iSCSI universal storage appliance

November 27, 2008: Serverless backups to hard drive and tape are being offered in a new NAS/iSCSI solution from Datastor that utilises virtualisation technology.

Described as a Universal Data Storage Appliance, it is based on a Tandberg Data Viking FS-1610 NAS, powered by Microsoft iSCSI Target on Windows Unified Data Storage Server (UDSSD)

Use of a new Alacritech iSCSI/IP card provides throughput speeds up to 200Mbps. The solution can provide storage to virtualised storage devices or application servers via VMware ESX. If a server needs additional storage, this can be provisioned using iSCSI. The solution also allows snapshots with iSCSI, centralised serverless backups, or backup up to a preferred medium.

The distributed Alacritech accelerator card speeds up processing by up to 30-40 percent with TOE technology (TCP Offload Engine) accelerating IP and iSCSI. The Tandberg Viking SAN has RAID 6 capability and can be managed either through a web browser or remotely. 

Datastor runs applications on the Tandberg Viking, allowing it to backup physical and virtual hosts. Providing storage to VMware ESX servers via iSCSI, allowing a user to plug into any environment. The setup can provide image-level hot backups of virtual or physical machines, while those machines are running. They can move disk to tape for offsite backup, or offer total protection either on or offsite. It is available for under $A10,000.

www.datastor.com.au