Compellent Technologies is abandoning a partnership
withnetwork attached storage(Nas)gateway maker OnStor
Inc. to pursue a new approach to Nas access to its StorageCenter
San, a more tightly integrated instance of Microsoft Storage Server
2003 R2, which will be sold under the Compellent brand.According to Bob Fine, senior product marketing manager for
Compellent, the OnStor/Compellent combination had gotten some
resistance from users because it involved multiple vendors. "There
was some pushback," Fine said. "There wasn't a lot of uptake for a
solution from two separate vendors."
The company still believes the vast majority of its customers will
be sticking with the block interface anyway, estimating only 15% to
20% of its install base will be using the new Nas feature, which
boots an instance of R2 off the storage area network (San), though
it also still requires a separate physical server to be attached to
the San chassis. San and Nas data must also be managed using two
separate interfaces.
Fine admitted that the integration could've been tighter, i.e.,
the StorageCenter San could be made into a true
Fibre Channel-iSCSI-Nas
multiprotocol system in a single chassis,
but for now it would have required significant additions to the
Compellent processing hardware. The company isn't opposed to
making those improvements, he said, but wants to gauge interest
in file access to its product before it overhauls the whole
system.
Ironically, however, the remaining separation between the Nas
gateway and San is still off-putting for some users. "Having
another server to manage just adds complexity to the system," said
a systems engineer for a large entertainment company in the western
part of the U.S., who asked not to be named due to his company's
legal policies. "If I'm going to manage a separate system anyway,
I'll just use NetApp if I want to do Nas."
However, others were more open to the idea. According to Perry
Mulcrone, deputy chief information officer for Scott County, Minn.,
his organization has been cobbling together file access to the
Compellent San using guest VMware hosts for the last two years.
Some systems, such as a 911 recording system, will not support
being attached to the San without a physical Nas device to write
to, he said.
"Having this kind of access to the Compellent San could help us
consolidate some more servers," he said, adding that some business
units still "spooked by VMware" could find a Nas gateway easier to
embrace.
Some AS400 servers also still standing alone in his environment
could benefit from the Nas gateway also, Mulcrone said. The AS400
servers can't attach to a volume via VMware but could attach via a
full Nas device.
"Right now we're storing data from the AS400 servers on an
optical tower, which is expensive, and we're looking to replace,"
he said. "With the Nas gateway we could write that data to WORM
volumes on the San and also have it replicated to our DR site with
the software on the Compellent system."
Meanwhile, for users who still want further integration, some
industry sources also said Compellent has promised processor
upgrades to its San as part of its roadmap for early next year that
could make the separate Nas server unnecessary. And users had a few
roadmap ideas of their own for Compellent.
"I'd like to see them add data deduplication and encryption,"
said Scott Rodenhuis, chief technology officer for Integrated
Systems Corp. "Decru is how we're solving one of those problems
right now, but at the next technology cycle, it would be nice to
have that all in one box."