Engenio Unveils Key Technologies to Enable ILM

Engenio Unveils Key Technologies to Enable Information Life Cycle Management New hardware and software offerings deliver enhanced data protection and robust platform for ILM application development

Engenio Information Technologies, Inc., formerly LSI Logic Storage Systems, Inc., today announced new hardware and software technologies that enable its partners to deliver Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) solutions.

The new technologies include SANtricity Storage Manager software version 9.1 with enhanced Remote Volume Mirror, additional tools for managing copy services, and support for mixing high performance Fibre Channel drive modules and high capacity SATA drive modules in the same storage system. Hardware enhancements include the addition of Fibre Channel switching technology to drive modules and a single controller version of the low-cost 2822 controller.

The most significant feature in SANtricity Storage Manager software is the enhanced Remote Volume Mirror, which enables:

• Synchronous and asynchronous mirroring modes enabling administrators to choose the replication method that best meets their protection, distance or performance requirements;
• Suspend and resume mirroring with delta resynchronisation protecting against the potentially lengthy vulnerability associated with completely reestablishing the mirror;
• Write-order consistency group ensuring data integrity in multi-LUN applications by eliminating out-of-order updates at the remote site that can cause logical corruption;
• Dynamic mode switching without breaking or suspending the mirror enabling administrators to accommodate changing application and bandwidth requirements;
• Read-only mirror access (includes the ability to create a snapshot of the mirror volume) enabling the remote data to be utilised prior to a disaster without sacrificing protection of the primary site data;
• Up to 64 mirror-pairs (4884/5884) - 32 mirror-pairs (2882) - allowing more data to be protected from unplanned disruptions.

Collectively, these features build on the existing synchronous mirror, snapshot, and volume copy technologies to create a higher return on users storage investments by providing administrators with new flexibility to better utilise and protect both local and remote data.

The addition of asynchronous mirroring mode enables the distance between primary and remote sites to be effectively extended to thousands of miles, providing additional protection against regional outages or disasters that disrupt business. Additionally, by reducing the impact of latency, asynchronous mirroring is able to provide a significant application performance improvement over the synchronous mode.

"Enterprises of all sizes are raising their business continuity standards, and robust data replication is a key element," said Rhoda Phillips, Research Manager, Storage Software at IDC. "Solutions such as Engenio's Remote Volume Mirror that provide data replication for a complete family of storage systems are important components that will enhance companies' disaster recovery capabilities and improve their application availability."

SANtricity Storage Manager software version 9.1 has the ability to mix drive enclosure types - Fibre Channel (FC) and serial ATA (SATA) - behind a single controller pair enabling customers to lower their total cost of ownership.

Applications are typically considered either performance-oriented, requiring the fastest response times, or capacity-oriented, needing to cost-effectively store large amounts of information online. With SANtricity Storage Manager software, performance-oriented applications, such as databases and OLTP, can reside on high-speed FC drives. Capacity-oriented applications such as static reference data or disk-to-disk backup, can reside on low-cost-per-gigabyte SATA drives all within a single Engenio storage system. This functionality creates an ideal foundation for OEM partners to deliver ILM solutions with a single storage system.

Available in conjunction with SANtricity Storage Manager software is a new 2 Gb/s FC switched drive module which enables quick and more accurate diagnosis of drive and interconnection problems. New switching technology offers enhanced reliability, availbility and serviceability benefits, equivalent to switched fabric-based Storage Area Networks.

"With data growing and the increasing threats to data availability, SANtricity Storage Manager software and the related hardware announcements offer powerful tools for global organisations that rely on mission-critical applications to successfully maintain their competitive advantage," said Steve Gardner, Engenio Director of Product Marketing. "These announcements highlight Engenios continued commitment to providing our partners with the technologies required to improve business value, implement ILM solutions, and increase performance, while reducing overall IT costs."