For an overview of the LeftHand Networks SAN solution, please view our iSCSI SAN Solutions Demo. It will take about 4 minutes and will give you a good view of our solution. (Before viewing the demo, please ensure sound is enabled on your PC.)

Choose the Right SAN
Avoid being locked into a proprietary storage solution with an Open iSCSI SAN from LeftHand Networks. Combine LeftHand SAN/iQ clustering software with a variety of best-in-class, industry-standard storage modules to build a cost-effective yet powerful iSCSI SAN. The Open iSCSI SAN approach lets you take advantage of world-class hardware from leading vendors, maximizes your choice, and provides investment protection by allowing you to use familiar and cost-effective hardware.

Cluster with SAN/iQ for Availability, Scalability, and Performance
LeftHand’s patented SAN/iQ software provides grid-like storage clustering capabilities, combining the storage modules together to form one pool of storage. The clustered SAN is managed from a single intuitive GUI, regardless of the mix of platforms.

SAN/iQ provides simple scalability, both within a volume and across the storage pool. All available physical capacity is aggregated and available for volume creation. Both volume expansion and the addition of a storage module are done on the fly, with no downtime. Since SAN/iQ distributes data across all modules in equal proportions, the system is always load balanced and capacity optimally utilized. And because the system scales by adding storage modules, you’re adding capacity, processing power, and bandwidth simultaneously, scaling performance as you scale capacity.

SAN/iQ spreads data across the modules using LeftHand’s patented SAN/iQ Network RAID capability. You choose – on a volume basis – whether you want one, two or three copies of data across the storage modules. Creating multiple copies completely eliminates any single point of failure. You’ll have continuous data availability in the event of a network, disk, controller, or entire storage module failure.

To further increase availability, you can install storage modules anywhere on the IP network. Within a single facility, storage modules in a cluster can be spread out between the server room and a network closet. If you have a campus backbone, a single cluster can be spread across the campus network to eliminate the risk from events that affect a building, such as HVAC failures, electrical circuit failures, janitorial mishaps, etc. You can also use our SAN/iQ Remote Copy feature to move a copy of your data to any facility, anywhere in the world.

DISASTER RECOVERY
In the wake of multiple natural disasters in 2005, companies are taking a magnifying lens to their plans for disaster recovery. The real possibility a disaster could erase valuable data assets and that a DR solution would save these assets has taken the forefront in future planning for many small and mid-tier businesses. In fact, according to Jon Toigo, a well-known industry analyst, "Companies denied access to mission-critical data for longer than 48 hours tend not to exist after one year. Those who plan have a four-times greater chance of survival than those who don't."

Choose to Save Money
Your business can easily avoid becoming a statistic. With the LeftHand SAN, you have unmatched flexibility to create the right DR solution for your company and your IT staff. You get a choice of Open iSCSI SAN platforms, allowing you to select the right capacity and performance functionality for your environment. Install LeftHand’s patented easy-to-manage SAN/iQ Remote Copy and you’ll achieve a combination snapshot and remote copy application designed to deliver a simple and flexible solution to maintain multiple copies of data, with almost real-time concurrency. You’ll have the flexibility to determine per volume what data is copied to your remote site. Plus, unlike many DR solutions on the market, you don’t need to mirror capacities between sites, which means you can create an initial DR solution with a single cluster-ready storage module in each location and then scale as you need.

SAN/iQ’s flexibility continues to deliver benefits once you implement the DR solution. You’ll save capacity and bandwidth through SAN/iQ Remote Copy which only copies changed blocks of information. No dedicated storage pool is required, so there is no unnecessary waste of valuable storage space.

SAN/iQ Remote Copy delivers several more features that reduce required bandwidth. If anything interrupts the data transfer, SAN/iQ Remote Copy only needs to start from the last 10th percentile, saving valuable time and money. SAN/iQ’s easy-to-use GUI allows users to adjust how much bandwidth is assigned to remote site data transfers. Plus, users have the ability to leverage data compression technology from partners such as Juniper Networks to increase efficiency.

Ease of Management
Every day the IT projects add on, stretching your staff’s workload. With the LeftHand SAN and SAN/iQ Remote Copy, you can spend your time creating best practices and a strong DR plan rather than managing data. Finding a file from three weeks ago will seem like a miracle to users but you will know it only took five minutes to locate and mount. If disaster does strike, you’ll keep your business online and functional without user interruption. And all of this is set up on a single screen and then managed through the intuitive centralized management console. The LeftHand SAN utilizes your existing IP infrastructure, so initially setting up the solution requires little to no re-wiring or expensive infrastructure changes.

Advanced Options for Data Protection
SAN/iQ Remote Copy in combination with the other high availability features of the LeftHand SAN allow you to build a fully redundant environment:

• SAN/iQ Network RAID within a main data center will ensure multiple copies of data are always available to protect against loss of any component of the SAN.
• Scheduled snapshots allow an administrator to perform a file-level restore in the case of accidental deletion or a full rollback to a point in time if data should become corrupted.
• SAN/iQ Remote Copy will copy the snapshots to a geographically separate site, making the data available at the secondary site if anything should happen to the data center.
• Use tape backups at the secondary site to alleviate the load from the primary network at the data center.
• LeftHand's Solution Pack for Microsoft Windows supports Microsoft's frameworks including Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), Microsoft’s Virtual Disk Service (VDS), and Multi-Path I/O (MPIO) to increase SAN ease-of-management and performance when businesses use the LeftHand SAN in conjunction with a Windows environment.

Call Strategic Business Solutions for a preliminary storage assessment