| Wed 1 Aug 2001, 0:00 | | Maxtec Limited - Demystifying Storage Within The E |
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PRESS RELEASE
JOHANNESBURG - "UbiquiStor is the 'remote control' of storage - allowing the
information technology manager to maximise storage availability within the
enterprise at the click of a key, eliminating the headache of physically
moving storage disks from server to server. The prime motivation for the
development of this product was to allow Enterprise Storage Solutions to
open new markets for its key vendors such as IBM and Brocade in the
heterogeneous and open platform arenas. The product allows easy connection
of IBM Shark for instance to another vendors storage environments whether it
be SAN, IP or directly attached." explains George Talbot, Maxtec Limited
executive chairman.
Developed and supported by Maxtec division, Enterprise Storage Solutions
(ESS), the UbiquiStor storage solution will be available to the market in
three models, catering for differing storage capacity and availability
needs. At the entry level, the UBS100, which scales up to 650 gigabytes of
usable space, has been designed with the small to medium-sized enterprise in
mind. The UBS200 scales to two terabytes, with the top of the range UBS500
catering, with its five terabytes of capacity, to the large company with
requirements for high availability as well as multiple location support.
The UbiquiStor virtual storage appliance is the outcome of a distribution
and support agreement signed in recent weeks between JSE Securities Exchange
listed Maxtec Limited and network storage infrastructure company, FalconStor
Incorporated, based in the Unites States.
Integrating Falconstor's IPStor software solutions with commodity-based best-
of-breed hardware into the UbiquiStor `Black Box', ESS assists local
organisations to leverage their existing IT infrastructure, irrespective of
the hardware or operating systems deployed in-house.
"It is all about storage enabling and virtualisation, and less so about
speed, feed or disk! It is concerned with managing your storage capacity
optimally by making use of a transparent `drop-down, plug-in and work'
solution, cutting out hours of tricky pre-configuration typical to
installing more traditional software solutions," says Andrew Brook,
Enterprise Storage Solutions Technologist.
"The UbiquiStor software layer interprets various hardware plug-ins at the
back-end, and passes it out as a number of blocks of space. Rather than the
IT manager breaking his head on how to configure the back-end, debating
whether if he is going to mirror data, mirror it off-site or if he should
utilise RAID 5, he can execute all commands with the Java-based management
GUI at the middle layer, and drag-and-drop the storage space to where the
user needs it."
"Field experience dictated the composition of the UbiquiStor solution,
comprising as a norm of a RAID protected disk subsystem; fibre channel; in
the mid-to-high end solution fibre channel switching technology; high
availability Intel-based dual processing servers at the middle level,
running of an optimised Linux kernel; a thin Linux management application
layer; and Gigabyte Ethernet technology for top-end solutions", explains
Mike Styer, technologist at Enterprise Storage Solutions.
On the back of the powerful IPStor software, the Black Box-solution also
offers essential enhanced functions such as mirroring, replication, snapshot
and zero-impact backup and restore. The snapshot engine ensures the virtual
replication of data, thereby preserving transactional integrity.
The UbiquiStor solution provides commerce and industry with a highly
competitive solution able to bridge the divide between storage and IP
networking. On the back of its IPStor software, UbiquiStor is able to
centralise, vitualise and provide storage over IP using standard industry
components such as Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel and SCSI, with future
support for iSCSI and Infiniband.
"With iSCSI becoming the ratified standard to encapsulate SCSI commands over
a standard 802.3 ethernet, end-users are no longer compelled to invest in
major fibre channel infrastructures to connect disk to servers. With
UbiquiStor, IT managers can allocate disk space to the enterprise's standard
servers over their current ethernet infrastructure, where the server now
detects the disk as if it were physically local," explains Styer
"The solution also delivers additional return on earlier IT investments,
where old SCSI attached arrays turned obsolete in the SAN environment. With
UbiquiStor, the IT manager can expand his SAN environment utilising SCSI
attached disks in the UbiquiStor server, right next to fibre channel disks,
and without a glitch... It is simply presented out on the other side of the
box as storage that exists right behind the UbiquiStor server. Gone is the
requirement for expensive SAN conversion equipment on channels or throwing
away equipment that could still be used!"
"Like a peacemaker, UbiquiStor combines all the advantages of Network
Attached Storage, where the storage would be sent over the network; with all
the benefits of direct attached storage, but without the struggle of running
separate infrastructures to feed the data. In a heterogeneous storage
environment, the argument around SAN or NAS being competitive or
complementary to each other, is turned on its head, since the solution
delivers both block and file level data to application servers and workgroup
users.
The flexibility inherent to UbiquiStor allows for better utilisation of
storage. According to Brook in the Unix open system space environment, most
South African corporates utilise only about 40 - 60% of their acquired
storage capacity effectivly. Although the organisation may have plenty of
digital storage space, in practice the equipment is often attached to the
wrong box or not where they need it most.
The secret lies in the unique software layer of UbiquiStor that allows users
to allocate space where needed and to dynamically re-size file systems,
avoiding the reallocation of physical storage drives and costly downtime.
In addition to capacity savings, the virtualisation layer also has the
potential to free up software licensing. Where at the typical enterprise,
the NT portion of the network may utilise Compaq storage, requiring Compaq
virtualisation tools, UbiquiStor only interacts with the RAID layer in
giving protected disk back to the UbiquiStor server, which in turn manages
all the functionalities - be that from Compaq or EMC. So not only are there
savings on expensive priority software products, the organisation also
requires fewer skills to manage the storage environment.
Moreover, the ESS innovation also obliterates the requirement for the IT
manager to understand the complicated fibre channel and fibre channel
switching technologies.
"Until UbiquiStor, there was no virtualisation-enabling appliance in the
market that could satisfy client requirements comprehensively. On the other
hand, the UbiquiStor range affords our supplier partners to access markets
hitherto untouched. We have tested the system extensively on all the
functionalities promised by the software authors, and are yet to be
disappointed in the way it addresses the critical issues surrounding
hardware independence, security and the ability to incorporate legacy
equipment still lingering in client's business," Talbot concludes.
END
For more information please contact:
Contact details:
Issued on behalf of : Maxtec Ltd
Client Contact : Mr George Talbot - Executive Chairman
Tel No : (011) 803-6635
E-Mail : george@maxtec-group.com
Editorial Contact : Christine Strydom
Tel No : (011) 805-8010
Fax No (011) 805-5451
E-Mail : stechno@mweb.co.za
