Scalent and Emulex Partner up

October 28, 2008: Data centre management software provider Scalent Systems has teamed up with Emulex to deliver a new storage access virtualisation solution through the integration of the dynamic World Wide Name (WWN) configuration capabilities of Emulex’s LightPulse Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) with Scalent’s storage access virtualisation.

Scalent says that this implementation removes barriers to rapid server failover, and enables complex server deployments with storage allocation to be brought on-line in minutes.

Scalent allows data centre operators to rapidly change entire systems and associated topologies in real time, including which servers are running, what software is running on them, and how they're connected to networks and storage.

The company says that typically, SAN-based storage access is determined by a unique identifier (World Wide Name, WWN), which is hard coded to the hardware (HBA) installed in a physical server. This static binding leads to server administrators either physically opening servers and moving HBA cards to new machines in order move storage, or leveraging storage administration to reconfigure switches and storage arrays to recognise a new server.

“The virtualisation of storage access is critical to automating the retargeting of storage from one server to another,” says Kevin Epstein, vice president, Marketing, Scalent Systems. “Scalent can repurpose servers and move storage without reconfiguration of the SAN or physical redeployment of adapter cards.”

“This capability means that servers with SAN storage can now be brought on-line or fail-over in about 5 minutes,” added Epstein.

Comment on this story