While a great deal of the data residing within organisations today is not accessed regularly, the ECT Act as well as basic business strategy maintains that this seldom accessed data is business-critical. Hence, the need for the data to be available online and kept safe from harm, but clearly in a less expensive fashion than conventional online storage technologies offer today.
"IBM`s TotalStorage FastT100 storage server is an excellent candidate for growing storage requirements in the medium-sized business space. The FastT100 fully configured delivers up to 14TB of online storage through the use of inexpensive Serial ATA (SATA) drives. It provides for integration with IBM`s e-Series, p-Series and x-Series range of servers, as well as any other Intel processor-based and Unix-based servers," says Brett Walter, IBM Product Manager at Tarsus Technologies.
In terms of hardware, each FastT100 storage server makes use of dual active 2GB RAID controllers, a total of 512MB of battery-backed cache, 4 Fibre channel (FC) switched and arbitrated loop (FC-AL) host interfaces.
Included are 14 250GB SATA hard disks and redundant, hot swappable fans and power-supplies, to provide its high-level of performance and reliability. Each FastT100 unit can be expanded using three IBM EXP100 expansion units, bringing the total drive count to 56 and natively offers RAID 0, 1, 3, 5 and 10 redundancy levels.
The FastT100 storage server is not simply a hardware-based solution. "Using IBM`s bundled FastT Storage Manager software, companies can benefit from the consolidated management of all local and networked FastT storage systems," Walter continues. "The software solution is accessible from any Java-based browser and affords administrators the ability to customise and change settings. They can also configure new volumes, define mappings, handle routine maintenance and dynamically scale storage volumes through adding new enclosures or capacity to existing volumes, while all the time, avoiding interruption of user access to data.
"The solution even allows for non-disruptive upgrades of controller firmware and from a reliability perspective includes fail-over drivers, performance tuning routines and cluster support. Reliability is also extended through the ability to connect multiple FastT100 servers to provide hardware fail-over with dual controllers and common management," Walter says.
Other FastT100 features designed to help enhance data management and protection, include IBM FlashCopy, which creates "point-in-time" copies of logical volumes which are used for file restoration, backups, application testing or data mining; Dynamic Volume Expansion, which resizes logical volumes; Dynamic Capacity Expansion, which adds new disks to RAID arrays in order to increase capacity; Dynamic RAID Expansion, which changes the RAID level of an array while avoiding disruption; and Dynamic Storage Sizing, which is designed to allow the block size or data stripe to be changed.
"All of these features can be used by the administrator, while the system is fully operational and without causing any form of loss in user access to data," Walter says.
In providing a high level of availability, using the FastT storage management software, administrators can partition the FastT100 storage server into as many as 16 virtual servers, allowing IT organisations to strategically allocate storage capacity and reduce hardware and software management costs.
"The FastT100 storage server is also supported by a variety of IBM Tivoli and third-party management products ensuring that centralised management can be extended beyond simply the centralised management of storage," Walter concludes.
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Tarsus Technologies is rated by suppliers and channel partners as SA`s leading hardware distributor for its stability, service ethos, product knowledge, excellent support, competitive pricing strategies and channel focus.
Distributing a wide range of products from the world`s leading manufacturers, including Acer, APC, HP, IBM, OKI, Samsung and Tally, and supplementing this range with its own brand - the Tarsus PC - Tarsus focuses strongly on long-lasting partnerships with its suppliers and resellers. In line with this philosophy, Tarsus provides a comprehensive range of services to its resellers that enables them to add value to their own offering, and assists them in growing their business.
It is this service offering that has afforded Tarsus a number of channel accolades. The latest include: Channel Executive Awards - 2002; Best Distributor Overall - 2002; Compaq`s "BDG Distributor of the Year" award - 2001 and CRN Outlook Awards - 2002.
More information about Tarsus is available at http://www.tarsus.co.za.
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