Transcript
Storage Systems Brief
NEC Introduces Modular D-Series
Flexible Alternative to Traditional Storage Systems
Date: May, 2007 Author: Heidi Biggar, Analyst Abstract: NEC continues to expand its branded storage business with the introduction of its D-Series storage systems. The D-Series is modular in nature, allowing users to scale capacity and performance independently and easily as demands dictate. Doing so eliminates many of today’s common pain points such as difficult and costly migrations and the need to add capacity when what’s really required is performance (and vice versa) and creates more efficiency in dealing with untamed power and cooling costs.
Getting the Word Out It may surprise you to find out that NEC has an install base of more than 1,000 storage systems in North America and Europe. The majority of these systems (video and medical imaging) were sold under OEM labels. But to date, NEC has been very low key in letting the market know who was selling and who was using their products. NEC has made it clear that its intent is not only to continue to build its market presence and brand awareness in North America specifically, but to also continue to innovate. The D-Series introduction builds on that momentum. This product announcement is in tune with the explosive growth of digital content and market demands for more scalable, management-free storage systems. NEC now needs to leverage its brand-awareness in PC circles and develop clear messages to generate user interest in its storage products in the U.S. Also, NEC will need to show it can execute by delivering products on time and with the announced functionality in addition to demonstrating that the products work as they are designed to. Bottom line: Users just want things to work. They want to use their applications and access their data, without being encumbered by technology. The more complexity that is introduced into an end-user environment, the greater the chance that IT will fail to meet the needs of the business and users. Out of the gate, NEC needs to show that its systems do what it says they do—while still doing it simply.
The D-Series Platform NEC’s D-Series is a highly-scalable modular platform, meaning that users can scale system performance and capacity independently as storage requirements dictate by adding controllers and capacity units (i.e., disk drives). This compares to traditional storage systems, which often make users choose capacity over performance or availability—or vice versa—and don’t allow users to easily scale systems as their data demands change. Consequently, users end up investing in systems that are too big for them and paying today’s diskdrives prices for disk that won’t be used for some time. Or, on the flip side, they wind up purchasing systems that don’t allow for a whole lot of growth and require forklift upgrades down the road. These users end up going through the time-consuming and costly process of migrating data between platforms. NEC offers five points of entry to the D-Series, starting with a 4-FC-port system configured with up to 72 SAS/SATA drives (the D1-10) and scaling to the D8-1040, which supports 64 Fibre Channel ports and up to 1,536 SAS/SATA drives when it is fully configured (see Figure One). Scaling from the low-end D1-10 and D310 platforms to the higher-end D8 models requires an off-line upgrade because a new adaptor must be installed. Upgrades in the D8 family are done on-line. All D-Series models are currently Fibre Channel-based, but iSCSI and NAS support are on the roadmap, providing even greater flexibility.
Copyright 2007 Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Enterprise Strategy Group
Page 2
Figure One: D-Series Platform
D8-1040 Large Enterprise
On-line Upgrade
Midrange Enterprise
D8-1020 FC 64 Port SAS/SATA 1,536 HDD
D8-1010
Small Enterprise D1-10
Off-line Upgrade
FC 32 Port SAS/SATA 768 HDD
D3-10
FC 16 Port SAS/SATA 384 HDD
FC 4-12 Port SAS/SATA 144HDD
FC 4 Port SAS/SATA 72 HDD
While the D-Series isn’t a “true” clustered storage system, it does provide some of the key benefits of one— notably extensive scalability and unified management. ESG refers to this as a management cluster, which provides ease of use and the centralized management of multiple physical controllers. The D-Series allows users to add performance elements, capacity and connectivity as needed and, importantly, allows users to manage these elements as a single system. Beyond this, the D-Series also has a number of differentiating features, including dual-redundant caches (2 pairs of independent write caches), triple mirror RAID, enhanced disk recovery, double-redundant power supplies and MAID technology.
Time for a Reality Check “The ultimate goal is to reach consumer levels of ease.” —System Administrator, Fortune 50 Company The truth is, leading systems are far from achieving this goal. By and large, the systems being sold are complex devices that were not originally designed to be easyto use or cost-effective. The interesting part is that while users, like the system administrator quoted above, say they want change, in all likelihood they are using dozens of the most complex traditional storage systems and have no plans to replace them anytime soon.
Copyright 2007 Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
Enterprise Strategy Group
Page 3
•
Dual-Redundant Cache Mirror: The D-Series uses two instances of redundant cache rather than the typical single instance. Doing so has a couple of key benefits: 1) it minimizes the operational impact in the event of a single cache failure because during such an event, writes are re-directed to the second instance instead of either disabling the remaining cache for protection or keeping it in an unsafe state for performance and 2) it optimizes performance in the event of a failure as writes are re-directed to the second cache instance. In a typical cache configuration, performance is significantly diminished with a single failure, which can then radically affect application performance.
•
Triple Mirror RAID: This technology is designed to address a key problem with RAID-1 and RAID-5 configurations: Both RAID-1 and RAID-5 can withstand a single disk-drive failure, but not against a second drive failing during the rebuild process. Triple Mirror RAID increases availability by providing three parity drives, not one. Additionally, NEC claims to be able to perform the rebuild process with just a 10% to 20% impact on I/O performance.
•
Enhanced Disk Recovery: In addition to decreasing the length of rebuilds and their impact on I/O performance, the D-Series actually features patented technology that proactively scans disk drives looking for bad sectors or other potential problems that could cause a drive to fail. These drives are taken out of disk groups and fixed before failures occur. Doing so potentially reduces the number of drive re-builds that need to be done, improves data integrity, and minimizes performance degradation caused by the re-build process.
•
Double-Redundant Power Supplies: The D-Series offers double-redundant power supplies for its midrange and higher-end D-Series systems. This provides optimum efficiency and availability in outage situations.
•
MAID Technology: The rising costs of power and cooling, as well as the drain they put on electricity resources, has quickly become one of this year’s most-talked about storage issues. MAID, or massive array of independent disk, technology is not unique to NEC (other vendors, such as COPAN, offer it), but the leading storage systems guys currently don’t. The idea is to save power consumption by spinning disks only when they are active (rather than spinning disks continually). NEC says it can cut power consumption costs by 30% or more using MAID. ESG Lab has not validated this claim. However, we do believe MAID technology can significantly lower power consumption levels.
The Bottom Line The long-term vision is for there to be one logical storage system that can meet all of your storage requirements—including your most demanding mission-critical applications and tiered storage environments. This type of next next-generation system is fluid and boundless, scaling to any size needed. This storage system liberates IT from worrying about bits and bytes, bandwidth and processing power and nuts and bolts so they can focus on being a strategic asset to the business. It provides consumer levels of ease of use while providing the highest levels of capability and reliability. But to get to this point, we—users and vendors alike—have to change our way of thinking and abandon onesize-fits-all attitudes. This is beginning to happen. Vendors are building highly virtualized storage systems that allow users to aggregate capacity and bandwidth for maximum efficiency, performance and bandwidth. NEC may be a relatively new player in this space, but it has a big name in other IT markets. Further, the company has a track-record of innovation and field-proven technology. This combination gives them a leg up on some competitors, especially start-ups.
All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. and is intended only for use by Subscribers or by persons who have purchased it directly from ESG. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of the Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at (508) 482-0188.
Copyright 2007 Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc.
