NAS (network attached storage) &
SAN (storage area network) Solutions

Enterprise Storage Management via a Web Browser console

The storage partition, is created and managed via a web browser based management console. The management console is a powerful program which allows you to administer the Direct Network Attached Storage system, and incorporates such functions, as allocating storage resources amongst users and setting up a security regime to restrict access based on group or user id. The management  console manages all the Direct Network Attached Storage units connected to your network. This is a very powerful way to manage the whole of your companies storage resources from one management console.

FIBRE CHANNEL SPEEDS

DNAS-FC (Direct Network Attached Storage Fibre Channel) is the latest addition to the Direct Network Attached Storage product family. It delivers all the existing functionality of the Direct Network Attached Storage systems, but with added benefit of breath taking speed. Fibre Channel technology supports a burst transfer speed of 100MB/sec. Depending on configuration typical fibre channel based Direct Network Attached Storage units reach sustained data transfer speeds of between 45MB/sec to 60MB/sec. Because of their remarkable speed DNAS-FC units are a natural choice for IO intensive applications such as SERVER storage, Video editing systems and publishing systems.

RAID 5 Data Protection

All Direct Network Attached Storage units feature RAID 5 data protection. In addition a hot online spare drive is provided. The system constantly monitors the status of all drives, if it detects a drive failure, the hot online spare is automatically activated and takes the place of the spare drive. When the faulty drive is replaced the new drive then becomes the online spare.

REDUNDANT ELEMENTS TO ENHANCE FAULT TOLERANCE

Direct Network Attached Storage units feature a number of redundant elements to enhance the operational fault tolerance of the units. These elements include redundant hot swap power supplies, and online spare hard drives.

INFINITE SCALABILITY

Unlike traditional RAID systems with their limitations as to cabling and the number of PCI slots e.t.c. Direct Network Attached Storage, units can be scaled infinitely, you can start out with 120GB unit and scale to 8000GB configuration. There is also no limitation as to partition size, you can have a single partition as large as 16,000GB. The only limitation is whether your operating system can handle such large partitions.

PERFORMANCE

The systems are designed from the ground up, to optimize I/O processing. Unlike traditional servers which are designed as general purpose computers, and are typically running a large operating system which has to share the workload among competing tasks, Direct Network Attached Storage units only do one thing: move data off the disks as past as possible. Direct Network Attached Storage units come equipped with multiple channels for I/O processing. The installation of a Direct Network Attached Storage system on a network usually leads to improvement in general network performance as they offload a lot of typical server processing. Direct Network Attached Storage units allow servers to concentrate on running applications such database, messaging, rather than managing file I/O. The network performance of Direct Network Attached Storage units can be further enhanced via the addition of extra network ports on the Direct Network Attached Storage units. The standard ethernet based Direct Network Attached Storage unit can have the number of network ports (NICs) increased from 1 to 16, a GIGABIT and ATM option is also available. With the Fibre Channel Direct Network Attached Storage the transfer rate is so fast that the bottle neck in never going to be located at DNAS-FC unit, but if required the DNAS-FC can also be upgraded to 8 fibre channel ports, giving a theoretical bandwidth of 800MB/sec.

Direct Network Attached Storage

DNAS (Direct Network Attached Storage) is a new type storage technology designed for the dynamic networking environments of the coming millennium.

PLUG and PLAY Storage.

All Direct Network Attached Storage systems come equipped with a direct connection module, which allows them to connect to your existing network, by just plugging them into your network hub. All Direct Network Attached Storage units come pre-formatted and RAID 5 configured, thus installation is very simple in fact a typical Direct Network Attached Storage unit can be set up and running in less than 15 minutes. There is no need for client licenses or servers.

Universal Accessibility

Virtually any type of client can connect to a Direct Network Attached Storage unit, including PC, MAC, SUN, HP IBM, AS400, in fact, any computer you can connect to your network can access a Direct Network Attached Storage partition. A Direct Network Attached Storage storage partition is the area on the the Direct Network Attached Storage unit which is reserved for user data.