Network Appliance has dolled up its Data Ontap
operating system with new virtualization capabilities that pool
storage devices and prepare changes to storage demand on the fly.
Data Ontap 7G, which runs on the vendor’s file
systems,
features FlexVol, a software feature that helps provision storage for
applications. FlexVol creates virtualized data containers that
eliminate
performance and utilization bottlenecks.
NetApp Vice President of Product Marketing, Suresh Vasudevan, said
FlexVol
changes the dynamic of storage volumes, making it so the volumes don’t
have
to be tied to physical or logical disks.
FlexVol sets up storage volumes of any size, from gigabytes to
terabytes
with
one command, a unique feature in the storage space.
With such a feature, storage administrators no longer have to figure
out how
to carve up terabytes of data for distribution. FlexVol does this
automatically, saving businesses time. FlexVol manages data via
point-in-time data imaging and replication for each application. Free
as
part of Data Ontap 7G, FlexVol also enables a utility storage model
based on
capacity.
Vasudevan said no NetApp rival, including EMC , IBM
, HP
or HDS
, or smaller vendors like Candera, offers such a
storage-centric virtualization tool that functions like FlexVol. It’s
also
much faster than current virtualization products, he claimed.
“The current approach to provisioning storage requires several hours to
create a volume and make it available to an application or an end
user,”
Vasudevan told internetnews.com. “No mainstream storage vendor
has
anything close to FlexVol in terms of simply provisioning storage and
being
able to shrink volumes in one command.”
Virtualization technologies have been all the rage in storage, as
vendors
have been looking for unique ways to help clients aggregate, manage and
move
data with greater efficiency. IBM makes San Volume Controller and San
File
System for virtualization, while HDS makes the TagmaStore Universal
Storage
Platform. EMC has planned a Storage Router for 2005.
Analysts acknowledge a multi-billion-dollar opportunity for vendors who
make
storage management software.
To complement FlexVol, NetApp has also created a new data cloning
technology
that competes with EMC’s TimeFinder software. Called FlexClone,
Vasudevan
said this replication technology promises the creation of multiple
images of
FlexVol data sets with no storage overhead. It goes beyond traditional
snapshots — read only data — but being read or write.
Vasudevan said cloned data can be tested without affecting the initial
data
set, preserving data integrity. Competitive approaches for copying
data,
such as TimeFinder, copy the entire volume and take hours instead of
minutes. FlexClone is a separately licensed product and starts at
around
$6,000.
In related news, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based NetApp said its gFiler storage gateway, which bundles
DAS
pool,
now supports the
family
and the IBM TotalStorage DS4000 series.
GFiler had previously supported only NAS and iSCSI for HDS, Sun
StorEdge
9900 and IBM Enterprise Storage Server disk arrays. Now gFiler supports
Fibre Channel, NAS and iSCSI for these vendors’ products. EMC provides
gateways to its own storage.
Support for multiple vendors’ products will help storage vendors stand
out
to customers with heterogeneous infrastructure in their data centers.
By
supporting its rivals products, NetApp is showing its priority lies
with the
customer.
