Channel Strategies for the CIOStorage channel news roundup for July 14 to July 20, 2011
Nasuni Filer adds SLA, hardware option for NAS cloud gateway
Startup Nasuni
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Corp. this week launched
a hardware appliance along with a service-level agreement (SLA) that guarantees close to 100% uptime for its Nasuni Filer NAS cloud gateway. The startup is banking on these enhancements to prod
organizations to give its cloud-enabling devices a try for primary storage.
Nasuni came out of stealth last year with a virtual appliance -- software that installs on a virtual machine and provides customers with a primary NAS filer. Customers can store data locally and send it off to a public cloud service provider for redundancy and archiving.
Nasuni CEO Andres Rodriguez said the startup has approximately 100 customers, but the market hasn't been strong yet for cloud gateways. Nasuni service provider partner Iron Mountain discontinued its service and SAN cloud gateway startup Cirtas Systems Inc. pulled its product off the market earlier this year.
Check out this tip on cloud gateways for primary storage.
IBM unveils next-gen XIV
While EMC formally launched its VMAXe enterprise storage system to compete with IBM’s XIV (as well as Hewlett-Packard’s 3PAR) last week, IBM was giving XIV an overhaul.
IBM launched what it calls XIV Gen 3 with InfiniBand connectivity between modules, 2.4 Ghz quad core Nehalem CPUs, 2 TB native SAS disk, and 8 Gbps Fibre Channel support. By next year, IBM also expects to offer up to 500 GB of solid-state drive (SSD) capacity per module for a total of 7.5 TB in a fully configured 15-module configuration. According to senior management consultant for IBM system storage Tony Pearson’s Inside System Storage blog, XIV will use SSDs as DRAM cache similarly to NetApp’s Performance Accelerator Modules (PAM) – a product IBM resells as its N Series.
Read the full story on IBM’s XIV Gen 3 and check out this survey on enterprise storage arrays.
Nimble adds storage system, grabs $25M in funding
Nimble Storage last week added a smaller model of its combination primary storage/backup platform and $25 million in fresh funding.
Nimble launched the CS210, a year after it came out of stealth with CS220 and CS240 systems that combine iSCSI, integrated inline compression and replication to optimize and protect data, and flash to accelerate performance. The startup also said Artis Capital Management has led its fourth funding round, bringing its total funding to $58 million.
Read the full story on Nimble’s launch of CS210.
Using BCP standards pays off for many organizations
When Steve Burcham joined Digium Inc. in 2008, he was charged with getting the company ISO-certified and developing a business continuity plan. Although deciding which business continuity planning (BCP) standard to use can be a difficult decision, the benefits are worth the upfront homework, some organizations report.
Those plans were put into place in April when deadly tornadoes ripped through northern Alabama, including Digium's Huntsville headquarters, resulting in a five-day power outage. "At 4:00 or 5:00 p.m., the power went out, and the backup generator came on like it was supposed to," recalled Burcham, vice president of operations for the company that provides turnkey business phone systems, IP PBX phone systems, VoIP phone systems and Asterisk telephony software. "We run a 24/7 call center out of our headquarters building, and we had a normal handoff between the day and night shifts—despite the power being off."
Learn about selling business continuity services to SMBs in this tip.
Texas college looks to EMC VMAXe for private cloud storage
“Stumbling” into the cloud prompted the IT team at Lone Star College System to overhaul its SAN to keep up with unexpectedly large increases in capacity and processing requirements. The Houston-based college will upgrade to the new EMC VMAXe enterprise system with solid-state drives (SSDs) and FAST VP automated tiering software for private cloud storage.
The community college has 90,000 students in 16 locations across 1,400 square miles. Three years ago, its CIO office set out to implement a more efficient infrastructure to better support the schools’ business processes, said Link Alander, associate vice chancellor of technology services at Lone Star College System. After a massive VMware server virtualization push, Lone Star soon found itself with a private cloud.
“We stumbled into the cloud,” Alander said. “Our goal really wasn't a private cloud. I was anti-cloud hype. I thought it was B.S. I came from a mainframe base. I looked at it as another client/server mode.
Check out this handbook on private cloud storage software and hardware.
Additional storage news
Check out last week’s storage channel news roundup.
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