Comprehensive virtualization framework in a single unified solution
BlueArc's Titan and Mercury Storage Servers are the most powerful unified network storage systems in the industry today. In addition to their industry leading performance and scalability, they offer the most comprehensive virtualization framework available with many advanced features integrated into the high performance platforms. The result is a network storage infrastructure that is fast, easily expandable, and can meet a diverse range of business and application needs all with a single unified solution.BlueArc's integrated virtualization framework takes a layered approach with different types of intelligence at each level. It is comprised of the following components:
- Virtual Servers
- Virtual file systems with a Global Namespace
- Virtual Storage Pools with Parallel RAID Striping
Virtual Servers
The Virtual Servers enable each physical server to be partitioned into up to eight logical servers. Each Virtual Server can have a different IP address and different data management policies. Once defined, the Virtual Servers can be moved around the infrastructure at will. Virtual Servers are a popular feature and many administrators use them to represent different user groups, applications, or projects. They then provide enormous flexibility to move them around within the infrastructure to manage performance, capacity, or planned downtime.Virtual File System
The Virtual File System provides a global name space to the Titan or Mercury infrastructure, and flexibility in clustered and non-clustered environments. The Cluster Namespace creates a unified directory structure with logical user-friendly naming conventions and enables global access to data through any node in the cluster. The Virtual File System also provides great flexibility with assignments for file systems to Virtual Servers and to physical servers. As usage requirements grow or change, file systems can be dynamically re-assigned to different Virtual Servers or to different physical servers within the infrastructure.Virtual Storage Volumes
The Virtual Volumes provide flexibility and efficiency for provisioning storage. They can be oversubscribed for thin provisioning and expand and/or contract as needed based on usage policies or quotas. Thresholds and alerts can be set up to notify administrators when to add more physical storage.Virtual Storage Pools
The Virtual Storage Pools provide efficient capacity utilization and optimal performance for the file systems in both clustered and non-clustered environments. Each file system can pull from a common logical pool of tiered Fibre Channel or SATA storage so that disk capacity is never wasted. In addition, the data is striped across all of the spindles for better availability, performance, and utilization. As a result, administrators have complete flexibility in selecting the amount of storage, storage type, spindle speed, and cost for all of their different application and storage needs.Thus, the BlueArc Virtualization Framework is a comprehensive layering of intelligence at the storage server, file system, volume, and storage levels. It provides a single Global Namespace with a unified directory structure of up to 4 petabytes of tiered Fibre Channel or SATA storage. Each Titan or Mercury server can be partitioned into one or more Virtual Servers. Each Virtual Server can have one or more file systems. Each file system can have one or more Virtual Volumes. All file systems pull from a logical pool of storage that is striped across the physical disk arrays.
One big advantage is the virtualization functionality is built into the server platform. It runs without performance degradation and is easier to deploy because is not spread out all over the data center and managed from different applications.
BlueArc's Titan and Mercury Series servers are the most powerful unified network storage systems available today. They lead the industry in performance, scalability, and ease of use. Now, they offer the most advanced and comprehensive virtualization capabilities to support the most demanding applications.
