What is the business focus for NSS?

NSS is focused on a strategy that delivers storage as a utility service to the enterprise. To do this, we will provide enterprise and corporate customers with the industry's strongest portfolio of open, modern, and modular enterprise and network storage solutions including storage management software, virtualization technologies, network storage (including online and near line storage), NAS/SAN fusion, and comprehensive solutions. All of this is enhanced by a tremendous services organization.

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What new technologies will support the storage utility vision?

The key new technologies that will support delivery of storage as a utility include: 
· New storage management/utility technologies 
o Storage provisioning 
o Automated storage management 
o Lifecycle data management 
· Storage virtualization 
· NAS/SAN fusion into a single Universal Network Storage Architecture 

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What are your key storage technology investments?

Key investments include: 
· Storage management software including storage provisioning, automated storage    management, and lifecycle data management. 
· Virtualization technologies that will remove complexity, thus increasing the efficiency, flexibility, and functionality of storage. 
· Network storage that includes NAS and SAN fusion, expanded storage networking protocols, and continued investment in next generation arrays. 
· Solutions-integrating hardware, software, business applications, and services, that solve specific customer problems such as SAP high-availability. 

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What is a SAN? 

Storage Area Network (SAN) is an optical storage area networking architecture that enables more efficient use of storage capacity by decoupling server and storage connectivity with a dedicated storage network. Much like a Local Area Network (LAN), a SAN enables greater scalability and reliability for computer storage resources, making it less expensive to implement and easier to manage. Traditional storage subsystems attach directly to the back-end of servers, called Direct Attached Storage (DAS). In a SAN, a dedicated storage network is inserted between servers and various storage subsystems.

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What are the benefits of a SAN? 

· Decreased cost of management as storage subsystems become centrally located and easier to manage. 
· Redundancies are created -- if a server fails in a SAN architecture, the disk array associated with that failed server can still be accessed from another server. SANs do this without increasing LAN traffic. 
· Handles data on a block basis. 
· Back up or restorations (disk-to-tape, tape-to-disk or disk-to-disk) can be done without the involvement of servers and at higher speeds. SANs can achieve this without increasing LAN traffic. 
· File sharing can occur between servers due to any-to-any connectivity. SANs scale very efficiently as a result of being able to share storage. 
· Excess capacity can be allocated where needed in a SAN, instead of only being available to the server it is attached with, as is the case in a traditional DAS architecture. In a traditional architecture, excess capacity often goes unused

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What is Network-Attached Storage (NAS)?

NAS is a disk array storage system that is attached directly to a network rather than to the network-server (i.e host-attached); functions as a server in a client/server relationship; has a processor and processes protocols such as SMB and NFS. 
Sunrise Computer Maintenance Ltd offer a complete range of Network-Attached Storage solutions.

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What is NAS/SAN fusion?

NAS/SAN fusion is the ability to connect NAS "heads" to a SAN in order to provide file services to clients. Application servers can also hook into the SAN to provide block services "naturally." This architecture combines the best of both technologies. NAS now scales to the limits of the SAN, and portions of the SAN storage now become accessible to the company's broader TCP/IP based network. No more storage islands. This all drives down costs by having one centrally managed storage pool that provides application servers and end users access to storage. 

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What is driving the need for networked storage? 

Over the past few years, data creation has experienced unprecedented growth, driven primarily by the Internet, enterprise eBusiness applications such as CRM, SCM, ERP, and increasing penetration of personal computers and networked devices. The need to manage this information explosion more effectively has spurred increasing acceptance of networked storage.

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Why is optically networked storage needed? 

Enterprises are seeking to manage the information explosion and improve operations by interconnecting networked storage across multiple locations in a metropolitan area. To support movement of massive amounts of data between multiple locations, high-capacity connections across distance enabled by Nortel Networks DWDM technology (OPTera Metro 5200) will be crucial.

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Why is optical storage area networking important?

 The demand for storage is growing exponentially. It is becoming more difficult for IT personnel to manage the growing number of storage devices. Until recently, businesses transported data exclusively within Local Area Networks (LANs). Increasingly, storage traffic and protocols are entering public Wide Area Networks (WANs). Today, the need is to move the data over Metro Area Networks (MANs) and WANs. The emerging optical infrastructure has solved the problem of inefficient transport of information across distance

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How long does the optically networked storage solution take to implement? 

The implementation time will vary depending on project scope and complexity

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What is Redundancy?

If the system, in this case a storage system, is capable of continuing to function after a component has failed, then that component is considered to be a 'redundant' component. 
Sunrise Computer Maintenance Ltd enclosures are supplied with a minimum of dual or triple power supplies and the system power requirements are 'split' between them. If one should fail, then the remaining power supply units will simply provide more power until the faulty unit is replaced. Audible and network alarms will be activated to alert a technician, but at the same time the RAID system will continue to function. 
Redundant components such as power supplies, fans, RAID hardware controllers, etc, are often referred to as 'hot pluggable' or 'hot swappable', which fundamentally ensures a clean component replacement and zero RAID system downtime while the component is replaced. 

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