number of
logical volumes presented to each client server, thus providing the ultimate flexibility in determining how much and how long backup data resides at disk speeds.
To optimize storage access, Exchange log files and databases should be installed on different types of
logical volumes. Exchange log files, normally accessed sequentially, can be placed on simple mirrored disks (i.e., RAID-1).
(The question there is in-band or out-of-band virtualization engines.) But SAN-based file serving suffers from a unique circumstance: SAN application servers are limited to a single storage device, represented by a unique LUN, so file virtualization systems must create file-based storage pools by striping multiple LUNs into a single
logical volume.
The i1000 and i1500 include iSCSI host support to create a full-function block-storage IP SAN;
logical volume management to create a common pool of storage, increasing overall disk utilization rates; advanced storage packet routing and 128-bit SSL security; and iSCSI to SCSI and Fibre Channel bridging, supporting the most common interface standards for storage systems today.
In addition, the product supports
logical volumes greater than 16TB.
Directly addressing these pain points, the new version of CentricStor provides the industry's biggest backup capacities - starting with the biggest VTL cache, which now scales up to a massive one petabyte - and Fujitsu Siemens Computers has trebled the number of
logical volumes that can be processed in one system, from 500,000 to 1,500,000.