Sun Enhances Midrange StorEdge Array

One new feature of its SunStorEdge 6920 system offers block-level replication for disaster-recovery purposes through IP-based remote replication.

PHOENIX—Sun Microsystems on Tuesday rolled out a number of enhancements and data management software features within its midrange SunStorEdge 6920 system that are designed to foster storage-area-network consolidation and to integrate existing multivendor storage assets to ease storage management.

Unveiled at Storage Networking World here, the revamped StorEdge 6920 storage array lets customers deploy a tiered storage architecture and migrate policy-based data to different storage classes throughout its life cycle when coupled with Sun StorEdge SAM-FS software, said Chris Wood, vice president of storage and data management at Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems Inc.

New features within the Sun 6920, available by the end of June, include the Sun StorEdge Data Replicator, which offers customers block-level replication for disaster-recovery purposes through IP-based remote replication.

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Running in both synchronous and asynchronous modes, StorEdge Data Replicator allows customers to use any open blade slots in a controller to provide Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel connectivity to directly feed a WAN (wide area network) for replication without using external storage boxes.

Pushing its ability to build full copies of application data volumes, Sun StorEdge Data Mirror provides full, block-by-block replication to any storage array physically connected to the Sun 6920 box.

Meanwhile, Sun StorEdge Data Snapshot has undergone a major revision. The software eases data migration and provides a "scorecard," allowing storage administrators to manage and synchronize any changes following the most recent snapshot without having to recopy data, Wood said.

The Sun StorEdge Pool Manager software manages the physical devices attached to the Sun StorEdge 6920 and provisions them out to various hosts. The product has been enhanced to support a variety of storage vendor offerings, including Hewlett-Packard Co.s Enterprise Virtual Array storage systems, EMC Corp.s Clariion family of CX 400 and CX 700 models, all of Suns 9000 products OEMed from Hitachi Data Systems, and every other storage array sold by Sun.

Click here to read about Sun Microsystems pushing the data-archiving envelope with Honeycomb.

Later this year, Wood said the 6920 will support remote replication as a full iSCSI controller. This will let customers bridge existing Sun storage assets without forklift upgrades with emerging storage connectivity technologies, such as iSCSI and 4-gigabit Fiber Channel, that loom on the horizon.

Sun is working on additional data services that will touch upon areas including dynamic performance management, by picking up activity on physical disks to promote load balancing. It also is working on driving high-end functionality capabilities deeper into the enterprise arena.

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