STORAGE

Turn-Key Joint Solutions Are Workload Optimized for Industries Critically Needing Scalable, Cost-Efficient Clustered Storage: Storage hardware provider Verari Systems and PolyServe, Inc. will unveil the BladeRack2 PolyServe Enterprise NAS Server at the Storage Networking World conference (Oct. 31 - Nov. 3) with a newly developed version of the PolyServe File Serving Utility, according to a new OEM agreement between the two companies. The agreement brings to market workload-optimized clustered storage solutions tailored to the unique and demanding requirements of storage-intensive industries such as online rich-media serving, broadcast media & entertainment, financial services, and oil & gas seismic processing. "We're pleased to join forces with Verari Systems in co-developing turn-key scalable storage solutions with industry-leading IO performance for a number of the most demanding industry workloads," said Michael Stankey, chairman and CEO, PolyServe. "This combination of two market-leading technologies may be unwelcome news for makers of traditional network-attached storage (NAS) appliances, but it is great news for those industries where storage growth has placed a premium on scalable performance, floor space and storage management." The PolyServe-Verari Systems solutions target the specific use-case and workload requirements of vertical industries including online rich-media serving (e.g., online photo sharing sites), broadcast media & entertainment (e.g., film/TV production and post production), financial services, and oil & gas research (e.g., seismic data processing). From an IT standpoint, those industries are characterized by sustained, exponential growth in stored data; parallel processing of large files requiring very high IO throughput rates; long-term requirements for data retention, including huge volumes of small files; datasets in the hundreds of terabytes (TB); and "always-on" data access requirements. "As the need for storage grows unabated, traditional NAS can constrain IT with sub-optimal architectures and data layouts, not to mention the huge number of large, costly filers needed to meet capacity requirements," said Arun Taneja, founder, Taneja Group. "With the footprint and flexibility of Verari Systems server blades augmented by the scalability and performance of the PolyServe File Serving Utility platform, this joint solution takes clustered storage one more step beyond the reach of traditional appliance solutions." Under the agreement, Verari Systems and PolyServe will co-develop turn-key clustered storage systems optimized for the individual workload requirements of online rich-media serving, broadcast media & entertainment, financial services, and oil & gas research markets. Sold through Verari Systems, the always-on file serving systems will scale storage capacity and IO performance independently and offer up to 360 TB within a single chassis and 2 petabytes (PB) within a single cluster. Additionally, the combination of Verari Systems' VB5150 Storage Subsystem for BladeRack2 and the just-released version 3.5 update to the PolyServe File Serving Utility, provides these new features not available in previous unbundled releases: -- Tiered storage, with multiple types of storage independently scalable within a single cluster. -- Scalability up to 16 nodes with linear increases in file serving performance. -- 128TB filesystems for extremely large data sets in a single filesystem. -- Advanced data protection with integrated snapshots support for IBM, Sun, StorageTek, Engenio and Verari Systems disk arrays. -- Virtually unlimited tuning and performance optimization, including options for multiple block sizes depending on workload. -- Centralized storage management with an all-new PolyServe GUI. -- Full compatibility with RedHat Enterprise Linux 4. -- Substantial reductions of storage floor space. "This agreement offers an ideal platform for both organizations to deliver powerful storage systems with industry leading throughput performance and storage capacity in a integrated package for turn-key ease of deployment," said Dave Driggers, CTO, Verari Systems. "With PolyServe software, BladeRack2 PolyServe Enterprise NAS Server delivers to our customers exactly what they've been asking us for -- clustered storage solutions that make no compromises with the demands of their critical applications."