Lenovo is upping its game in the storage market as its latest ThinkSystem DS series of arrays aim to offer an enterprise-class feature set and performance at a price mid-sized businesses can afford. On review we have the top-dog DS6200 a 2U appliance that targets I/O intensive applications and offers end-to-end 12Gbits/sec SAS support, real-time data tiering, high availability and a mighty expansion potential.

Along with 24 SFF drive bays, the DS6200 is endowed with dual controllers running in active/active mode. Each as a generous 16GB of cache memory, perform low-latency cache mirroring and team up a super-capacitor and Flash memory to protect their contents during a power outage.

Our review system has Lenovo's CNCs (converged network controllers) installed, which each have four SFP+ ports and support both 8/16Gbits/sec Fibre Channel and 1/10GbE iSCSI operations. You need to manually set their personality using the CLI but you can have them as all FC, all iSCSI or a mixture of both where the first pair are FC and the second pair are iSCSI.

High-speed SAS3 support extends to the CNC's expansion ports. You can daisy-chain up to nine disk shelves from them using fault-tolerant links for a total of 240 SFF or 108 LFF drives, and mix and match different shelves as well.

Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 review: Installation

Deployment doesn't get any easier as the appliance's web console runs a wizard that handles enabling management access and configuring system settings including SNMP monitoring. Out of the box, our CNCs had their port personalities set to iSCSI but we wanted FC support for our performance tests.

It's easy enough to change and we used the PuTTY client to SSH to the appliance and from its CLI, used the set host-port-mode' command to change them all to FC. Next up is virtual storage provisioning, where the appliance manages two storage pools with one assigned to each controller.

We were supplied with eight 800GB SSDs for testing and quickly created a four-drive RAID10 pool, or disk group, for each controller. As we were only using SSDs, the appliance placed them in the Performance tier and if you add SAS hard disks, they'll go in the Standard tier while Midline SAS drives are automatically allocated to the Archive tier.

The base license only supports real-time data tiering across SAS and ML-SAS HDDs and to use all three tiers, you'll need an optional license which costs around 2,553. However, the base license does enable SSD read caches which can be assigned to disk groups and are not part of the tiering process.

Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 review: FC performance

For performance testing, we used two Xeon Scalable and two Xeon E5-2600 v4 Windows Server 2016 hosts, all equipped with QLogic single-port 16Gbits/sec FC adapters. We mapped a dedicated virtual volume to each server and connected two servers to Controller A and the other two to Controller B.

Our first test using a single server delivered excellent results with Iometer reporting steady sequential read and write rates both of 12.3Gbits/sec. Random read rates held steady while write speeds dropped to 7.5Gbits/sec.

With all four servers in the Iometer mix, we recorded top cumulative sequential reads and writes both of 49Gbits/sec. Total random read and write speeds settled at 48Gbits/sec and 30Gbits/sec with each server recording average I/O response times of less than 0.3ms

I/O throughput is excellent as Iometer recorded cumulative sequential read and write rates of 388,000 and 115,000 IOPS. Moving to random operations saw read and write throughput drop to 228,000 and 114,000 IOPS with latency on all four servers hovering around the 1.2ms mark.

Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 review: Snapshots and management

The base license includes snapshot support for up to 128 targets which can be optionally increased to 512 or 1024. They're easy to manage and can be run on-demand or scheduled as often as every minute within a set daily time window, with an option to retain up to 32 for each volume.

We found snapshot recovery is equally swift as we selected a volume and viewed its snapshots in the list below. After choosing the one we wanted, we disconnected any hosts, selected the Rollback option and had our deleted data returned to its rightful place in a matter of seconds.

Asynchronous replication is another optional feature and a bonus is the DS6200 can replicate volumes to any remote ThinkSystem DS or older Storage S series appliance. It requires iSCSI connections to function and can be set to run immediately and as often as every hour.

We found the appliance's web interface very easy to use, and it provided quick access to the various storage functions. It also provides a handy performance section where we could monitor all components ranging from a single drive or host port to an entire controller.

We run Lenovo's XClarity Administrator as a Hyper-V VM in the lab and it automatically discovered the DS6200. Once we'd supplied our management credentials, it was amalgamated into the Storage section of the XClarity web console where we could view a full hardware inventory, monitor power consumption and temperatures, remotely control power and watch out for system alerts.

Lenovo ThinkSystem DS6200 review: Verdict

Mid-sized businesses that baulk at the cost of all-Flash storage arrays can rest easy with Lenovo's ThinkSystem DS6200. It offers a host of affordable enterprise storage virtualization features and teams them up with integral real-time data tiering, great Flash performance and plenty of room to expand capacity.

Verdict

The ThinkSystem DS6200 is a fine choice for mid-sized businesses that want the best storage performance, real-time data tiering and scalability at a sensible price

Chassis: 2U rack

Storage: 24 x SFF hot-swap drive bays

Power: 2 x 580W hot-plug PSUs

Two controllers each with the following:

Memory: 16GB cache with super-capacitor and Flash memory

RAID support: RAID1, 10, 5, 6

Data ports: 4 x SFP+ supporting 8/16Gbps FC and/or 1/10GbE iSCSI

Management: Gigabit Ethernet

Expansion: 12Gbps SAS3 ports (max 108 LFF/240 SFF drives)

Other ports: Mini-USB CLI port

Snapshots: Base 128 (optional 512 or 1024)

Management: Web browser

Warranty: 3 years on-site 9x5 NBD

Options: SSD Data Tiering License (01GV561), £2,553 ex VAT

Intel's Atom appears to have had its day in the business NAS appliance market as many manufacturers are now moving over to Core i3 processors for their SMB products. QNap's new TS-879 Pro TurboNAS is its first desktop appliance to use this processor and combines it with a remarkable range of new features.

It supports the latest 6Gbit/s SATA3 hard disks, has a pair of fast USB3 ports and is 10-Gigabit Ethernet ready. QNap supplied our review system with an optional Emulex dual-port 10GBase-SR adapter so we could plug it into the Lab's 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) network and see just how fast it can go.

Along with a pair of quiet running fans, the TS-879 Pro has a wealth of ports and a PCI-E expansion slot for a 10-Gigabit adapter.

The appliance is well built. The eight hot-swap disk bays have small locking buttons to stop the disks being accidentally popped out. The chassis uses two large fans at the rear for cooling and we found the appliance ran very quietly during testing, making it well suited to small offices.

One USB3 port is located at the front and is linked to a Copy button above it. Pressing the button copies the entire contents of an inserted drive to a predefined folder on the appliance.

At the rear you have a plethora of ports with another USB3, four USB2, two Gigabit Ethernet and two eSATA ports. A PCI Express expansion slot is located at the top which can be filled with either dual-port Gigabit or 10-GbE cards from QNap. Fitting the supplied Emulex 10GbE card was easy enough, as we just needed to remove the casing to access the slot.

Installation is swift as QNap's Finder utility locates the appliance on the network and offers quick access to the newly designed QNap Storage Manager (QSM) 3.5 web interface. This provides a side menu listing all features and selecting one shows all its details in the main window making it very easy to use.

The 10GbE card was identified without any problems and both ports appeared in the Network section ready for configuration. As with the Gigabit Ethernet ports, they support Jumbo frames and can be teamed together for fault tolerant or load balanced links.

The appliance can be upgraded easily to 10-Gigabit and we had no problems using an Emulex dual-port 10GBase-SR card.

We dived straight into performance testing over Gigabit Ethernet using a Broadberry dual X5560 rack server running Windows Server 2008 R2. Iometer reported a fast read speed of 110MB/s for a mapped Windows share whilst drag and drop copies of a 2.52GB video clip returned read and write speeds of 104MB/s. Using the FileZilla client to FTP the video clip also returned the same speeds.

For 10GbE testing we used a dual Opteron 4170 HE Dell PowerEdge R515 server fitted with an Emulex dual-port 10GBase-SR card and all configured for Jumbo frames. With a direct fibre connection to the appliance we saw Iometer return a storming raw read speed of 586MB/s for a mapped share.

This translated to a big boost for drag and drop copies with the same tests now returning average read and write speeds of over 300MB/s. Most businesses will connect the appliance to a switch over 10GbE and use it to link multiple servers over Gigabit Ethernet and the TS-879 Pro looks quite capable of handling these demands.

IP SAN performance is also excellent with a 100GB target delivering a raw read speed of 111MB/s over Gigabit Ethernet with the file copies returning similar rates. Moving over to a 10GbE connection saw Iometer report a read speed of 627MB/s for the same target with copy speeds of up to 575MB/s.

the TS-559 Pro II.

QNap's MyCloudNAS provide a useful range of services to remote users over the Internet.

There's also QNap's NetBak Replicator software for running scheduled backups of Windows workstations and servers. The appliance also supports Rsync services for remote replication. As expected, extra features are in abundance and, along with MySQL, the appliance can host your own web sites and use the Surveillance Station to monitor and record footage from up to four IP cameras.

New features are RADIUS and TFTP servers, onboard anti-virus scanning and iSCSI LUN backup to a remote storage location over CIFS or NFS. It even has a built in Syslog server where it can receive and store log messages from Syslog senders.

Prices for this appliance vary considerably so we advise shopping around for the best deal. After some searching we found a diskless model at LambdaTek for 1,396 ex VAT which includes a three-year warranty.

We were impressed with the TS-879 Pro on a number of counts and it throws down a very big gauntlet to the competition. Performance over Gigabit and 10-Gigabit networks is impeccable and it provides a remarkable range of storage features which includes some very useful IP SAN options and cloud services for remote workers.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The TS-879 Pro delivers a range of storage features that the competition will be hard pressed to match let alone beat. These include free cloud services and some quality IP SAN capabilities, plus it’s impressively fast over both Gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet networks. The only thing missing is the ability to add expansion units, but its maximum capacity of 24TB using the latest SATA3 hard disks should be quite sufficient for most SMBs.

Chassis: Desktop CPU: 3.3GHz Intel Core i3-2120 Memory: 2GB DDR3, 512MB DOM Storage: 8 x hot-swap 3.5in/2.5in SATA 2/3 disks bays Array support: RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 5 + hotspare Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Other ports: 2 x USB3, 4 x USB2, 2 x eSATA Expansion: PCI Express slot Management: Web browser Software: QNap Finder, NetBak Replicator and Qget software

Enhance Technology has been in the network storage market for many years and its UltraStor appliances are aimed at SMBs looking for a low cost IP SAN solution. In this exclusive review we look at its RS16 IP-4 which combines a tempting price tag with a high capacity and impressive performance claims.

For this review we were supplied with a diskless appliance, but Enhance offers a system with a full house of 16 1TB Enterprise SATA 2 disks for 5,280. An 8TB version costs around 4,478 or you can choose one with 16 2TB SATA disks for 7,274. Enhance also supports 3TB Near-Line SAS disks.

The 3U chassis is well built with sixteen solid metal hot-swap carriers mounted vertically across the front and each incorporating disk status and activity LEDs. Power redundancy is handled by two 460W hot plug supplies at the rear and above these are hot-plug cooling fan modules as well.

The appliance's single RAID controller has four Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual power supplies and fans plus a mini-SAS expansion port.

The RAID controller is mounted in a metal sled which can be released and removed from the back once the appliance is shut down. It's equipped with a 1.2GHz Intel IOP 81342 dual core processor and 2GB of DDR2 cache memory, but it only supports 3Gbit/s SAS/SATA disks.

It's here that fault tolerant features end as the appliance doesn't support dual RAID controllers. There's no battery backup pack to protect the cache contents either, so we recommend a UPS which can be monitored using one of the serial ports at the back.

Expansion is good as the controller has an SFF8470 mini-SAS port which is used to daisy-chain up to four of Enhance's RS16 JS 3U disk shelves. This allows the array to be expanded to a total of 80 hard disks, although with only one port available you can't create redundant physical paths across the disk shelves.

Installation is simple enough as the appliance's tidy web interface provides a quick start option. This offers to set up all the disks and will suggest the optimal RAID array based on the disks installed. For testing, we loaded up four 1TB WD SATA hard disks, took manual control and created a RAID 5 array.

RAID arrays are called volume groups (VGs) and the appliance supports up to eight of them. Within the VGs you create user data volumes (UDVs) which are your iSCSI virtual drives and each VG can contain multiple UDVs of different capacities.

User data volumes (UDVs) are created within VGs and presented as iSCSI targets.

For access control you select a UDV and either make it available to all hosts using a wildcard or enter the full IQN of the host initiators allowed to access it. During this phase you choose a LUN number and can also decide on read-only or read/write privileges.

The controller advertises a single iSCSI node name with all accessible virtual volumes appearing under this as LUNs. This isn't a major issue, but as CHAP authentication is applied at the node level this will apply to all hosts and LUNs.

Snapshots can be taken of a UDV for point-in-time backups and these can be run manually or on scheduled hourly, daily, weekly and monthly intervals. Snapshots can then be used to rollback their associated UDV in the event of a problem.

Snapshots can be presented to selected hosts for data restoration and will appear as read-only optical drives.

You can migrate VGs to different RAID array types and expand their capacity into extra physical drives. UDVs can also be expanded into spare space within their parent VG simply by clicking on a button in their size column and entering a new capacity.

For performance testing, we created four UDVs and used a wildcard entry to allow access for all hosts. We used four test servers running Windows Server 2008 R2 and equipped with either dual Xeon 5500 or Opteron 4100 processors.

Each server was logged into a different portal IP address on the appliance giving each one a dedicated Gigabit connection. The Iometer utility was used to test raw read and write performance and each server was run on a different UDV to avoid any contention.

With one server we saw Iometer report read and write speeds of 112MB/s and 110MB/s. Adding a second server to the mix saw overall throughput increase to 223MB/s and 220MB/s.

With a third server running Iometer we saw throughout rise to 336MB/s and 331MB/s. Finally, with all four servers in the mix we recorded cumulative raw read and write throughputs of 446MB/s and 421MB/s showing no contention for resources on the controller was occurring.

The RS16 IP-4 delivers impressive performance under load and costs a lot less than products such as HP's StorageWorks P2000 G3. If you don't need or want dual redundant RAID controllers then this IP SAN appliance is worth considering.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The UltraStor RS16 IP-4 provides a reasonable set of IP SAN storage features and we found it very easy to deploy. At this low price you won’t get dual controllers and redundant paths to expansion shelves, but it's still worth considering if you're looking for an IP SAN solution at a low price and willing to sacrifice features and redundancy to get it.

Chassis: 3U rack Storage: 16 x 3Gbit/s SAS/SATA hot-swap bays Hard disks: 16 x 1TB SATA2 disks Power: 2 x 460W hot-swap power supplies Cooling: 2 x hot-swap fan modules RAID controller with the following: CPU: 1.2GHz Intel IOP 81342 Memory: 2GB DDR2 cache Array support: RAID0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60, JBOD Network: 4 x Gigabit Ethernet data ports, 10/100 management port Expansion: SFF8470 Mini-SAS port Management: Web browser, CLI

Thecus has been busy upgrading its higher-end rack mounted NAS appliances, but with the launch of the XXX family the company finally turns its attention to its desktop products. The five-bay N5200XXX brings some much needed improvements to its predecessor, the N5200Pro.

Thecus catches up with vendors such as QNap, Synology and Netgear as the N5200XXX now has a 1.8GHz Atom D525 processor partnered with 1GB of DDR3 memory. Other physical changes aren't as significant - the USB port count increased from three to five.

However, unlike the QNap TS-559 Pro II, none of these are of the USB3 variety. Another point to consider is that although the N5200XXX can handle 3TB SATA drives, it doesn't support new SATA3 models whereas the TS-559 Pro II does.

The front panel hasn't changed at all with a backlit LCD display providing system, network and disk status information and a keypad below allowing you to carry out basic configuration. Chassis cooling is handled by a large fan at the rear and we found that although noise levels are low, it's not totally silent. In a busy office environment the appliance won't be heard, but in a quiet room it will be noticeable.

The ports on the rear of the Thecus N5200XXX.

The review system was supplied to us by Origin Storage and came with five 1TB WD GreenPower SATA2 hard disks. Costing 648 ex VAT, this is superb value. A diskless model costs just 456 whilst a 15TB version costs 1,268.

Installation is swift as Thecus' Setup Wizard locates the appliance and provides quick access to the main web interface. The interface isn't quite as slick as QNap's or Synology's, but is still very easy to use.

There's a good choice of RAID arrays with support for JBODs, mirrors, stripes, RAID 5 or dual-disk redundant RAID 6. For testing we created a five-disk RAID 5 array which took around six hours to build. However, after the initial formatting process, the array was made available for use after about twenty minutes.

The appliance supports iSCSI targets but prior to RAID array creation, you must decide how much space you want to keep aside for these. Target creation is simple and iSCSI thin provisioning is supported so you can create targets that only use a small amount of space on the appliance but appear much larger to the host. As more data is stored on the target, the appliance dynamically allocates extra space to it.

IP SAN support extends to thinly provisioned iSCSI targets for better storage usage.

For workstation backup Thecus includes a single-user copy of Acronis True Image Personal which does not support Windows Server. It takes manual backups of files and folders or entire drives as images to the appliance and can create a bootable disaster recovery disk. However, this is a heavily stripped down version so if you want job scheduling, disk cloning, incremental backups and more you must upgrade.

Other backup options include support for Rsync where the appliance acts as a target for other appliances. A free add-on module allows it to replicate to other targets and another enables scheduled backups to locally connected USB and eSATA devices. The appliance's operating system is also protected by Thecus' dual-DOMs. The second DOM automatically maintains a backup copy which is called upon if the primary one fails and you can schedule regular backups too.

Many vendors are adding cloud-based services to their appliances but Thecus isn't one of them. So far, the best example we've seen of this feature is QNap's MyCloudNAS service which allows you to use the appliance to provide your own secure cloud backup, multimedia and file sharing services to remote workers.

The N5200XXX delivered respectable results in our performance tests. Using a Broadberry dual Opteron 4162-equipped rack server running Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, drag and drop copies of a 2.52GB video clip returned read and write speeds of 89MB/s and 86MB/s. Our 17.4GB collection of 10,500 files was also handled well with this folder copied to the appliance at a rate of 60MB/s.

The appliance's capabilities can be upgraded with a good range of freely available software modules.

The appliance's capabilities can be upgraded with a good range of freely available software modules. The IP camera module supports up to five cameras and provides basic surveillance features. However, it's not as good as the equivalent features on QNap or Synology appliances as you can't view live feeds or enable motion detection and it can only take scheduled snapshots at intervals of between one and sixty seconds.

The download station module can be used to retrieve remote files via BitTorrent, HTTP, FTP or eMule and home users will like the new Piczza module which provides a handy remote web photo server for organising galleries, sharing pictures and adding Google Maps links to show where they were taken.

The N5200XXX delivers plenty of NAS and IP SAN storage features along with some serious performance improvements over its predecessor. It's very good value although if you can afford it, QNap's TS-559 Pro II is superior as it offers far more features, supports the latest SATA3 hard disks and is slightly faster.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The N5200XXX may not be as featured packed as QNap’s excellent TS-559 Pro II, but it's much value with a 5TB model costing nearly £400 less. Performance is on a par with most Atom based desktop appliances and its extensive NAS and IP SAN features makes it a good network storage choice for small businesses on a tight budget.

Chassis: Desktop CPU: 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 Memory: 1GB DDR3 Storage: 2 x 128MB IDE DOMs; 5 x 1TB WD GreenPower SATA2 hot-swap hard disks Ports: 5 x USB2; 1 x eSATA Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Software: Setup Wizard, Acronis True Image Personal single license

There's never a dull moment in the desktop NAS appliance market with each vendor constantly trying to outdo the others for features. QNap's latest TS-x59 Pro II range consists of three new desktop models and are the first to support 6Gbit/s SATA hard disks and have USB3 ports.

QNap has also pushed ahead with its support for cloud services as, along with Amazon's S3 hosted backup, you now have support for the ElephantDrive service which Netgear teamed up with some time ago with its ReadyNAS appliances. However, QNap goes a step further with its MyCloudNAS service which allows you to use the appliance to provide your own secure cloud backup, multimedia and file sharing services to remote workers.

The TS-559 Pro II uses the same 1.8GHz dual-core Atom D525 processor as the older Pro+ model but you can now expand memory. The appliance has 1GB which can be upgraded to 3GB using an extra SO-DIMM module. It's easy enough to achieve as you just remove the main cover where you'll find the extra slot easily accessible.

Physically, the TS-559 Pro II is virtually identical to its predecessor as the only external differences are the blue USB3 ports on the front and rear. Along with these you have dual Gigabit Ethernet, four USB2 and a couple of eSATA ports.

QNap's TS-559 Pro II is one of the first NAS devices to have USB3 ports.

Installation is simple as QNap's Finder utility locates the appliance on the network and offers quick access to its well designed web interface. This provides a side menu listing all features and selecting one shows all its details in the main window alongside.

QNap's web interface is well-designed and provides easy access to the myriad features.

The MyCloudNAS service is hosted by QNap which manages host name registration and dynamic DNS mapping for the appliance's services. A wizard takes you through the process where you provide a unique hostname and enable the services you want to publish.

The MyCloudNAS service is supposed to work automatically with UPnP routers, but may require port forwarding rules to be created manually.

It claimed to have succeeded with our Linksys WAG160N wireless router but when we tried to access the services they failed to load. Our solution was to manually add the relevant port forwarding rules to our router after which the services became accessible. Along with username and password access for each service you can also enable HTTPS only for better security.

There are plenty more features to play with as the appliance runs iTunes and UPnP media servers while the Multimedia Station can be used for publishing photos, videos and music in web galleries. The Web File Manager can be used to upload and download files from a browser interface, plus the appliance can host your own web sites.

Using MyCloudNAS allowed us to present the Web File Manager and Multimedia Station to remote users.

A good range of backup features are also provided with NetBak Replicator software running scheduled backups of Windows workstations and servers. Along with the cloud backup services, there's also support for Rsync servers for remote replication.

For real world testing we loaded five 1TB SATA drives and created a RAID-5 array which took around six hours to build. Our performance tests show that standard 3Gbit/ss SATA2 disks are quite capable of delivering the goods.

We used a Dell PowerEdge R515 server running Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit and saw drag and drop copies to a mapped share return read and write speeds of 107.5MB/s and 96MB/s. FTP operations were slightly faster with the FileZilla utility reporting speeds of 108MB/s and 103MB/s respectively.

Using the Dell server and a Broadberry dual X5560 Xeon server running the same OS, we mapped separate shares to them and ran Iometer on each one. After settling down, we saw an impressive cumulative raw read rate of 224MB/s.

IP SAN features are good as all QNap appliances support iSCSI thin provisioning which allows targets to be created that only use a small amount of space on the appliance, but appear much larger to the host. As more data is stored on the target, the appliance dynamically allocates extra space to it. Performance is good as well with a 50GB target returning a high raw read speed of 112MB/s.

IP SAN services come as standard and the appliance supports iSCSI thin provisioning as well.

For USB3 speed testing we inserted a Super Talent Express Drive Duo flash drive into the front port of the appliance and ran copy tests between this and a mapped share. Copying the test video clip to the share returned a read rate of 36MB/s and copying it back to the USB3 stick averaged a 16MB/s write speed. To put these results in perspective we ran the same copies using a USB2 flash drive which delivered read and write speeds of 20MB/s and 5MB/s.

For a five-bay desktop NAS appliance the TS-559 Pro II is competitively priced and has an excellent range of storage features. The USB3 ports improve backup speeds significantly and QNap's new cloud backup and file sharing services currently puts it one up over the competition.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

QNap's new TS-559 Pro II combines an excellent range of storage features with lightning fast performance. The USB3 ports also perform very well and will make significant improvements if you're backing up to external storage devices. Small businesses especially will appreciate QNap’s free MyCloudNAS service for providing secure remote access to resources.

Chassis: Desktop CPU: 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 Memory: 1GB DDR2 expandable to 3GB, 512MB DOM Storage: 5 x 3.5in.or 2.5in SATA2/SATA3 hard disk hot-swap bays RAID: Software managed Array support: RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 5 + hotspare, JBOD Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Other ports: 2 x USB3, 4 x USB2, 2 x eSATA Management: Web browser Software: QNap Finder, NetBak Replicator and Qget software bundled

Acer has had a relationship with Hitachi Data Systems going back a number of years and, as part of its onslaught on the SMB network storage market, has extended this to its Gateway business division. With this agreement, Gateway is marketing Hitachi's lower-end storage arrays under its own brand leaving the Japanese giant free to concentrate on the enterprise storage market.

Gateway makes no attempt to disguise the fact that it's in partnership with Hitachi.

In this exclusive review we take a look at the GS2040, the entry-level model in this family of three products. Gateway makes no attempt to disguise the fact that it's in partnership with Hitachi. The well-built 4U chassis has room for fifteen hot-swap carriers and supports mixes of SAS and SATA drives, plus Gateway offers 200GB SSDs. At present, the GS2040 only supports up to 2TB SATA2 drives and is not yet certified for 3TB models.

However, if you go for a full house of 2TB SATA drives, capacity can be pushed to 30TB. The appliance can also be expanded to a maximum of 90 drives using extra shelves so storage can be increased to a very respectable 180TB.

The GS2040 has plenty of fault tolerance as the chassis comes, as standard, with two redundant hot-plug power supplies and a pair of hot-plug fan modules. The price includes two controllers which run in active/active mode and they each incorporate 2GB of battery protected cache memory mirrored across both of them.

The rear of the Gateway GS2040.

The controllers also have pair of SAS ports so extra expansion shelves can be connected via fault tolerant links. You have a choice of data ports as the GS2040 can support either 4/8Gbit/s FC SANs or IP SANs. Our review unit was supplied with dual Gigabit iSCSI data ports on each controller.

Installation is handled by the Storage Navigator Modular 2 (SNM2) software which is designed to manage multiple arrays from a central console. It runs as a group of web services on your chosen host system which can be accessed either locally or from another remote system.

A quick start wizard steps through configuring the four iSCSI data ports and choosing spare drives to cover any failures.

Your next task is to create RAID groups where you choose your drives and decide on an array type which can range from a simple mirror to dual drive redundant RAID 6. The process is very simple as you choose either SAS or SATA drive types, pick an array and decide how many drives are to be used in it.

Target creation is a swift process as you create a logical unit, decide on its size in MB, GB, TB or blocks and choose a LUN (logical unit number). You can assign it to a specific data port and either use an existing iSCSI target or create a new one. Access security is good as it can be enabled on individual data ports to stop more than one host logging in to an iSCSI target and you can implement CHAP authentication as well.

The GS2040 returned some good results in our performance tests. Starting with a Dell PowerEdge R515 running Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, we saw the Iometer utility report high raw read and write throughputs of 110MB/s and 100MB/s.

We then connected a Broadberry dual Xeon X5560 rack server to a data port on the second controller and logged it into a dedicated iSCSI target. With Iometer running on both systems we saw a cumulative raw read throughput of 220MB/s showing no contention for resources was occurring.

All critical hardware components are monitored and you can be alerted by email of any failures.

Thin provisioning isn't included as standard - Gateway offers Hitachi's Dynamic Provisioning (DP) software as an option. This allows volumes to be created that use a small amount of physical space but appear much larger to host systems.

DP is activated by entering a license in the management console and it requires special pools to be created. These are made available to all thinly provisioned volumes and as they get used, more storage from the pool is made available to them.

It's disappointing that snapshots for point-in-time copies aren't included and are another optional purchase. HP's StorageWorks P2000 G3 looks better value as prices are in the same ball park but it comes with a 64 snapshot license as standard. Gateway's Volume Backup is also an optional extra, but HP includes its volume cloning feature as standard.

Although the GS2040 is essentially a rebadged Hitachi Data Systems appliance, this isn't an issue as it's very well built and provides plenty of storage features. With prices for a diskless appliance starting at around 7,500 it's good value as long as you don't need too many of the optional extras which will push costs up significantly.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

SMBs won’t go far wrong with Gateway’s GS2040 as this appliance is built on a firm foundation, has a good range of network storage features, a high expansion potential and hardware redundancy too. It's also very easy to install and manage. However, we recommend checking out HP’s StorageWorks P2000 G3 arrays first as they cost around the same, are 10-Gigabit ready and provide many backup features as standard rather than as options.

Chassis: 4U rack chassis Storage: 10 x 300GB 15K SAS, 4 x 1TB SATA in hot-swap carriers Power: 2 x redundant hot-plug power supplies Two controllers each with the following: Memory: 2GB with BBU RAID support: RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, 6 Data ports: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet Management: Gigabit Ethernet Other ports: 2 x 6Gbit/s SAS expansion Management: Hitachi SNM2 software

Network storage arrays touted as being affordable for SMBs usually have limited expansion potential. In contrast, HP's new StorageWorks P2000 G2 arrays are designed so you can start small to keep costs down and grow easily with demand. They also have flexibility as their middle name as you can pick from controllers with 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel (FC), 1GB iSCSI, a combination of 8Gbps FC and iSCSI, 6Gbps SAS or the latest model on review here with dual 10-Gigabit iSCSI.

HP's 2U chassis supports either 12 3.5in (LFF) or 24 2.5in (SFF) hard disks and you can choose from 6Gbit/ SAS, midline SAS or low-cost, high capacity SATA. For the latter HP advised us it expects to have 3TB drives certified for use by late autumn.

The chassis accept a pair of hot-plug controllers so you just need to pick which interfaces you want. You can also reduce costs further by starting with one controller and adding a second when you need it.

The controllers have 2GB of cache memory and use a capacitor and flash memory to protect the cache contents. If there's a power failure, the cache contents are written to flash memory and the main advantage here is the capacitor takes far less time to charge than a battery.

The controllers have 2GB of cache memory and use a capacitor and flash memory to protect the cache contents.

For installation you can start by accessing the command line interface (CLI) using the mini USB port on the controller and the supplied USB cable. This will require a proprietary driver which can be downloaded from HP's support site, but note that it does not support 64-bit Windows systems.

We found it easier to point a web browser at the controller's default IP address where we were greeted by a nicely designed interface. It opens with graphics of the array chassis, virtual disks and all controllers and you can drill down to view individual components.

Expansion units are available with 12 LFF or 24 SFF bays and use simple controllers with 6Gbit/s SAS interconnects. This is where the P2000 G3 really shines as the controllers support a maximum of 96 LFF drives or 149 SFF drives so expansion potential is extremely good.

Your first job is to create virtual disks, or vdisks, where you select physical drives, pick a RAID array and assign hot-spares. Make sure you choose an appropriate array type as you can't migrate from one to another although you can expand existing arrays by adding more drives to them.

A provisioning wizard helps with vdisk creation and can also spilt a vdisk into equally sized volumes if you want.

Vdisk creation can be speeded up with automatic setup but with full manual control you can choose an array, assign a primary controller to it and decide on the number of volumes it should contain. You can leave the controller to create equal sized volumes where you simply name them and dish out host mappings to define host access privileges.

You can use snapshots to create point-in-time copies of selected volumes which are stored in a separate pool on the appliance. The base price includes a 64 snapshot license which can be upgraded to a maximum of 512, a very useful extra that provides a lot of added value.

There's more as you also get volume cloning as standard. This is used to create an identical copy of a volume which can then be used for a variety of purposes such as archiving data or safely testing applications. It's as easy to use as snapshots - simply select a volume, choose the copy option from the drop-down menu and either run it immediately or schedule it for later.

HP supplied our review unit with eight 1TB SATA drives which we used to create a single RAID-5 array. The build process took a few hours to complete, but providing you select the online initialisation option you can access the array during this phase.

For performance testing we used a Broadberry dual 2.8GHz X5560 Xeon server running Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit and equipped with an Intel 10GBase-SR card. We used this to directly connect the server to the primary controller and had no problem logging on using the Microsoft iSCSI initiator where we could see all mapped volumes.

Once the RAID-5 array had initialised we mapped a volume to the server and used the Iometer utility to test raw throughput. Using eight disk workers and 256KB transfer request sizes we saw an impressive top speed for sequential read operations of 676MB/s. Changing Iometer to 100 per cent sequential write operations returned an average speed of 465MB/s.

A Mini USB port on the rear of the P2000 allows you to control the storage array using a command line interface if you wish.

Along with fine performance, the new 10 Gigabit Ethernet model of the P2000 G3 comes in at a price that few other storage vendors will be able to match. We found it extremely easy to use making storage provision a simple task and the high expansion potential makes it a good long term investment.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

The StorageWorks P2000 G3 is a great choice for SMBs looking for a flexible network storage solution that won’t break the bank. HP offers an excellent range of controller choices, expansion potential is very high and the price includes snapshots and volume cloning. The smart management interface makes light work of storage provisioning and the new 10GbE model on review performed very well in our tests.

Chassis: 2U rack Storage: 12 x 3.5in drive bays supporting SAS, midline SAS and SATA hard disks Power: 2 x 573W hot-plug supplies Two controllers each with the following: Memory: 2GB cache with capacitor and flash memory backup RAID support: RAID 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 50 Data ports: 2 x 10 Gigabit SFPs Management: Fast Ethernet port Other ports: Mini USB CLI port Management: Web browser Snapshots: 64/512 (Standard/Maximum) Volume Copy: Included as standard Options: AP843A P2000 LFF expansion enclosure, £2,259; AJ941A D2700 SFF expansion enclosure, £2,319 (all ex VAT) Model code: AW596A

Storage networking has reached the high street. But that's no reason for enterprises to dismiss it.

Moore's Law is most closely linked with the processing power of computers. But the trend for IT equipment to become more powerful, and cost less money, is by no means confined to the CPU. Just look at smartphones.

Storage is one area where improvements have tended to lag behind, however. The physics of spinning disks which need motors, ball bearings and other mechanical parts stand to benefit less from the falling cost of transistors than microprocessors or RAM.

The cost of storage is falling steadily, however, and you can now pick up a 1TB hard drive, in a retail package on the high street, for under 80. But more interesting still is how device manufacturers are re-packaging those basic drives into a range of increasingly intelligent, and useful, devices.

This is a development that is particularly useful to any business that needs to store more information (that's most of them, then).

As a journalist, for example, data storage might not seem that important. But as well as writing this column, that means producing video and audio content. The growing demand from publishers for that content means that data storage is almost as important as a stock of notepads and pens.

Tapes and Minidiscs have given way to video cameras and audio recorders that use SD or Compact Flash cards, and all that information needs to live somewhere. At the last count, this office housed around 14TB (yes, terabytes) of data, and the total is still growing.

Bringing some semblance of order to all this storage prompted a mission to explore the field of networked storage. This means weighing up the pros and cons of various NAS drives and storage area networks.

A few years ago, a storage area network was at least a five-figure investment. Prices have fallen since, but even so, it was a surprise to find that a basic, storage area network device is available for around 250. Apparently you can even buy one in Harrods.

The ix2-200 will not win many awards for performance, but it is not short of features. Perhaps the most interesting of these, and one that is certainly unusual at this price point, is support for iSCSI.

Support for the iSCSI protocol allows the ix2-200, and similar low-cost devices, to give shared, block level data access to more than one computer.

Put simply, this means applications such as databases or Microsoft Exchange, which usually object to storing their data on a network-attached drive, can share a volume over Ethernet. With iSCSI support now built in to Windows, setting up a very basic SAN takes just a few minutes.

According to Paul Hudson, head of sales for Northern Europe at Buffalo Technology, another storage vendor, iSCSI is the key "enabling technology" for storage among small and mid-sized enterprises.

As iSCSI becomes more familiar to businesses, and their IT resellers, Hudson expects more and more companies to replace direct attached drives with small, or even not so small, SANs. Buffalo, for example, can put together an iSCSI system that provides a whopping 96TB of shared storage to a single server host.

Whether anyone can actually find key business information in storage systems that are that large, of course, is another question entirely

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT PRO.

Comments? Questions? You can email him here.

Despite high interest in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) in the past few years, a new report has suggested companies are heading back to older iSCSI technology.

The study released by Forrester today, and commissioned by Dell, shows that many companies are keen to take advantage of converged network technologies, but rather than keeping up interest in FCoE, the most popular protocol choice from the respondents was 10GB iSCSI.

"A couple of years ago there was a lot of noise around FCoE," said Praveen Asthana, vice president of storage and networking at Dell, in an interview with IT PRO.

"It sounded like a good idea and a lot of customers got interested in the idea of converged fabric and then the problem is that FCoE ran into some technical issues. It took five years for fibre channel to settle down and be stable so FCoE is going to have the same issues. iSCSI has been around for 10 years and it will take a few years before we can trust FCoE."

Whilst around half of respondents said they were looking into iSCSI technology, only just over a fifth of them were seeking the FCoE option.

Server virtualisation adoption is high and fibre channel is the main connection protocol of choice, however iSCSI is also catching up in this area, according to the report.

"We used to think it was an SMB play but we have seen a lot of adoption in the higher enterprise," continued Asthana.

"Not only are more enterprises taking it up but people are replacing their infrastructures with it which was very surprising. About 30 per cent of the customers who have fibre channel and bought iSCSI have replaced their infrastructure with it."

Click here for our Q&A with Praveen Asthana, Dell's vice president of storage and networking.

Infortrend has launched two new unified storage systems for small and medium businesses.

The new EonNAS family range, the EonNAS 3200 and EonNAS 5100, both feature combined network attached storage (NAS) and iSCSI connectivity to help small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) simplify storage and server consolidation.

Thomas Kao, product planning and global marketing director at Infortrend, said in a statement: "At affordable prices, these multi-protocol systems help SMBs deal with growing amounts of data that need to be stored longer, protected and managed more efficiently."

He added: "With EonNAS, SMBs no longer have to compromise on business competitiveness because of limited budgets and staff."

The EonNAS 3200 is an entry level device aimed at the smaller business or branch offices for larger companies whereas the EonNAS 5100 is designed for the medium sized organisation, offering support for SSD drives to improve performance.

Infortrend is making its move into the mid tier enterprise storage market with a list of new products unveiled today.

IT PRO had an exclusive pre-briefing about the launch with Jon Ashley, the company's European director of marketing communications.

He said: "We have always played in the entry SME level for RAID arrays and just provided a storage system. The next step in our evolution is mid tier and we have done this with the Enterprise Scalable Virtualised Architecture (ESVA)."

ESVA features three fibre channel and two ISCSI products which Ashley considers the "next logical step" for the company to be taking.

The three fibre channel products are the F20, F40 and F60. The F20 comes with starter disk drives of up to 1TB, although the company are testing the possibilities of 2TB. The F40 and F60 both have SAS drives with the first containing a 2.5 inch drive and the second a 4.5 inch drive.

The ISCSI products are the E20 and E60. Again the E20 features starter drives but the E60 is run on SAS with a native 64 drives.

Ashley said: "We also have a road map where towards the end of the year we will be making NAS products. We want a portfolio to cover all the bases and as a storage company with 15 years experience, we will demonstrate our commitment to our growth strategy."

Included in the products will be a range of embedded software services such as SANwatch, storage virtualisation, thin provisioning and snapshot. Remote mirroring is not included due to its complexity and would need a separate licence.

It also includes three years of 24/7 support, although this can be upgraded to an advanced or premium package.

Pricing information is yet to be released, but global shipping will begin at the start of the third quarter.

Key features of IP SAN disk arrays have always been ease of deployment and value when compared with FC SAN products but Boston aims to push the envelope even further as its latest iGloo 24-T-StorMagic appliance offers a impressive 24TB for a shade under ten grand and claims a simple six step manoeuvre for setting up iSCSI virtual volumes.

The iGloo is an all-Supermicro system and the solidly built 4U chassis serves up 24 hot-swap drive bays each filled with 1TB Western Digital SATA hard disks. The drive backplane is connected through to an AMCC 3ware 24-port SATA RAID card, which provides a good range of array support including dual-drive redundant RAID-6. There's plenty more on the hardware menu as the price includes a 2GHz quad-core Xeon processor teamed up with 8GB of memory and power fault tolerance is handled by a pair of 900W hot-plug supplies.

The network port count includes a pair of embedded Gigabit adapters plus a 10GbE card offering a pair of CX-4 ports and the system can be remotely managed and monitored using the Supermicro RMM card. The storage software comes courtesy of StorMagic's SM Series software preloaded on a USB DOM plugged directly into the motherboard.

You can manage the appliance via its web browser interface but you'd miss out on StorMagic's Disk Manager utility, which offers six-click manoeuvres for iSCSI target creation and deployment. The concept behind the StorMagic software is quite simple as all the hard disks in the appliance are placed into RAID arrays that present storage pools to the network. The pools are then used to create iSCSI virtual disks, which can be shared amongst multiple hosts or dedicated to selected systems. The Disk Manager kicks off with a wizard based routine that hunts down the appliance on the network and offers to set up an array. RAID configuration does not need to be done at the controller BIOS level as StorMagic handles all of this automatically or you can create multiple pools manually if you wish.

For IP SAN creation StorMagic has focused very much on SMBs with limited technical resources. The Disk Manager interface opens with a view of local and IP SAN storage resources showing used and free capacities. Usefully, it'll show all StorMagic appliances plus local and remote host systems that have the Disk Manager service running. With the appropriate credentials you'll be able to view the entire IP SAN and all hosts from a single interface and see the status of all local and virtual hard disks.

StorMagic's migration feature lets you move data on selected local drives to much larger virtual volumes and on completion they retain the same drive letter. You don't lose the original volume as StorMagic keeps it intact and only removes its drive letter. Another useful feature is StorMagic's automatic disk extension, which can be enabled on selected targets during creation. On each volume you decide when the disk should be extended based on available space and what percentage it should grow by.

To test performance we used a Supermicro dual-core 3GHz Xeon server and a Dell PowerEdge 1950 quad-core 1.86GHz Xeon server with both running Windows Server 2003 R2. We placed each server on a different IP subnet and created and assigned virtual volumes to each one in a matter of minutes from the Disk Manager. With the Iometer utility configured on one host we saw it return a very respectable 112MB/sec raw read rate. With two hosts in the mix and assigned to independent iSCSI targets we watched Iometer returned an equally impressive cumulative read speed of 208MB/sec.

Along with top performance and easy deployment, the iGloo offers many other valuable IP SAN related features. Along with the Disk Manager, the appliance can also be fully managed via a well designed browser interface which also provides access to more features. StorMagic supports persistent connections, iSNS servers, CHAP authentication and ACLs.

MPIO (multi-path I/O) is also on the list and this uses multiple paths from hosts to storage volumes to create redundant links. Setting up MPIO is easy enough as StorMagic provides clear documentation for this process something a few other vendors should take note of. We configured the two network ports on our Dell server to be on different subnets, logged on to the iSCSI target and from the advanced settings created two sets of source IP and target portal associations. We could now see from the Device manager that we had two new hard disks along with the MPIO driver. Whilst running Iometer on the virtual disk we could pull either network cable out of the server and watch it continue unabated.

The number of IP SAN products coming on to the market is testament to the rapidly increasing popularity of iSCSI amongst SMBs and enterprises alike. The iGloo 24-T-StorMagic doesn't offer the same level of RAID controller redundancy as found in products such as iQStor's iQ2850, but this feature does increase costs considerably. What it does deliver is a tremendous amount of RAID protected storage at a very competitive price and teams this up with top performance and extreme ease of use making it an ideal network storage solution for SMBs.

Verdict

IP SAN deployment really doesn’t get any easier than this as the array’s StorMagic embedded OS makes light work of virtual volume creation and target assignment. The RAID card is a single point of failure but the appliance offers plenty of other fault tolerant features and you’ll be hard pushed to find a better price for this amount of storage capacity.

Chassis: 4U rack CPU: 1 x 2GHz Xeon L5335 Memory: 8GB 667MHz DDR2 Storage: 24 x 1TB Western Digital WD1000FYPS SATA/3Gbps hard disks RAID: AMCC 3ware 9650SE-24M8 SATA PCI-e with 512MB cache and BBU Array support: RAID0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and hot-standby Network: 2 x Gigabit, Supermicro 10GbE card with 2 x CX4 ports Power: 2 x 900W hot-plug supplies OS: StorMagic SM Series software on USB DOM Management: SIMLC RMM, web management

Although Fujitsu Siemens has always offered an extensive network storage portfolio its main focus has traditionally been on FC SANs (Fibre Channel Storage Area Network). The FibreCAT SX80 iSCSI represents its first foray into the world of IP SANs (Internet Protocol Storage Area Network)and it aims to offer SMBs an easily deployed and more cost effective alternative to FC SANs.

The SX80 iSCSI uses the same 2U chassis as its fibre channel FibreCAT chums, which is extremely well constructed with attention to detail extending to the sturdy drive carriers. There's room for twelve hot-swap hard disks and it accepts SAS or SATA or a mixture of both. Fault tolerance is extensive with the chassis supporting dual redundant RAID controllers plus dual combined fan and power supply units. Expansion options look good as the array supports the latest high-capacity drives and the single SAS port on the controller enaqbles you add up to four more 12-bay disk shelves.

The RAID controller offers a couple of unusual features developed by Fujitsu Siemens to improve performance and reliability. FibreCAP replaces traditional battery backup packs with a combination of capacitor and CompactFlash card and in the event of a power failure the cache contents are written to the card. The benefit here is that when power is restored the capacitor takes a lot less time to recharge than a standard battery pack and can provide full protection much quicker.

Next up is FibreCache, which provides a high-speed, direct link between two controllers. Data written to one controller is synchronously mirrored to the other and it aims to improve general performance by reducing internal system traffic between the controllers.

For installation you can use a serial port connection to the CLI but make sure you don't lose the supplied cable as the small port on the controller is proprietary. We found it just as easy to point a web browser at the unit's default IP address where we were greeted by a well designed management interface.

You start off by creating virtual disks, or vdisks, where you select the member drives, decide on a RAID array and assign hot-spares if required. The controller supports all key arrays types, which includes the latest dual drive redundant RAID-6. If you have both controllers installed you can also assign a preferred controller to a vdisk. Note that you can't change the RAID array type later on but you can add more drives and expand an array, although this doesn't apply to mirrors. During manual vdisk creation you can decide on the number of volumes it should have and leave the controller to create equal sized volumes which you can then name as required.

Access controls are good as you select a volume, pick your logged in hosts from a drop down list and decide whether they should have read only or read/write access. These privileges can be applied to specific data ports and you can also assign LUN numbers as well. CHAP authentication is on the list where you can enforce this globally or activate it for selected hosts only and give each one their own secret.

Volume snapshots are used to take point in time copies and are supported as standard. The price includes a license for four snapshots and this can be upgraded up to 32. Volumes copies are also a possibility but this is an optional feature that represents an additional purchase. However, a scheduler is included enabling you to run snapshots and volume copies at regular intervals.

Only available with SAS drives, the appliance also supports iSCSI boot capabilities. This enables you to remote boot servers from the appliance and a key reason this feature has been implemented is that Fujitsu Siemens uses the SX80 iSCSI appliance as the central storage component in its x10sure we'll be bringing you a review of this server clustering solution soon.

For testing we started with a Boston Supermicro dual 3GHz Xeon 5160 server running Windows Server 2003 R2 and the latest Microsoft iSCSI initatior software. Our initial speed test involved creating a quad drive RAID-0 striped vdisk with four volumes, which we made available to all hosts. After logging on we were presented with four new drives in Windows Explorer ready for formatting. Using the Iometer utility configured with four disk workers, 64KB request sizes, 100 per cent sequential reads and 100 outstanding I/Os we saw a very reasonable raw throughput of 108MB/sec.

We then added a quad-core Xeon Dell PowerEdge 1950 server to the mix and logged its iSCSI initiator on to the second data port with a dedicated volume assigned to it. On our initial Iometer test run we saw a good average raw read throughput of 109MB/sec. With Iometer running on both servers simultaneously we saw a cumulative raw throughput of around 120MB/sec showing clearly that there was contention for resources on the single RAID controller.

Naturally, MPIO is supported and setting up fault tolerant connections proved to be a simple process helped along nicely by the copious documentation. We mapped one volume to both data ports and then logged in from the Dell server initiator using both IP addresses as targets. We had no problems creating a fault tolerant link and during a copy of a large video clip to the iSCSI target we disconnected one network cable from the server and watched it continue unabated.

The increasing number of IP SAN appliances coming on to the market is testament to popularity of this network storage technology. It's a far better choice for SMBs than costly FC SAN solutions and the SX80 iSCSI delivers a fine range of features for the price. Deployment is very easy, it has good expansion potential and with Fujitsu Siemens currently offering a bundle deal that includes a quintet of 500GB SATA hard disks for 2,995, it looks even better value.

Verdict

The exponential rise in popularity of IP SANs means there’s a lot of choice on the market with value and ease of deployment now key selling points. The SX80 iSCSI certainly scores on both these counts as it’s competitively priced and we found it easy enough to install in the lab. Performance under heavy load could be better but it is capable of handling the demands of the target market making it a good choice for SMBs looking for a low cost entry point into IP SANs.

Chassis: 2U rack Storage: 12 x hot-swap SAS/SATA Power: 2 x 712W hot-plug supplies Controllers: 1 (2 supported) Cache memory: 1GB RAID arrays: RAID0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 50, 6 Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet data ports Expansion: External SAS port (supports up to 4 12-bay expansion units) Management: Fast Ethernet, serial port Other: FibreCAP capacitor, 512MB CompactFlash card, four snapshot license included

Competition in the IP SAN market for network storage is intensifying and clearly iQStor aims to beat the rest on value as its latest iQ2850 disk array delivers a number of features many other vendors will charge extra for. Standard features include services for unlimited managed snapshots and volume copies along with a DSM for MPIO fault tolerant functions.

iQStor also offers its enhanced data services, which include synchronous and asynchronous remote replication for disaster recovery, a choice selection of agents for popular databases and its SAN Manager software. The latter provides a centralised console for managing entire IP SANs and offers automated discovery, monitoring and alerting facilities.

There's a lot more to the iQ2850 as this 3U disk array is extremely well constructed with the disk drives fitted in industrial strength hot-swap carriers. These slip firmly into place in the chassis and the top panel flips down in front where it provides activity LEDs for each bay and a useful backlit LCD operator panel offering a status display and access for basic configuration. The system on review came supplied with fifteen 1TB SATA hard disks but iQStor also offers arrays for FC drives instead. However, considering SAS has all but taken over as the choice for high performance storage we would have expected these drives to be a better bet than FC models.

The array can be purchased with a single controller but we had the dual controller version with them functioning in active/active mode, enabling all four Gigabit data ports on each one to be available for host connections. Each comes with 1GB of cache memory, which can be expanded to 4GB and both are protected by a battery backup pack located in the management controller. RAID options are good as along with stripes, mirrors and RAID-5, the controllers also support dual-drive redundant RAID-6 - the Dell EqualLogic arrays, for example, only support RAID-5 and -50.

Expansion potential knocks the rest into a cocked hat as the controllers also each have a pair of 4Gbps FC ports, which accept iQStor's J2880 SBOD expansion units. These have the same number of bays as the main unit and up to fifteen can be daisy-chained from it enabling capacity to be increased massively to 240TB using 1TB SATA drives. If you wish, you can also mix FC and SATA SBOD units in the same daisy-chain as well.

We found installation a simple enough process as you point a browser at either of the controller's IP addresses to load the System Manager interface. Its home page opens with a complete graphical rundown on the condition of the drives, controllers, power supplies and fans plus the link status of each data and FC port. If you want full manual control you start by creating RAID arrays where you select an array type and pick the drives to be included. Pools come next and these can comprise one or more RAID arrays. VDisks are your iSCSI virtual volumes and you decide on a size for each one, which pool they are members of and the data port they should be assigned to.

Access security is good as CHAP authentication is permanently enabled and must be used on all targets. Profiles allow multiple schemes to be created where each contains a username and a CHAP secret. All hosts can be enabled to access selected VDisks or you can assign them to specific hosts using LUN mapping. You'll need to set up host aliases first and we found it annoying that the dialogue box for this wasn't wide enough so we couldn't see the whole IQN for each server.

Along with array membership, you can designate certain drive bays as global hot spares, which make them available to all arrays in the event of a failure and array rebuilds will happen automatically. Providing there's enough spare space in the pool, VDisks can be expanded at will simply by entering a new value for capacity in GB. Snapshots provide point-in-time copies of VDisks and are created by selecting a source and a pool for the snapshot to be stored in.

The same procedures apply for creating local VDisk mirrors as well. This can prove useful for testing as once a mirror has been created you can split it so the copy becomes a new VDisk that can be made available to your test systems. In the event of a problem or failure a volume can also be restored from its snap-shot by selecting the roll-back option.

The System Manager offers a number of optional storage management tools that are activated with a license. Policies are used to monitor the capacities of VDisks and once a threshold has been breached the appliance will increase them by the selected percentage. You can use policies to monitor an attached UPS and close the system down before its battery runs out and also control the number of spare disks that must be kept ready for use.

For testing we called up dual quad-core Xeon Dell PowerEdge 1950 and 3GHz dual-core Xeon Boston Supermicro servers with both running Windows Server 2003 R2 and loaded with the latest Microsoft iSCSI initiator. We logged both servers onto dedicated targets on different ports and subnets and running Iometer on the Dell server first returned an impressive raw read rate of 113MB/sec. With a second instance running on the Boston system we saw a high cumulative read throughput of 210MB/sec.

To test MPIO we created a single VDisk, assigned it to the first port on the controllers and then logged in from the Dell server initiator using both IP addresses as targets. We had no problems creating a fault tolerant link and during a copy of a 2.5GB video clip to an iSCSI target we disconnected one network cable from the server and watched it continue unabated.

Compared with many other IP SAN storage arrays, the iQStor iQ2850 looks particularly good value even with the current exchange rates. It offers more standard features than most competing products, delivers excellent performance and an amazing expansion capacity.

Verdict

Some storage vendors seem to have forgotten that a key selling point of IP SANs is their value proposition when compared to FC SANs with many charging disproportionately high prices. iQStor clearly isn’t one of these as its iQ2850 delivers an enterprise level feature set with a massive expansion capacity but at a more affordable price.

Chassis: 3U rack

Power: 2 x 460W hot-plug supplies

Cooling: 2 x hot-plug fan modules

Storage: 15 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda ES.2 SATA hard disks in hot-swap carriers

Controllers: 2 x hot-swap

CPU: 1GHz

Cache memory: 1GB expandable to 4GB per controller with battery backup

RAID arrays: RAID0, 1, 10, 3, 5, 50, 6

Network: 4 x Gigabit Ethernet data ports

Expansion: 2 x 4Gbps FC ports per controller

Management: Fast Ethernet port linked to both controllers

Virtual infrastructures are all the rage. Businesses need to be able to respond flexibly to rapidly changing market conditions, while at the time saving money and increasing their green credentials.

Consolidating data centres and switching to virtual servers to increase server utilisation is a big part of the story, but it starts to fall apart when it takes several minutes to copy a virtual disk from one machine to another, or from one network-attached LUN to another.

That's where storage virtualisation comes in. Instead of defined LUNs (logical unit numbers) and physical volumes, all your storage hardware can be treated as a single pool of storage, which can be used a single storage utility. Storage can be partitioned as required, and quickly moved between servers, using user-friendly storage management tools. Applications than need LUN-based access can work with virtual LUNs, while protocols like iSCSI give mixed block-and-file access to your stored data.

Virtualised storage is an important piece of any virtual infrastructure. It allows you to quickly move virtual machines from physical server to physical server, simply by moving the pointers for virtual LUNs or volumes. It also lets you use the same techniques to quickly failover from one VM to another, keeping down time to a minimum and increasing service reliability.

With virtual storage in demand, it's no surprise that storage vendors are buying start-ups. Dell bought EqualLogic, while HP recently purchased LeftHand Networks. Even the NAS stalwarts like NetApp have brought out storage virtualisation products.

Virtual storage and virtual infrastructure

In the past, servers and storage went together hand-in-hand. Each server had its own storage, whether it was a set of directly attached disks or a SAN on the end of some fibre. Even file-based NAS just looked like another storage volume that could be mounted and dismounted as required.

That model doesn't work very well for virtual infrastructures. Server consolidation means that multiple virtual servers run on a single physical server. While each physical server can be connected to enough physical storage to handle the requirements of each guest server, it's appropriate to consider how storage can be consolidated along with the servers. It's an approach that saves space in the data centre (along with reduced power and cooling demand), as well as simplifying the network connections to each server.

You can use your virtual servers with block network storage solutions like NAS, but it's not really suitable for the dynamic approach to storage required by tools like VMware's Virtual Infrastructure, where storage needs to be mapped between servers on demand. Different problems arise with SANs, where LUN migration can be a slow and complex process.

IP networks have a level of flexibility that fibre finds hard to match though fibre's speed gives it an edge in other arenas. The alternative, iSCSI, is a relative new-comer to the field, but allows system administrators to mix file and block-based storage on a single piece of equipment. But iSCSI-based solutions scale well. Dell's EqualLogic systems are shipping with the ability to scale up to 192TB. While the 16TB entry-level systems use SATA drives, the higher-end solutions use the much faster SAS drive format.

You can link iSCSI management tools to your virtual infrastructure, either taking advantage of any built-in integration points or using APIs to build out your own management tools. LeftHand is exposing much of its management interface using WMI which means it should be accessible using tools like Microsoft's PowerShell.

It's also possible to use virtualised storage to manage virtual desktops. You can build stores that map multiple instances to a single set of master records, saving space by just storing the differences between the master and each copy.

If you're running virtual desktops for your users you can use this approach to simplify desktop management. If you need to patch your users, you only need to do it once patch the master copy and all your users will have access to an updated desktop.

Virtual storage and disaster recovery

If you're using offsite storage as a key component of your disaster recovery plans, you'll find that virtualising your storage infrastructure will simplify the process. Most virtual storage platforms offer tools for replicating content to offsite installations, using a mix of shadow copy and delta replication to speed up the process, reducing the amount of data on the wire.

Shadow copies replicate one moment in time on your storage array, taking a snapshot and copying it to a remote server. In between snapshots, deltas and transaction logs can be sent to make sure that the remote site is as up to date as possible.

Snapshots only need to be sent at specific intervals, letting you keep intersite bandwidth to a minimum. Deltas and transaction logs can be replayed to handle updates, treating your entire storage pool as you might treat a mission-critical database.

If you're working multi-site, you can use IP accelerators with your iSCSI connections. Dell EqualLogic has been seeing a 4 to 5:1 compression ratio with many real world scenarios a reduction that can significantly reduce the need for dedicated bandwidth to a recovery site or a branch office, saving time and money.

It's the appliance of storage

Virtual storage isn't about the hardware it's all about the software. Companies like LeftHand have been building storage servers using commodity hardware, mixing rack servers with storage arrays. While these techniques may not have the storage densities of purpose built storage arrays, they're easy to build, easy to deploy, and easy to manage.

If a disk fails, commodity hardware means replacement is low cost, as economies of scale apply. With SATA disks now shipping with over a terabyte of spinning disk, it's easy enough to quickly populate a rack with more than enough storage for a medium business.

Software-based virtual storage means it's also very easy to map in a new array.

System administrators can add the new hardware to a network, giving it an appropriate IP address in a management VLAN, and then let it add itself to the storage network as a peer. You may need to use management tools to define storage roles for the new server, but once in place data will be transferred to maximise reliability and recovery, with multiple copies across multiple arrays. This process can happen in the background (along with disk formatting and preparation).

A peer-to-peer network of storage servers also means faster access to your data. Distributed indexes mean that requests can be handed off to the server with lowest load, while data is delivered from the fastest location. Once data has been written to a disk, it can then be replicated across the rest of the storage array without affecting other operations. The key is managing and sharing indexes, and various approaches are available.

One option gives every storage controller the entire index, while another shares it across the network in a similar manner to Skype, where each server knows where its data is, along with a list of other indexes and instructions on how to query them. If the requested data isn't on the current server, the request is passed around the network until it can be fulfilled.

The appliance-based approach to virtualised storage makes a lot of sense. Microsoft is using it for its Home Server product, where storage has been turned into a box that plugs into a network, and then manages its own storage array, along with any additional attached storage devices.

Management is kept to a minimum with the server software handling replication, security and recovery. The same model scales up to enterprise storage, and lets you apply content-based storage rules reducing risk by keeping more copies of important data than temporary files. Data classification is key here, and will need to be linked to any regulatory requirements.

LeftHand offers a starter storage appliance for small businesses, which uses a VMware virtual machine to host a storage controller. There's no need to buy dedicated servers, and you can use it to handle up to 4TB of storage. While the storage capacity may be on par with a NAS, you gain iSCSI access and the ability to address your storage pool in any way you want.

Virtual futures

Consolidation is the key to any future data centre, and virtualisation is the answer to many of the questions around just how we can bring several sites into one.

Storage virtualisation lets businesses deliver on the promise of virtual infrastructures, simplifying disaster recovery, system management, and data retention at the same time as increasing uptimes and reducing the risks of an unplanned outage.

With the latest iSCSI-based solutions, scalable commodity storage can be deployed alongside commodity servers, letting you manage hardware as cheaply as software, and keeping expansion costs to a minimum.

Well-designed and well-implemented virtual storage is an important factor in managing an effective virtual infrastructure. The latest generation of tools and technologies go a long way to offering the level of management and control that's needed though integration with standard management tools is still minimal.

It's worth persevering. Open APIs and commodity hardware mean that it's getting easier to use your standard management platform to control a virtual infrastructure, from servers to storage.

HP is splashing out $360 million (204 million) to acquire storage virtualisation and iSCSI SAN specialist LeftHand Networks.

The deal mirrors the move made by Dell last year when it acquired EqualLogic to strengthen its own storage arsenal.

Once the acquisition is completed tipped for the first fiscal quarter of 2009 LeftHand Networks will become part of HP's StorageWorks division.

"Customers need a faster, less complex and more economical route to storage networking to better protect their critical business data," said Dave Roberson, senior vice president and general manager of that division.

LeftHand has been around since 1999 and has 215 employees and 500-plus resellers around the world. It focuses on reducing complexity by blending scalable storage software with industry standard hardware.

The company also boasts intelligent cloning technology that can reduce disk space requirements in certain virtualised scenarios by as much as 97 per cent. In addition to gaining the above by acquiring the vendor, HP hopes to beef up its midrange iSCSI portfolio.

"The acquisition of LeftHand Networks significantly expands our storage portfolio, enabling HP to deliver customers an expanded suite of storage functionality, scalable capacity and interconnect options for every budget and performance requirement," added Roberson.

EMC has announced a new storage device for mid-sized businesses that represents an aggressive change to the company's product architecture, according to industry analysts.

The new system's Ultra-Flex technology' enables it to support both iSCSI and Fibre Channel hard disks and solid state flash disks. The company also says that the CX4 has been designed to take advantage of any future connectivity formats.

The Xeon-powered CLARiiON CX4 Series will be available in four versions and the suffix of each model's product name indicates the maximum number of hard disks that it can support. The largest, the CX4-960 able to support up to 960 hard disks, while the other models are the CX-4120, the CX4-240 and CX4-480.

Ruya Atac-Barrett, director of CLARiiON product marketing, told IT PRO that the CLARiiON CX4 offered a number of business benefits that would enable companies to both save money and make money.

Firstly, the embedded OS of the storage array, FLARE, is now 64-bit, which says Atac-Barrett is, "a major innovation in storage processor architecture, delivering up to double the performance and scale".

Other features highlighted are the Ultra flex technology', which enables it to support both iSCSI and Fibre Channel at once. "Companies with production environments and test environments can be consolidated and captured into one system. It's once less thing to think about," said Atac-Barrett.

Flash drives are available as an option, which Atac-Barrett said offer a number of benefits over conventional drivers. "They offer 30 times the performance, use 98 per cent less energy per IOP (Input/Output Process), and have much higher utilisation as there's no short stroking- you get the same performance across the whole drive."

EMC is also highlighting the CX4's energy saving capabilities with support for 5,400 rpm SATA drives that use 32 per cent less energy than faster spinning drives.

Atac-Barrett also highlighted the systems' intelligence, referencing its Policy Based Spin Down, which detects when drives are not being used and spins then down to save power.

Another key feature is Virtual Provisioning, which lets applications believe that there is more storage available than there actually is. The advantage of this is that it enables capacity to be bought on demand in a just-in-time' fashion, enabling IT managers to take advantage of falling disk prices and the latest technology.

Analysts have viewed the release favourably. "EMC has done its homework and decided on a big incremental leap forward rather then just a small step," said Mark Peters, analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group.

"Most of the functions are already available elsewhere but to have so many genuine new capabilities rolled into the CLARiiON is impressive."

Meanwhile Benjamin Woo, an analyst at IDC, praised the Clarion CX4 series for its "forward-looking, investment-protecting, and scalability features" and said that "overall, the CX4 represents a very innovative approach to storage system design."

For many of the latest SAN solutions a number of storage vendors have decided to combine both FC and IP capabilities in the same unit. HP's latest StorageWorks products take the opposite tack as the new 2000 Modular Storage Arrays (MSAs) are offered with either fibre channel or iSCSI RAID controllers. The twelve bay disk cabinets are the same you just choose which SAN you want to go with.

These are aimed squarely at SMBs with limited budgets and a glance at the price tags shows that HP looks to have hit the mark for value although the prices we've listed don't include any hard disks. We take an exclusive look at both products as on review we have the 2012i and 2212fc arrays.

The 2U chassis accepts high performance SAS and high-capacity SATA drives and you can mix and match them in the same chassis as required. There's plenty of fault tolerance on tap as the chassis supports two RAID controllers along with dual combined fan and power supply units.

HP offers a range of controller options with base FC and iSCSI models coming with a single controller. A pair of standard controllers provides active-active failover, whilst the enhanced model such as the 2212fc on review has two controllers and a faster processor. Expansion options look good as the single SAS port on the RAID controllers supports up to three disk shelves enaqbling capacity to be boosted to a theoretical maximum of 36TB using SATA drives.

Instead of using a battery backup pack to protect the cache contents the RAID controllers use a combination of a 512MB CompactFlash card and capacitor. If there's a power failure the cache contents are written to the card and the main advantage here is the capacitor takes far less time to charge than a battery and can provide full protection much quicker. The two controllers are also joined with a high-speed, direct link. Data written to one controller is synchronously mirrored to the other with the aim of improving general performance by reducing internal system traffic between the controllers.

We kicked off with the iSCSI array and had no problems with basic installation as you simply point a web browser at the controller's dedicated management port. The tidy web interface opens with a basic status display for the array cabinet, virtual disks and controllers with options to drill down to individual components. The enclosure view shows which bays in the array and any attached expansion units have drives in and hovering the pointer over them reveals the drive type and model lurking inside.

We began by creating virtual disks, or vdisks, where you select physical drives, pick from a choice selection of RAID array types and assign hot-spares. Some on-line array expansion options are provided, as although you can't migrate from one RAID type to another it is possible to add more drives to existing arrays and expand into them although this doesn't include mirrors.

An automatic vdisk creation option is provided where you just answer a few simple questions but we opted for manual control where we could select the array type, the preferred controller and the number of volumes it should have. If you wish you can allow the controller to create equal sized volumes and then you name them and decide if they should be available to all hosts.

Before hosts can have access to volumes the iSCSI host ports on the controllers need to be configured. Here, you can provide an IP address for each one, add the location of any iSNS servers and activate CHAP authentication as well. You then need to map volumes to specific host data ports and you can hard set read and write access as well.

Snapshots for point-in-time volume copies are supported and these are stored in a snapshot pool on the appliance. An eight snapshot license costs around 369, whilst 64 will set you back 1,005. Full support for Microsoft's MPIO (multi-path I/O) comes as standard. This uses multiple hardware components to create redundant paths from hosts to storage volumes and HP includes its DSM (device specific module) as standard.

For testing we started with a Boston Supermicro dual 3GHz Xeon 5160 server running Microsoft's iSCSI initiator. IP SAN performance initially looks good as with one host attached to a volume created on a quad-drive stripe using SAS drives we saw the Iometer utility report a raw sequential read throughput of 113MB/sec pretty much tops for Gigabit Ethernet.

We then added a Dell PowerEdge 1950 equipped with dual quad-core 1.86GHz Xeons and logged this on to a separate volume through the second host port. With Iometer running on both systems we saw a cumulative throughput of only 151MB/sec showing clearly that there was some contention for resources even with the two hosts assigned to different ports and both RAID controllers installed.

Moving over the 2212fc we found nearly every procedure is exactly the same as for the iSCSI version. Vdisks define physical drives and RAID arrays, they contain multiple volumes and controls can be used to restrict host access using WWNs instead of IQNs all very simple indeed.

To test performance we introduced the 2212fc to the lab's 4Gbps FC SAN. Our two test servers were also equipped with LSI 4Gbps 7204 FC HBAs and we had no problems accessing the virtual volumes. Performance on one host was impressive with Iometer reporting a speedy 375MB/sec. We assigned a second volume to the Dell server and ran Iometer on both systems. This test returned a cumulative raw read speed of 515MB/sec showing clearly, as with the iSCSI appliance, that contention for resources was occurring.

HP clearly lay down the gauntlet to vendors such as NetApp and EMC who will find it nigh on impossible to compete on price with these new FC and IP SAN solutions. We have some concerns over performance under load but the 2000 series of appliances offer a good range of features, are particularly easy to install and manage and have plenty of expansion potential.

Verdict

HP’s latest network storage appliances are competitively priced making them an affordable option for SMBs looking for an FC or iSCSI solution with fault tolerance on tap. Installation is very streamlined and expansion potential looks good but although performance is reasonable our tests do show they won’t cope well with a heavy demand.

Model: 2012i MSA Chassis: 2U rack Disk bays: 12 hot-swap SAS or SATA (not included in price) Base Controller: 566MHz Celeron; 1GB cache memory, 512MB CompactFlash card, capacitor, LSI 1064 SAS controller, supports RAID0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10 and 50. Network: 2 x Gigabit data ports, 10/100 management port Other: Web browser management, Windows MPIO DSM bundled. Model: 2212fc MSA Chassis: 2U rack Disk bays: 12 hot-swap SAS or SATA (not included in price) Enhanced Controller: 700MHz Pentium; 1GB cache memory, 512MB CompactFlash card, capacitor, LSI 1064 SAS controller, supports RAID0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10 and 50. Network: 2 x 4Gbps FC SFP ports, 10/100 management port Other: Web browser management, Windows MPIO DSM bundled.