Storage - the basis of virtualisation

The fundamentals are often easy. What is difficult is to recognise them. For virtualisation in general, it is indispensable that the systems that are being virtualised have access to the same resources. This means that everyone wanting to virtualise operating systems must access a CPU pool and a central storage repository. This also applies to hard disks. A central storage system is thus essential for qualified virtualisation. In the old days it would have been sufficient for a "mountain of disks" to carry out mass data storage. Today we are able to offer you technology that contains more intelligent software functionality with less hardware. There are a variety of functions available as a result of modern storage systems.

The most important functions allow the modelling of server hard discs (SAN), as well as replacing the file servers (NAS) in Windows or Unix environments. Alongside this centralisation and consolidation, the operating system for the ONTAP storage systems includes further capability characteristics, which make it unique. The integrated snapshot technology allows a full backup of your data on an hourly basis, for example, which enables all employees to retrieve any data they may have erroneously deleted, themselves. Using this kind of data access does not require complicated tape backups or the administrator's intervention. Snapshots can be generated and also restored within a few seconds. In the storage, these software blocks are able to set back entire servers, be they 50 GBs or 2 TBs, to any desired point in time.

Linear performance - scalable from 0.5 to 100TB

The features of storage solutions are scalable across all systems and allow a seamless transition between the various performance categories.

• ONTAP operating system

• Hotswap and Hotspare technology

• Clustering ability

• nfs and cifs support

• iSCSI and FC activation

• SCSI and SATA

• Web front-end

• 2 x GBit Ethernet

• Bootkernel on flash

More through virtualisation

Classic storage allocation:

Virtualisation with ONTAP:

The fantastic four

iSCSI / FiberChannel

The iSCSI and FiberChannel (FC) interfaces can be used to connect into the different worlds within SAN. In this way, all servers can boot from the storage system or mount their (virtual) disks.

nfs / cifs

In the world of Windows, the NAS communicates with the Active Directory Server via cifs protocol. NFS shares are supported in the Unix environment.

Please also consult our flyer to learn more about this topic.