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ViewStor®-Storage Management Software

Secure Enterprise Storage Server (SESS) combines feature-rich storage management tool with a user friendly web-based management interface. ViewStor® SESS allows organisations to build a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and/or Storage Area Network (SAN) appliance using industry standard hardware.

ViewStor® SESS addresses the storage management requirements across the entire enterprise, including data centres and remote branch offices. Instead of managing a diversity of storage management tools within the enterprise, ViewStor® SESS provides users with a single common interface with comprehensive built-in toolsets.

Secure Enterprise Storage Server (SESS) End-to-end enterprise storage management system.

Highlights


Fault Tolerant Storage Solution

ViewStor® SESS has been engineered for continuous availability and supports redundant interfaces such as dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual SCSI and dual Fibre Channel ports AND connectivity to any leading RAID array to ensure reliable uninterrupted access to the data from any network client. ViewStor® SESS supports clustering and port binding, Dual active/active controller arrays and InfiniBand.

Inter-Operability

ViewStor® SESS provides shared storage to both clients and servers in Windows, UNIX, Apple MacIntosh, Novell and hybrid environments. With multi-protocol support (SMB/CIFS, FTP, Secure FTP, AppleTalk, Windows, CFS, NFS, HTTP, FTP) ViewStor® eliminates the need to have separate servers for each supported protocol, further enhancing the ability to consolidate storage from multiple servers.

Feature Rich Functionalities

Storage Virtualisation: The core function of ViewStor® SESS is Storage Virtualisation. ViewStor® SESS is designed to improve the flexibility and utilisation of enterprise storage. ViewStor® SESS storage virtualisation works by pooling all storage volumes, files and file systems into a single repository for centralised management. This repository can include storage capacity from multiple vendors and platforms in dissimilar environments. ViewStor® SESS is also designed to reduce the effects of reconfigurations and at the hardware level, to support business continuity.

File Storage Virtualisation: The File Storage Virtualisation function of ViewStor® SESS enables management of files and file systems across multiple and disparate servers, allowing users to present client machines with one logical file mount for all servers. This function provides several key advantages, including a global namespace to index files on network file servers. Additionally, ViewStor® SESS' virtual file storage consolidation allows excess storage capacity to be shared between file servers.

Another key benefit of File Storage Virtualisation is the ability to conduct data migrations between file servers transparent to end users and applications. In short, file storage virtualisation allows users to access isolated storage capacity on network file servers and perform seamless file migrations.

VMware Storage and Server Virtualisation Support: ViewStor® SESS turns internal disk into a sharable storage pool without the usual external storage array, SAN switch and expensive host bus adapters (HBAs). It is an effective solution that provides highly available storage and data services to VMware infrastructure. Furthermore, the ViewStor® SESS storage infrastructure is aware of operating systems and applications on each virtual server. ViewStor® SESS is built to fully enable the virtual storage environment of the VMware infrastructure to function at peak performance. ViewStor® SESS technology ensures that all types of disk are available and fully protected in the VMware environment. It raises the data services of commodity disks to enterprise level, and minimises replication and bandwidth requirements.

RAID Support: The integrated software RAID in ViewStor® SESS offers many advanced features, which were previously available only on hardware RAID controllers. ViewStor® SESS supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 1+0, with software support for Hot Plug or Hot Spare (in one RAID array).

Parallel Clustering: ViewStor® SESS may be clustered across WAN and supports both Active/Active and Active/Passive failover

Adaptive Load Balancing: The Adaptive Load Balancing function of ViewStor® SESS enhances data throughput by automatically routing data through alternative paths as applications change.

De-duplication at Source: The de-duplication process of ViewStor® SESS runs concurrently as backup operations, or it can be scheduled to run after backups are completed. Only unique data blocks are replicated, minimising the bandwidth and time required to move data off-site.

IP Bonding: The IP Bonding function facilitates the communications between ViewStor® SESS over multiple IP links with failover and load-balancing capability.

Single Instance Repository: The Single Instance Repository works in conjunction with ViewStor® SESS' de-duplication function. It eliminates data redundancy and reduces the storage and bandwidth requirements.

Thin-provisioning: The Thin-provisioning function within ViewStor® SESS is called Smart provisioning. It allows for virtual disks to be presented to clients with more capacity than is actually provisioned. The physical storage is automatically allocated only when needed. This enables an efficient utilisation of the disk storage. The Smart provisioning function can be used for primary disks, mirrors, snapshot volumes and replication volumes.

Replication & Mirroring: ViewStor® SESS provides an extra layer of fault tolerance as you mirror two target volumes, similar to disk mirroring (RAID1). By allocating one target as the primary data storage device and the second a destination target, data will synchronously be written to both targets using a dedicated network connection.

Snapshots: Snapshot is an immediate point-in-time image of the logical volume (LV). The snap shot image can be used for both consistent and temporary backup, while users still have uninterrupted and complete access to the logical volume.

ViewStor® SESS also provides multiple snapshots functionality with volume cloning support.

Storage Quota: ViewStor® SESS can create and enforce quota limits based on individual users, files, folders, or partitions to control storage growth and enforce users to manage their own storage.

Hardware Compatibility

ViewStor® SESS has an extensive compatibility list, which allows users the flexibility to build a more exacting solution without additional costs.

Configuration and Management

ViewStor® SESS consolidates the management of storage devices (NAS and SAN) in a dissimilar environment by making available comprehensive configuration functions, easy to use and user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) to set-up, manage and configure these storage devices.

High Performance

ViewStor® SESS was developed for high performance and utilises 10G Ethernet, TCP/IP Offload Engine, Fibre Channel and Multi-CPU support.

TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE)

TOE lowers the host system CPU communications overhead. It increases the bandwidth while reducing the message latency across connections and improves the overall performance.

InfiniBand Support

For high performance computing environment, ViewStor® SESS provides high speed InfiniBand protocol support. It integrates an InfiniBand target mode for users supporting InfiniBand protocol.

Monitoring and Reporting

ViewStor® SESS reduces application host-based monitoring and reporting agents, and replaces cumbersome command line interfaces with an integrated management software platform. ViewStor maps, monitors, analyses, reviews storage network resources and enables reporting from the application to the storage device. ViewStor® SESS allows storage administrators to monitor storage environment, troubleshoot performance problems, enables alerts to proactively identify potential problems before they occur, and forecast the storage requirements to meet service-level agreements, where applicable.