MaXXan Does Storage on Demand

MaXXan Systems has combined its intelligent fabric systems with FalconStor’s IPStor 4.0 software suite to create a storage-on-demand solution that also
performs disaster recovery, file serving, data protection, and storage consolidation.

San Jose, Calif.-based MaXXan, which bills itself as the first company to ship intelligent storage networking solutions, spent three months integrating its MXV320T intelligent switch, SA100T standalone appliance, and SA200T application card with FalconStor’s latest release to create a solution that just about does it all.

And does it for less too, claims Ravi Chalaka, MaXXan’s marketing VP.

For example, a 30 TB disaster recovery solution from EMC would cost about $3 million, according to Chalaka. A comparable 30 TB DR solution from MaXXan would cost about $1.35 million, Chalaka says, and operating costs would be significantly lower, too.

“It’s clearly a disruptive technology, clearly a new paradigm,” Chalaka told Enterprise Storage Forum.

MaXXan can start out small, too, but as Chalaka puts it, “We’re not going after small companies that have less than half a terabyte that they want to
manage.” Starting at 1 TB, cost savings with the MaXXan product begin to accelerate, he says.

Pricing starts at $23,000-$27,500 for the base MXV320 and SA100, $10,000 per 10-port line card, and $5,000-$10,000 each for additional features such as
replication, active-active failover, compression, and encryption.

MaXXan’s ports can be converted to SAN, NAS, Fibre Channel, IP, FCIP, and iSCSI, and any interface can be supported.

A key piece of MaXXan’s storage utility model is the Capacity-on-Demand agents built into IPStor 4.0. Capacity-on-Demand technology combines compression, relocation, and volume expansion methods to eliminate downtime caused by low disk space conditions, the company says. IPStor also provides integrated real-time virus scanning and 56-bit data encryption for end-to-end security in replicating SAN and NAS resources over MANs and WANs.

IPStor HotZone increases I/O performance by re-mapping the most frequently accessed data to higher-performance storage devices, including solid-state disks (SSDs).

IPStor ZeroImpact backup works with embedded backup software to centralize backup management, and BareMetal Recovery minimizes server and desktop downtime by providing an IP-based boot service that continues operations in the event of a boot disk failure from a head crash, virus infection, or data corruption. The system reboots and runs from a SAN-based disk until repair operations are complete.

MaXXan says its SAN platform enables centralized deployment of fabric-based applications to reduce TCO while improving ROI in storage solutions hardware
and software technology. The company’s offerings include the highly scalable intelligent fabric solution for data centers, and standalone disaster recovery, file serving, backup/recovery acceleration, and storage consolidation solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

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