Well if the CEO sez OK...! A big high-end storage array is just a server anyway when you think about it: CPU's, channels, cache (for performance), and software (or firmware) - oh, and also a bunch of disk drives (made by Seagate, Maxtor, Samsung etc...). DataCore took that idea and decided to leverage commodity kit for the underlying hardware, and focus on the software.
What you get is a portable software storage controller. The O/S of the storage server discovers the disk assets that are physically attached, and SANmelody uses a GUI to create the virtual disks. The same GUI is used to map these LUNs to any computer on your network. These application computers see it simply as a disk that they can mount, initialize, format and start banging away with I/O. There are also features that are typically associated with very high end storage arrays: snapshot copies, synchronous mirroring for high availability, Asynchronous IP mirroring for disaster recovery, and auto provisioning. This last one is interesting and was part of my original question. We create a pool of unallocated disk chunks. SANmelody can then create an unlimited number of virtual disks up to 2TB in size. The net result is that I can have, say, 10 2TB volumes allocated to applications (20TB) even though my physical storage is only a few hundred gigs. As the pool is allocated, a warning is issued at a user definable level (default is 80% allocated) and the administrator can add more storage to the pool. The application is unaware of this and so there is no disruption or down time when it comes time to add storage. To get an idea, you can download a free 30 evaluation copy from the DataCore website. (follow the link and hit "try": http://datacore.com/products/prod_SANmelody.asp) Of course, this is an SMB product and still may be priced too high for home use, but there is an entry level "Lite" version that allows for up to 4 HDD to be "virtualized" and that product lists at $199, which is doable for most I think. RAID can be done at the disk level. i.e. if your adapter will do RAID on the disks and create a LUN, SANmelody will then take that LUN and virtualize it. -- ob_kook _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
