It’s not every day that IBM partners with an industry newcomer in order to enter into a new market, but that’s what it’s done with storage developer Scale Computing.
In order to compete directly with Dell EqualLogic, IBM has partnered with Scale to offer an end-to-end storage solution for the midmarket. Avnet Technology Solutions, one of IBM’s global distribution partners, will assist in both the development and distribution of the storage appliance.
Dubbed the iSN 1000, the product integrates Scale Computing’s intelligent clustered storage (ICS) technology onto the IBM System X server platform. It’s the first in a series of planned clustered storage products that will target SMB customers.
Enterprise Strategy Group storage analyst Terri McClure says the market will benefit from the newly sparked clustered storage competition in the SMB space. “The true winners,” she adds, “will be IBM’s loyal SMB customers who have wanted an advanced, yet competitively priced storage solution.”
To read more about commodity-based clustered storage, download a PDF on the topic.
Rolling Out the iSN100
Scale’s ICS technology uses the IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) as its core file system. GPFS is a symmetrical, parallel file system. ICS taps into its features and adds additional functionality, including the ability to run CIFS, NFS, and iSCSI protocols simultaneously. This creates a unified SAN/NAS environment.
The iSN1000 is a one usable terabyte (TB) storage node. Customers must make an initial purchase of three iSN 1000s to create a three usable TB cluster, called the StarterSAN. Scale’s MSRP for the three usable TB starter SAN is $18,300.
While many other leading storage vendors use a The iSN 1000 with ICS technology is a clustered storage system that can scale per TB to more than 2.2 PBs on a single file system. That means it doesn’t have to use a monolithic architecture that requires control units with limited scalability and single points of failure.
Features of the iSN 1000 with ICS include:
- Future Proofing–Because ICS is a clustered system, the 1TB iSN 1000 will work in the same cluster with 2 TB, 4 TB and even 32 TB iSNs.
- Snapshot and Replication–The iSN 1000 with ICS includes these features at no additional cost above the MSRP.
- Data Aware Drives–The iSN 1000 with ICS is symmetrical, with drives that are “data aware” as information is mirrored and striped across the entire cluster.
- Linear, Low-Cost Scaling–The iSN 1000 with ICS is designed to scale linearly, to more than 2.2 PBs, one usable TB at a time.
- No Service Disruptions–To grow capacity, IT managers add extra iSNs to the cluster without disrupting services. ICS technology quickly identifies the node and, adds its capacity to the existing cluster. Then it begins mirroring and striping data to the new node.
