HP StorageWorks Enterprise File Services Clustered Gateway - Overview & Features

Overview

The EFS Clustered Gateway uses a shared data architecture. This enables EFS Clustered Gateway servers to be configured into a cluster of up to 16 servers. This clustering capability allows you to scale your file serving performance in a near linear fashion to over 3 GB/s. EFS Clustered Gateway provides continuously available storage that can also be scaled as application needs dictate without loss of performance. The shared data architecture of the EFS Clustered Gateway maximizes file server consolidation opportunities.

EFS Clustered Gateway supports industry standard servers and software. Servers supported include the HP ProLiant and HP ProLiant BladeSystems. Supported software includes Windows and Linux operating systems. This capability enables you to purchase only the file serving capability you require and add nodes as you need them – without a forklift upgrade. You can also utilize familiar tools and processes to manage and maintain the EFS Clustered Gateway solution.

EFS Clustered Gateway provides unified storage management. It can create an integrated block- and file-level storage solution out of any SAN, consolidating individual silos of storage into to a single, shared pool of storage that simplifies storage allocation, yields high utilization and reduces IT costs as compared to traditionally architected storage solutions.

High availability for mission critical applications are ideal for EFS Clustered Gateway because its share data architecture ensures that there is no single point of failure - every server in the cluster sees the same view of the data.

What's new

• Support for HP PolyServe Database Utility software: The HP StorageWorks PolyServe Database Utility for SQL Server enables multiple SQL Server instances to be consolidated onto a smaller number of servers and those instances can be dynamically re-hosted between servers when workload or conditions change. The Database Utility also provides utility-wide high availability and streamlines software updates and the migration to newer versions of SQL Server.
• Simplifies Enterprise Management: Includes an HP Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 for alerting via SNMP traps.
• Enhances Enterprise Security: Enables three main areas of control and security. It enables 'Role Based Administration and Security" with integration to Active Directory groups - a key requirement to enable multi-department coordination and responsibility sharing. It provides single sign-on Active Directory based authentication that simplifies login and authentication. Thirdly, it supports Auditing as it records to the Windows Event Log any human initiated changes and logon attempts included failed/succeeded logons.
• Expedites Disaster Recoverability: Helps to complete a DR strategy by supporting off-site or cross-campus failover and auto-volume reconstruction as the product can re-assemble all component volumes and enable the second site to recover quickly.
• Run truly centralized backups: Enables a single node backup solution so that all backups can be run from a single server taking advantage of the shared data architecture. This would allow customers to use only one copy of backup software (covering up to 16 servers) as opposed to every server.

Features & Benefits

• Scalable File Serving Performance from 1 to 16 servers: Purchase the right amount of file serving throughput and performance you need today with the ability to easily add performance and throughput in the future without a "forklift" upgrade.
• Continuously available storage can scale as application needs dictate without loss of performance: Quickly adapt your storage capacity to changing business requirements without fear of disruption to current operations.
• Shared data architecture maximizes file server consolidation opportunities: Consolidate file servers to provide IT departments a way to both drastically reduce the cost of operations and provide more efficient management of the incredible storage growth everyone is facing.
• Supports industry standard servers and software: HP ProLiant DL server is the world’s best selling server with enterprise class uptime and management features. Both Linux and Windows are supported.
• Creates an integrated block- and file-level storage solution out of any SAN: Increases the ROI on your exiting SAN investment.
• Single, shared pool of storage: Simplifies storage allocation, yields high utilization and lowers TCO.
• Storage Virtualization across heterogeneous arrays for easy online capacity growth: Provides configurable striping to meet workload and performance demands. Online volume growth and aggregation across multiple arrays allows full use of storage infrastructure.
• High Availability for Mission Critical Applications: Cache coherency and data integrity is maintained in the event of a single or multiple file server failure. Clients are failed over transparently and uniformly distributed across the cluster to ensure optimal load balancing and uninterrupted file serving for critical applications.
• No single point of failure, because every node in the cluster sees the same view of the data: With a shared data architecture, every file server in the cluster has the same data view. This ensures that cluster integrity. Failover from file server to another happens quickly and the client is unaware a failure has occurred as file serving has failed-over to all remaining filers. There is no single point of failure.
• Operationally efficient manageability, with support for all major management software: Manage a single cluster rather than individual servers. The cluster can be monitored from any node or from any system running Windows or Linux. In addition to cluster management, storage management and fabric management can also be done from the cluster console.