File virtualization into the development of mature gradually, major manufacturers have have aimed at the business, have introduced their own file virtualization products, and strive to dominate the field. F5 Networks has file storage and management products to its extensions, add new software to store managers to better understanding of file usage patterns and trends, in addition to its ARX hardware product line will be expanded to increase support for 10Gb Ethernet.
F5 Networks and WAN optimization vendor acquired last year to 210,000,000 U.S. dollars as well as their storage hardware vendor Acopia's ARX platform on which to enter the storage market. Acopia ARX 6000 high-end switches can handle more than 2 billion files, configure up to 24 1Gb Ethernet ports. Present in the file virtualization market this product competes with the NuView and Brocade EMC's Rainfinity.
Yesterday launched ARX4000 switches are smaller, prices are relatively lower. It can handle about 2 billion documents, providing 12 1Gb Ethernet ports or two 10Gb Ethernet ports. F5 said that this was their first 10Gb Ethernet support system, from about 185,000 U.S. dollars. F5's small compared to entry-level ARX500 and mid-ARX1000 products, ARX4000 provides a higher storage capacity.
To help customers address their growing unstructured data, F5 introduced a clear understanding of storage can help users ease into the practice of the Data Manager software, this software can analyze usage patterns and trends, and then uses "smart paper virtualization "technology to automatically grade, to help simplify the backup process and storage capacity of the plan. This software is designed to help store managers know what types of data they have, how much storage capacity consumed, who is using the file storage space and save time.
F5 Renny Shen, product marketing manager, said: "There is a popular little joke between the storage manager: they love their first NAS device, but they do not like the 20th Taiwan NAS device. Data Manager software can be installed in a Taiwan Windows PC machine, monitoring the file storage system from different vendors, in a platform that show all the case, which storage managers can better formulate document management strategy. For those who manage SAN 或者 NAS of users, this is an economic The easy to use tool provides the capacity to predict and monitor the use of growth functions. "
Data Manager software is cheap about 1500 U.S. dollars, if the increase F5's File System Inventory Module module, then the price will increase to 10,000 dollars.
Market research firm, vice president of storage systems research Richard Villars in a statement that the growth of non-structured data storage system has a "huge impact", many IT executives are beginning to realize that "management of such file-based non-structural data will be stored in their data center managers a number of important tasks. " He believes, like F5 ARX4000 file virtualization products that can "provide a solution in the large heterogeneous file storage environment, effective management methods simultaneously, will minimize the impact the existing environment."
Just last week, ONStor Pantera integrated release of their gateways and storage systems, this is a use of the ONStor NAS Gateway and Nexsan SATABoy RAID overall solution. Pantera 3100 and 3110-HA file virtualization products are easy to install and manage, at a relatively low cost level providing enterprise-class high availability.
ONStor said, Pantera products for small, medium and enterprise-level working group can easily expand storage capacity to provide higher levels of performance. Each device, including RAID 5 and RAID 6 functionality, support for four virtual servers, snapshots, scalable file system and clustering capabilities. They also offer up to 8GB of memory capacity and four Fibre Channel ports, with 42TB of SATA drives connected.
ONstor worldwide sales, said Tom Gallivan, senior vice president: "We are in a two-node cluster provides 32 different IP addresses, which means users can file server into a virtual file server, so that each sector in this cluster still have their own independent IP address. It's like a group of dedicated file server. "
Specializing in virtualization and storage market analysis firm, said George Crump, founder of Storage Switzerland, when the enterprise to a virtual data center migration process, they need a rapid growth can save the file to exercise control and management approach, this also makes the file the growing importance of virtualization prominent. He said: "There are still many users need to understand the knowledge. File virtualization is the market has been one of the most important in mature process technology options, it has gradually become a migration of data between different levels of the best 工具."
The future we have to face an important question is whether it will file virtualization is a stand-alone product, or a more feature-rich products in a storage features. Crump said: "By ONStor to add in their NAS products, we have seen is the function of this product transition. The future as a standalone product that will have to be wait and see how to respond."