Virtualise Your Storage for Scalability
Storage directly attached to servers severely reduces flexibility, producing islands of information with an inability to share data or unused resources with other servers. Storage Area Networks (SAN) attempt to address this problem allowing an array of hard disks to be divided into logical units for sharing amongst servers. Traditional fibre channel SANs have been very expensive and only available to larger enterprises. help4IT can assist in bringing affordable iSCSI SANs to smaller businesses with two or more servers.
iSCSI is an emerging protocol that takes advantage of the practical availability of low cost IP networks through low cost gigabit switches and the ever decreasing cost of Internet connectivity. iSCSI first became popular as a means for storing data backed up from primary storage, challenging the dominance of tape and now is increasingly used for primary storage itself. iSCSI uses standard IP networking as is therefore affordable for smaller businesses.
help4IT can design a SAN which will provide connectivity between servers and shared storage, greatly simplifying data management and assuring much higher asset utilisation. help4IT will use iSCSI solutions from leading vendors making use of proven SCSI disk controller technology over standard IP networks. The advantages of using standard IP connectivity down to the disk-level are dramatic, producing supreme scalability. IP is a standard protocol and therefore you are not locked into expensive proprietary products from inflexible vendors. With IP and iSCSI addresses are dynamic; equipment can be moved or reconfigured to your changing requirements without major effort.
IP enabled storage brings superior manageability, most of our customers are familiar with IP and therefore a storage network that scales well and takes advantage of the same networking topologies that you are used to, brings considerable advantage in ease of learning, monitoring and control.
IP SAN is available now for smaller businesses. Operating System vendors such as Microsoft, Sun, HP and Linux are already IP SAN enabled, shipping iSCSI support out of the box for free. help4IT can help you build a true IP network that delivers storage services to more servers than was previously possible, in the most scalable and cost effective manner. The cost savings, not only in upfront costs but total cost of ownership is significant, help4IT can give you the confidence to make the move.
Why not give help4IT a call for some friendly informal advice.
Please do not hesitate to contact us on 0800 043 4448 or take a moment to complete our email contact form for a prompt and friendly response.
