Tuesday, June 8, 2010

The Guide To Green Storage – Free Download

Maximizing Storage Power Efficiency without Sacrificing Performance

Waste. It’s what your data center is making of your energy and money right now with today’s storage arrays. By the time you finish this 10 minute white paper, the storage infrastructure within your data center will have just pushed up to 70% more carbon into the atmosphere, consumed up to 70% more power and up to 70% more cooling than it needed to. Over a year, a typical 42TB storage solution will push 8.9 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere that otherwise could have been COMPLETELY eliminated by a power efficient storage subsystem that meets or exceeds ALL the same performance, reliability and cost requirements demanded by your business.

It’s easy to ‘tune out’ those kinds of talking points as IT professionals have grown more and more cynical of vendor marketing that always seems to over-promise and under-deliver. But if green initiatives play a role in your organization’s priorities, power consumption solutions to the storage infrastructure are one of the easiest to implement and, thus, belong at the top of IT.

View this paper in its entirety at http://www.nexsan.com/whitepapers/Nexsan_WhitePaper_Green_Storage_Guide_GA122409-A.pdf

Additionally, for a comprehensive comparison of midrange storage arrays, visit the Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG) and download the free Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide at http://www.dciginc.com/2010/06/free-download-dcig-midrange-array-buyers-guide.html

Monday, June 7, 2010

DCIG Announces Free Download of First-of-its-Kind 2010 DCIG Midrange Array Buyer’s Guide.

Comprehensive report weighs, scores and ranks over 70 midrange arrays from more than 20 different data storage providers. Access the new report at www.nexsan.com/DCIG_Buyers_Guide

NEWS BULLETIN
The Data Center Infrastructure Group (DCIG), an independent analyst firm, has just released a first-ever competitive review of its kind with the 2010 DCIG Midrange Array Buyer's Guide. This comprehensive report weighs, scores and ranks over 70 midrange arrays from more than 20 different data storage providers. Access the new report at www.nexsan.com/DCIG_Buyers_Guide

The 105-page report goes far beyond most consumer guides in both detail and scope to provide granular information that end-users need to know when comparing competitive solutions. This independent analysis is prepared from a "user's perspective" and fully discloses what factors were taken into consideration when arriving at its recommendations. As a wholly objective report, none of the 21 reflected storage vendors had any influence on the findings within the guide. Nexsan is making the guide available for a limited time in order to promote balanced and fair competitive evaluations.

IT professionals will find the guide a valuable resource for determining the top midrange storage array options for their computing environments and according to DCIG, “The Guide cuts through the hype in the storage industry and removes much of the fuzziness that is often found in other analyst reports as it ranks all of the midrange arrays from #1 down to #72.”

This Buyer's Guide lists winners and losers in the mid and is a valuable asset that allows users to do side-by-side comparisons so they are clear in their choices of the most appropriate storage with respect to application or computing requirements.

www.nexsan.com/DCIG_Buyers_Guide

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Caltech Spitzer Science Center Reduces Storage Management and Costs for Two Petabytes of NASA Data with Nexsan Storage

Nexsan Storage Systems Selected for Storage of Space Image Data

Nexsan, a leading storage system provider, today announced that the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Spitzer Science Center (SSI) is meeting its data storage challenges by using Nexsan SATABoy® and SATABeast® storage systems. SSI has decreased storage management and maintenance costs of two petabytes of data by employing Nexsan’s storage systems. The resulting savings have enabled better resource utilization for other strategic projects surrounding this important NASA mission.

The Spitzer Space Telescope (formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, or SIRTF) was launched into space by a Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on August 25, 2003. Throughout its mission of discovery, Spitzer has obtained images and spectra by detecting the infrared energy, or heat, radiated by objects in space. These images have enabled visibility into regions of star formation, the centers of galaxies, and newly forming planetary systems.

The storage of these unique and research-critical images is managed by Caltech, and SSI consulted with ESS Direct to select a combination of Nexsan SATABeast and SATABoy RAID storage systems for their reliability, cost efficiency and simplified operation. During each new Spitzer research activity, SSI stores approximately 100 TB of images in its Nexsan storage environment, which today is composed of more than 2,000 drives, 130 controllers and 65 chassis.

“In choosing a storage vendor, we wanted to reduce storage costs, but we also needed very reliable technology to reduce IT resource drain,” said Eugean Hacopians, senior systems engineer, Caltech SSI. “It’s understood that one of the best ways to shrink storage management costs is to reduce system and component failures so that IT professionals are not relegated to servicing equipment.”

“We’ve had petabytes of data stored on our Nexsan systems for more than seven years and have experienced excellent reliability. The systems have helped reduce storage maintenance costs, which are less than what they might have been with alternative systems,” added Hacopians.

Learn more about the entire Nexsan product line at nexsan.com/products.php.

About the Spitzer Space Telescope
JPL manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology campus in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information, see spitzer.caltech.edu.

About Nexsan
Nexsan Corporation is a leading provider of energy-efficient, long-term storage systems. Nexsan delivers secure storage appliances and modular, capacity-optimized disk-storage systems for a broad range of applications including fixed content storage and archiving, email, medical imaging, compliance and litigation support, disk-based backup, digital video security, and rich media. Nexsan’s solutions are the choice of small and medium-sized companies as well as large global enterprises and major governmental agencies around the world that are seeking cost-correct, high-density storage solutions. Founded in 1999 and based in Thousand Oaks, California, Nexsan sells its products exclusively through a select global network of VARs, OEMs and system integrators. For more information, please see the company’s website at nexsan.com.

END

Nexsan Technologies is a registered trademark and AutoMAID is a trademark of Nexsan. All other product or company names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Nexsan Expands Highly Efficient Storage with 84TB SATABeast

Storage System Doubles Capacity in 4U of Rack Space For Greater Power, Space and Cost Efficiency

Thousand Oaks, Calif., - Nexsan, a leading storage system provider today announced at the company’s NexStep EMEA VAR conference that it has doubled the capacity of the award-winning SATABeast™ storage system from 42TB to 84TB in only four units (4U) of rack space. Built to provide the best power efficiency and space efficiency in the industry along with meaningful cost efficiency, the SATABeast enables midsized organizations to achieve both exceptional capital and operational cost savings. The highly efficient SATABeast is the ultimate solution for data intensive storage applications that require 24x7 online data access.

The Nexsan SATABeast is an enterprise-class RAID system designed to deliver exceptional performance, reliability and simplified operation in a very dense storage footprint. With a customer reported system reliability rating of more than 99.9%, the high density SATABeast is the premier option for both primary and secondary storage applications, including content archiving, disaster recovery and disk-based backup.

The system’s chassis design reduces hard drive stress with unique anti-accumulative rotational vibration and horizontal midplane cooling technology supporting one of the lowest storage system maintenance rates in the industry. As with all of the company’s storage systems, the Nexsan SATABeast features AutoMAID™ (Automatic Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology for policy-based power management that cuts energy demands up to 70% without impacting storage performance.

“Midsize organizations are challenged with continued data growth and seek solutions that not only reduce upfront costs but also lower day-to-day operating expenses. They want to use systems that provide greater power, space and cost efficiencies to drive down their total costs of ownership,” said Mark Peters, Senior Analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group. “Nexsan’s latest generation of products, including the enhanced SATABeast, reflects the company’s steadfast commitment to deliver such improvements; with capabilities that will help their customers to save money - and their partners to compete - in today’s challenging economy and beyond.”

Key features of the enhanced SATABeast include:
• Up to 84TB of native capacity in only 4U
• Power efficient AutoMAID technology for greatly reduced power consumption
• Dual-function Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity with wire-speed performance
• Flexible, scalable and completely OS independent storage system for supporting a broad range of storage infrastructures
• Support for RAID 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6
• Worldview™ single GUI interface for simplified management

“Customers are seeking solutions that achieve capital and operational savings and the enhanced SATABeast is specifically designed to deliver these benefits with power efficient, space efficient and cost efficient technologies,” said Bob Woolery, Senior Vice President, Marketing for Nexsan. “We invite customers to unleash the capacity and power of the SATABeast for their data intensive applications and benefit from technology that is proven in thousands of deployments worldwide.”

Pricing and Availability
The Nexsan SATABeast is available immediately through the company’s worldwide channel network. Pricing for a fully populated SATABeast with 2TB drives starts at $38,000 and scales based on configuration options.

Storage industry VARs, resellers and service providers interested in learning more about partnering with Nexsan should visit http://www.nexsan.com/reseller_signup.php .

About Nexsan Technologies
Nexsan Corporation is a leading provider of energy-efficient, long-term storage systems. Nexsan delivers secure storage appliances and modular, capacity-optimized disk-storage systems for a broad range of applications including fixed content storage and archiving, email, medical imaging, compliance and litigation support, disk-based backup, digital video security, and rich media. Nexsan's solutions are the choice of small and medium-sized companies as well as large global enterprises and major governmental agencies around the world who are seeking cost-correct, high density storage solutions. Founded in 1999 and based in Thousand, Oaks, Calif., Nexsan sells its products exclusively through a select global network of VARs, OEMs and system integrators. For more information, please see the company's website at nexsan.com.

END

*A trademark or trade name of an entity other than Nexsan Technologies, Inc.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Petabyte Explosion: How Caltech Manages to Manage Billions of Files

Managing billions of small files effectively requires a clear understanding of data flows and a system based on common Lego-like building blocks that provide services to application owners.

This was the message at the September 29th, 2009 Peer Incite Research Meeting, where an industry practitioner, Eugene Hacopians, Senior Systems Engineer at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), addressed the Wikibon community.

Caltech is the academic home of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As such it runs the downlink for the Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA's orbital space telescope, as well as 13 other missions, processes the raw data into images, and supports the needs of scientists visiting from locations worldwide. The focus of this discussion was the activities of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), which has evolved to become the national archive for infrared analysis from telescopic space missions.


To be sure, Caltech's needs are on the edge. The organization is the steward for more than 2.3 petabytes of data created from its 14 currently active missions. Caltech captures data from these missions and performs intense analysis in what it calls its 'Sandbox', a server and storage infrastructure that supports scientific applications that analyze the data. Once 'crunched,' the data is moved to an archive, using homegrown data movement software.

The team at Caltech had to design a cost-effective means of providing reliable data access to all this scientific data. As well, organizationally, the projects supported by Caltech had to be completely walled from each other from an accounting standpoint. Rather than implement a shared SAN infrastructure with onerous chargeback mechanisms, Caltech decided to use a common set of technologies that would support each of the projects. The technological building blocks are:

A Sun Solaris server running the ZFS file system, A QLogic 5602 FC switch, One-to-three Nexsan SATA Beast arrays.
Caltech uses Nexsan's Automaid spindown capabilities in its archive to reduce energy costs, using Level 1 (slowing the spin speed of the disk) and Level 2 (parking the heads after sufficient inactivity). It does not put the drives into sleep mode (Level 3) and has never had reliability problems associated with spinning down devices.

Caltech uses SAIC tape for long term archiving and last resort off-site disaster recovery. However, its own tests indicate that because of the huge number of small files involved, recovery from tape would take weeks or longer.

This building block approach has allowed Caltech to use common configurations across its infrastructure. Caltech derives four main benefits from this strategy:

1.The infrastructure is architected for fast, simple, safe recovery from failure or data loss.
2.The approach scales nicely in support of Caltech's data growth, which occurs in large chunks of hundreds of TB's and billions of tiles at a time.
3.It streamlines staff training.
4.The "Lego" building-block method allows Caltech to reuse infrastructure when it comes off maintenance, providing it with large numbers of spares and saving money.

Caltech uses a cascading refresh approach when new infrastructure is purchased, placing the newer equipment in support of the most critical parts of the infrastructure and migrating older equipment to less mission-critical areas. In this case, the archive is the most critical as it houses massive numbers of files that scientists access for their research and because it is regarded as a National Archive, which should be kept indefinitely. The Sandbox infrastructure is the least critical because data is quickly migrated off it into the archive.
Click here for the entire story:
http://wikibon.org/vault/Petabyte_Explosion:_How_Caltech_Manages_to_Manage_Billions_of_Files

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Nexsan Sponsors Conference on Power Efficient, Space Efficient and Cost Efficient Storage Systems

NexStep Conference Highlights Storage Innovations for VARs and System Integrators Serving Midsize Organizations

Thousand Oaks, Calif., -- Nexsan, a leading storage systems provider for the mid-market, today announced the start of its NexStep conference which takes place this week in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Venetian Hotel. Over one hundred and forty North American based VARs and System Integrators are registered to attend the conference which features state-of-the-industry presentations from leading analysts, including Roger W. Cox, research vice president for Gartner and Mark Peters, senior analyst for the Enterprise Strategy Group.

Roger W. Cox of Gartner will present issues impacting the storage market as revealed through Gartner’s market analysis and the results of Gartner-commissioned end-user surveys. He will also highlight the five most popular questions Gartner’s end user clients are asking about data storage.

Mark Peters from the Enterprise Strategy Group will examine current market trends and aspects of Nexsan’s product portfolio that support the channel in capitalizing on business opportunities – driven by customer CAPEX and OPEX reduction requirements. Peters will also showcase recent research and analysis that ESG conducted as part of commissioned research and explain Nexsan’s competitive position in the market which drove ESG from skeptics to fans of the disk-storage provider.

The conference format will consist of educational lectures from industry thought leaders and product experts on topics that focus on making storage more power efficient, space efficient and cost efficient. Additionally, there will be presentations on advanced storage technologies, storage implementation strategies, archiving, and power-managed data deduplication. NexStep will also provide an opportunity for those in attendance to network and share real-life storage system experiences.

“A key component of Nexsan’s success has been our longstanding and unwavering dedication to our channel. With a 100% indirect selling model, it is critical that we support our partners with a completely channel focused partner program. The ‘Nexsan Advantage Program’ is built to mitigate wasted business efforts, minimize channel conflict and position our partners to win in this competitive economy,” said Michael McGuire, chief commercial officer for Nexsan. “In addition to advanced storage systems and superior levels of support, the advantages of teaming with Nexsan include rapid turnaround on orders, zero inventory requirements, and a direct relationship with the company to facilitate sales. The NexStep conference allows us to showcase the benefits of the program, and highlight our latest innovations to assist partners in growing their businesses in concert with Nexsan.”

According to Nexsan channel partner, Scott Mellegaard, a data center specialist with 3RP, "Nexsan's NexStep partner event is the best new product expo in our solution portfolio. Nexsan provides detailed customer success stories, in-depth technical information from the actual product engineers, and the Nexsan roadmap for the future. At last year’s NexStep 2008 conference, we learned about the new DATABeast™ and sold one 2 weeks later for over $300,000 (and growing). As Nexsan is one of our most profitable partnerships, we look forward to this event every year."

Nexsan’s CEO Philip Black will deliver the welcome address providing Nexsan’s vision on the data storage space and why Nexsan is positioned for success in the midmarket. “Nexsan pioneers disk-based storage innovations to lead the market in terms of power efficient, space efficient and cost efficient storage,” said Black. “The NexStep conference provides an excellent platform to strengthen relationships with our analyst, VAR and SI colleagues on a product, business, and personal level.”

To learn more about the Nexsan Advantage program, visit http://www.nexsan.com/reseller_signup.php .

About Nexsan Technologies
Nexsan Corporation is a leading provider of energy-efficient, long-term storage systems. Nexsan delivers secure storage appliances and modular, capacity-optimized disk-storage systems for a broad range of applications including fixed content storage and archiving, email, medical imaging, compliance and litigation support, disk-based backup, digital video security, and rich media. Nexsan's solutions are the choice of small and medium-sized companies as well as large global enterprises and major governmental agencies around the world who are seeking cost-correct, high density storage solutions. Founded in 1999 and based in Thousand, Oaks, Calif., Nexsan sells its products exclusively through a select global network of VARs, OEMs and system integrators. For more information, please see the company's website at http://www.nexsan.com/.

# # #

*A trademark or trade name of an entity other than Nexsan Technologies, Inc.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Nexsan® and FalconStor Announce Industry’s First High-Performance, Power-Efficient Data Deduplication Product

Disk-Based Storage Innovator and Data Protection Leader Team to Deliver New Nexsan DeDupe SG Family to Help Customers Eliminate Data Redundancy and Realize Significant Storage and Energy Savings

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., and MELVILLE, N.Y., Aug. 11, 2009 – Nexsan Technologies, a leading provider of power-efficient disk-based storage and FalconStor Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: FALC), the provider of TOTALLY Open™ data protection solutions, today announced a strategic venture to deliver a joint solution, which has resulted in the delivery of an integrated deduplication product family for high-performance, power-efficient data storage. Based on Nexsan’s power-efficient storage systems and the FalconStor® File-interface Deduplication System (FDS) software, the new, Nexsan DeDupe SG (“Speed with Green”) product family will be delivered by Nexsan through its worldwide network of channel partners.

The cost of traditional storage solutions makes it difficult for organizations to efficiently backup and store their rapidly growing business and application data. Compounding this challenge are tight budgets which drive an increased demand for solutions that will improve operating efficiencies while meeting performance requirements. Nexsan and FalconStor have responded to this growing need with a reliable, disk-based storage product line which offers high-performance data deduplication that has been optimized for high density, power and cost efficiency.

“Nexsan and FalconStor have made a significant leap forward in the area of operating efficiency with the new Nexsan DeDupe SG,” said Lauren Whitehouse, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. “The new self-optimizing capability of this product is very unique and will help companies realize benefits in both power and data efficiency while automating critical storage management processes.”

Storage deduplication systems are primarily used as backup targets, operating only during the backup window. Even though the typical backup window is less than eight hours a day, all other deduplication systems spin drives and burn energy for the remaining 16 hours, even while not in use. With Nexsan DeDupe SG, customers not only get higher capacity and better performance during their backups, they also save energy and reduce costs every hour that the system is not in use.

Nexsan DeDupe SG leverages the green efficiencies inherent to its industry-leading technology components: data reduction through high-speed deduplication, footprint reduction by utilizing space-efficient storage arrays, and substantial energy savings through AutoMAID technology. Nexsan DeDupe SG is the only high-performance, data deduplication solution with AutoMAID technology delivering “Speed with Green” to improve operational efficiency.

“The Nexsan DeDupe SG solution solves two very pressing customer needs — reducing capacity costs and improving operating efficiency,” said Michael McGuire, chief commercial officer for Nexsan. “With over 20 years of combined experience, FalconStor and Nexsan together continue their traditions of innovation by redefining deduplication and power efficiency and providing our global network of channel partners with a differentiated offering in one of the fastest growing market segments.”

FalconStor FDS, the deduplication engine for the Nexsan DeDupe SG family, is a block-level deduplication software solution that presents a network share interface as a backup repository, offering customers an easy-to-use, space-saving option for writing data efficiently and cost-effectively to disk. Nexsan DeDupe SG maximizes interoperability with all data sources, including disk-to-disk backup and archiving applications. It also can be deployed in any physical or virtual infrastructure environment, offering file-level access to a central block-level deduplication repository. Nexsan DeDupe SG uses policy-based concurrent and post-process deduplication methods for maximum flexibility. The product supports all major backup software, directly accepts Oracle RMAN, Microsoft SQL and other database dumps, and provides integrated data replication and deduplication.

“The Nexsan DeDupe SG system family offers the only solution that delivers both high-performance data deduplication and automated energy savings,” said Wendy Petty, vice president of North American Sales for FalconStor Software. “This FalconStor/Nexsan joint solution is focused on small-to-mid-sized enterprises but is attractive for all storage users. We are excited to offer this solution through Nexsan’s global channel network, leveraging their industry-leading closed channel lead registration model.”

“We see this joint solution as a win-win situation for the channel,” said Greg Knieriemen, vice president of Chi Corporation, a solutions provider specializing in data storage, backup and disaster recovery. “The combination of high-performance deduplication with the dramatic reduction of energy consumption makes this solution a ‘must have’ in nearly every IT environment concerned about reducing storage costs, power costs and the physical footprint for storage.”

Pricing and Availability
The Nexsan DeDupe SG family is offered in six configurations and available immediately through Nexsan’s worldwide channel partner network starting at $49,000 U.S. To learn more about channel partner opportunities, visit Nexsan’s partner information site at http://www.nexsan.com/reseller_signup.php .

About FalconStor Software, Inc.
FalconStor Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: FALC) is the market leader in disk-based data protection. FalconStor delivers proven, comprehensive data protection solutions that facilitate the continuous availability of business-critical data with speed, integrity, and simplicity. The Company's TOTALLY Open™ technology solutions, built upon the award-winning IPStor® platform, include the industry leading Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with deduplication, Continuous Data Protector (CDP), File-interface Deduplication System (FDS), and Network Storage Server (NSS), each enabled with WAN-optimized replication for disaster recovery and remote office protection. FalconStor products are available from major OEMs and solution providers including 3Com, Acer, COPAN Systems, Data Direct Networks, Dynamic Solutions International, EMC, IBM, Pillar Data Systems, Spectra Logic and Sun and are deployed by thousands of customers worldwide, from small businesses to Fortune 1000 enterprises.

FalconStor is headquartered in Melville, N.Y., with offices throughout Europe and the Asia Pacific region. FalconStor is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For more information, visit www.falconstor.com or call 1-866-NOW-FALC (1-866-669-3252).

About Nexsan Technologies
Nexsan Corporation is a leading provider of energy-efficient, long-term storage systems. Nexsan delivers secure storage appliances and modular, capacity-optimized disk-storage systems for a broad range of applications including fixed-content storage and archiving, email, medical imaging, compliance and litigation support, disk-based backup, digital video security, and rich media. Nexsan's solutions are the choice of small and medium-sized companies as well as large global enterprises and major governmental agencies around the world who are seeking cost-correct, high-density storage solutions. Founded in 1999 and based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Nexsan sells its products exclusively through a select global network of VARs, OEMs and system integrators. For more information about Nexsan's products, please see the company's website at www.nexsan.com.

# # #

Nexsan is a registered trademark and AutoMAID is a trademark of Nexsan Technologies. FalconStor, FalconStor Software and IPStor are registered trademarks and TOTALLY Open is a trademark of FalconStor Software, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. All other company and product names contained herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.