Control the data explosion with scalable storage systems

Due to the proliferation of digital processes in businesses, companies create a large volume of electronic data every day. Whether in the form of documents, e-mails or images, this data needs to be stored somewhere and be available to users at short notice. The direct consequence of digitisation is an almost constant corporate demand for more storage.

"The first reaction of most managers to the burgeoning data problem is to purchase more storage systems and add them to their existing infrastructure," says Brett Walter, IBM product manager at Tarsus Technologies. "This may provide short-term relief, but it also increases the organisation`s storage management burden as every new box needs to be integrated with older technologies transparent to users."

Walter believes the optimal method of catering for corporate storage needs today is to start with a storage server that meets a company`s current needs, but can scale as the business and its data grows. Most importantly, the system`s cost also needs to scale to ensure customers only pay for what they need. The IBM TotalStorage FAStT600 Storage Server has been designed for this purpose.

"The FAStT600 is an affordable, scalable storage server suited to workgroup environments, but can scale to handle enterprise demands," Walter explains. "Its modular architecture makes it the perfect system for consolidating direct-attached storage into a centrally-managed, shared or SAN environment that can grow to support 42 hard disks providing a maximum capacity of over 6TB."

In addition, advanced caching algorithms help optimise disk performance and are capable of delivering more than 45 000 cached I/O operations per second and a throughput of up to 400MBps.

Management is handled by the FAStT Storage Manager, included with the FAStT600. This software allows administrators to manage their storage from a central location, quickly configuring and monitoring different storage devices from a Java-based Web browser.

"They can also customise and change settings on the fly as well as configure new volumes, define mappings, handle routine maintenance and dynamically add new enclosures and capacity to existing volumes - all without interrupting user access," adds Walter. "Failover drivers, performance-tuning routines and cluster support are standard features of Storage Manager."

Meeting the needs of the most popular operating systems in use, the FAStT600 includes failover drivers for Windows 2000 as well as optional support for AIX, Sun Solaris, HP-UX and other Intel-based platforms, including Novell Netware and Linux. It also provides administrators with the ability to partition the FAStT600 into as many as eight virtual servers, allowing companies to strategically allocate storage capacity as needed.

RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5 and 10 are supported to ensure all possible storage needs of businesses, small to large, are covered by the TotalStorage FAStT600 Storage Server, a storage solution that grows as the amount of data in an organisation grows.