Shared Internal Storage
Shared Internal Storage is a ground breaking concept in the world of shared storage. Traditionally, shared storage – be it NAS or SAN – is made of an external array accessed by a network. NAS and SAN have both their benefits and their drawbacks. Each of them has their preferred use.
Seanodes offers a whole new way to share storage: SIS – Shared Internal Storage.
Introducing the Shared Internal Storage Concept
Shared Internal Storage allows users to share disks and arrays directly attached to, or embedded in servers as if they were part of an external array.You already know and appreciate the benefits of NAS, SAN and DAS. SIS takes the best elements of all three to give ultimate user satisfaction.
Shared Internal Storage: The Benefits
Unique on the market, Exanodes converts unused internal disks and Direct Attached Storage (DAS) into a shared storage array – Shared Internal Storage (SIS).
This Shared Internal Storage (SIS) is:
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Efficient due to a high level of parallelism.
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Reliable owing to the implementation of our unique RAIN feature (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Nodes) which adapts the RAID philosophy to nodes architecture.
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User Friendly as virtualization features incorporated in Exanodes allow the user to easily and efficiently manage a shared storage area (eg. resize, destruct, migrate a volume, etc.).
This SIS is viewed by applications as a traditional external shared array and can be either implemented alone or as a complement to traditional external storage (SAN or NAS) in order to alleviate their restrictions (performance, capacity, network bandwidth).
Storage investments can be drastically reduced as Shared Internal Storage allows users to utilize underused disks. This is especially true in cluster and blade server architecture where the unused internal disk capacity can amount to 20-30 TB.
Shared Internal Storage: Preferred use
Shared Internal Storage is perfectly adapted to commoditized architectures such as clusters or blade servers because of their potential internal disk capacity.
Considering their extensive use of commoditized servers and their growing need for vast storage capacity SIS is the ideal solution for High Performance Computing applications (HPC) and Hosted Services infrastructures. SIS is also the only solution that can equally satisfy their need for high performance storage (bandwidth and I/O).
Shared Internal Storage is equally advantageous in development & test environments where there is a huge need for simple, low level shared storage but where key decision makers are typically reluctant to invest in expensive, traditional, over-featured, shared storage solutions.
Exanodes: A first step into the world of Shared Internal Storage
Exanodes is the first application which allows you to efficiently share commoditized servers’ internal or directly attached storage
The standard dilemma has been where to find more storage capacity. Exanodes reveals that this storage space already exists and makes it easy for the user to access.