BlueArc Revs New NAS Engines

Convinced that it can outsell Network Appliance and EMC with its scalable
architecture, BlueArc introduced the Titan 2000 storage system
family.

BlueArc officials said the Titan 2100 storage system and the Titan 2200
storage system run as many as 100,000 operations per second. These speeds
are twice the performance of BlueArc’s first Titan and three times higher
than systems from NetApp or EMC.

To say that BlueArc machines play in the high end of the enterprise is an
understatement.

The company’s goal is to provide maximum performance, scalability and
availability of data files from as few machines as possible in a large
enterprise.

For example, BlueArc Vice President Steve Daheb said BlueArc once
consolidated data files from 14 NetApp machines down to two Titans, and as
many as 50 direct-attached storage (DAS) machines onto one
Titan.

Fewer machines is a goal many corporations are trying to attain as they look
to cut power and maintenance costs of the gear in their data centers, Daheb
noted.

But these businesses don’t want to sacrifice performance and the readiness
to recall their data; Daheb said the company made sure the 2000
line was more potent than the first generation.

The Titan 2100 Storage System delivers 5 gigabits per second of throughput
and scalability to 256 terabytes. The Titan 2200 Storage System delivers 10
gigabits of throughput and scalability to 512 terabytes for a single file
system.

Both systems come standard with six Gigabit Ethernet ports and four
four-gigabit Fibre channel ports to make sure that data is always available.
The Titan 2100 and Titan 2200 systems also offer a 10-gigabit cluster
interconnect port between Titans.

Moreover, customers needn’t rip and replace their Titan 1000 chassis to
enjoy the benefits of the 2000 systems. Existing Titans can be converted to
a Titan 2100 or Titan 2200 by swapping the old blades with new 2000-oriented
devices.

Titan 2000 storage systems are available now, starting at approximately
$100,000.

To go along with the Titan 2000, the San Jose, Calif., company today
launched Cluster Name Space (CNS) technology, which provides a directory
tying information from storage pools and servers.

With CNS, multiple file systems on one or more Titan servers can be linked
to provide users with a common root for both CIFS and NFS access. Clients of
both types gain access to data through any node in the cluster.