Configure a Nexenta Storage Array Broadberry XLStore

Scaling Capacity and Performance

The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor supports many network connectivity environments including GbE, 10GbE, Infiniband and Fibre, making it the most versatile storage solution available.

The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor allows an enterprise to match appropriate storage media to differing application requirements, achieving optimal levels of performance, capacity and cost without being required to manage and maintain multiple storage systems. Hard drives in the XLstore can either be the high performance enterprise class SAS drives or higher capacity SATA enterprise drives enabling you to mix and match as your storage requirements dictate.

Customers can add storage at any time to meet new application or business needs or to consolidate a company’s disparate storage into a single point of management, without incurring downtime and with the IO Pooling feature it means that as you add extra storage your data storage solution becomes faster. Storage capacity is also not a concern with the Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor because it is designed on the ZFS 128-bit file system with current data storage limitations being 16 Exabytes.

1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte

Business Continuance

The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor with RAIDZ is designed for the heart of the enterprise, with no single point of failure. All aspects of the systems architecture deliver maximum reliability and availability even during upgrades or maintenance. Also the XLstore has data replication, mirroring, data compression and data encryption features for backups to either local or remote sites. The high availability RAID Z2 feature built into the XLstore ZFS file system allows for multiple storage units to fail or be taken off line and still supply continuous data availability regardless of an enterprise's maintenance schedules or disaster recovery requirements.

Investment Protection

In today's environments, as new server and networking technology is deployed within the enterprise, storage systems must be upgraded to meet the needs of the IT infrastructure. The vast majority of storage system upgrades require an entirely new product installation. With the Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor you can eliminate these painful hardware replacement costs by having a modular storage solution with maximum flexibility to upgrade without replacing the entire system.

Unlimited Single Volume Size

The XLstore based on the ZFS 128bit file system and can support up to 16 Billion Gigabytes or 16 Exabyte’s in a single file volume or file.  This is the largest volume that can be supported by any storage solution.  Many applications require large single volumes and the XLstore based on the ZFS  will support the largest of requirements. Typical applications include CCTV;  voice ; geological; oil database, backup, and finance applications.

High Availability

The term High Availability or failover is term given to a computer or storage system with no single  point of failure. The XLstore based on ZFS not only offers in box high availability with raid1 and redundant power supplies in the storage node; it also has raid Z( similar to raid5) or  raid z2 (similar to raid6) across the storage nodes so multiple storage nodes can fail and the storage solution still operates to its full capacity and functionality.  The XLstore also has high availability on the header nodes ;  network switches;  NIC cards or HBAs and network fabric. All of these features make the XLstore based on the Sun Solaris ZFS storage solution one of the most robust storage solutions on the market.

Unlimited Snapshots

The Broadberry Data Systems XLstore has unlimited snapshots as a standard feature. A snapshot is an image or copy of a logical volume at given point in time. The snapshot is then stored and can be rolled back to restoring the data to when the snapshot was taken. When a file system has a corruption or a has virus to be able to roll the system back to the snapshot prior to the corruption or virus attack has proven to be invaluable rather than to rebuild a complete system. The XLstore can take as many snapshots as a business requires. The maximum no of snapshots that can be taken by any of the other storage systems on the market is 255. If a snapshot is taken every hour it will take 11 days before the original snapshot is reached.  Snapshots are a key feature in storage system management and with the Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor based on ZFS with unlimited snapshots it makes the XLstore the ultimate storage solution.

Thin Provisioning

Thin provisioning allows the storage system to exaggerate the amount of physical space available to storage users.  This enables efficiency and storage utilization to attain almost 100% of the storage resource unlike the previous systems they tended to require large amounts of storage to be pre allocated.
The XLstore with the built in thin provisioning enables companies to procure less storage capacity initially; put off storage capacity upgrades in line with usage saving on operating costs i.e. power and physical system footprint when keeping unused storage disks in a storage solution. The ZFS based XLstore has thin provisioning built in as a standard feature.

End to End Encryption

Data that is sensitive that travel over a network or WAN (wide area network) requires encryption. E2EE ( End to End encryption ) encrypts data at the source of a data transfer knowing that the data recipient can decrypt the data providing the receiver  has the necessary key variables ;once the data has passed over exposed networks i.e. the  internet. The XLstore ZFS based storage software has E2EE (End to End encryption) is a standard module of the XLstore.

End to End Data Authentication (Self Healing Technology)

The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor end-to-end data integrity requires that each data block be verified against an independent checksum, after the data has arrived in the host's memory. It's not enough to know that each block is merely consistent with itself, or that it was correct at some earlier point in the I/O path. The Broadberry XLstore will detect every possible form of damage and attempt to repair the damage.

Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor provides fault isolation between data and checksum by storing the checksum of each block in its parent block pointer -- not in the block itself. Every block in the tree contains the checksums for all its children, so the entire pool is self-validating.
When the data and checksum disagree, The Broadberry XLstore knows that the checksum can be trusted because the checksum itself is part of some other block that's one level higher in the tree, and that block has already been validated.

The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor ZFS file system uses its end-to-end checksums to detect and correct silent data corruption. If a disk returns bad data transiently, The Broadberry XLstore will detect it and retry the read. As the disk is part of a RAIDZ or Mirror group, The Broadberry XLstore will both detect and correct the error: it will use the checksum to determine which copy is correct, provide good data to the application, and repair the damaged copy.
The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor 128bit file system's end-to-end data integrity is built in as a standard feature and requires no user intervention - The Self Healing technology is fully automatic.

I/O Pooling

The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor I/O Pooling means that  as you add more storage to the XLstore the overall storage solution accelerates in performance.

Unlike traditional storages systems that would get slower as you add more capacity. The Broadberry XLstore takes full advantage of the extra bandwidth, and can spread the data more thinly throughout all storage nodes thus increasing performance.

Virtualisation

Virtualisation was never invented when other 32bit and 64bit file systems were designed. The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor was built from the ground up with Virtualisation in mind.

The Underlying storage is virtualised simplifying the administration, improving overall performance and flexibility.
Virtualization is at the core of The Broadberry XLstore.  This virtualization enables thin provisioning and also improves performance via I/O pooling.

Replication

Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor offers a variety of replication storage services, including local and remote synchronous mirroring, asynchronous mirroring over WAN (long distances), unlimited point-in-time snapshot replication and rollback capabilities, providing a variety of the most useful local and remote data replication alternatives.

With other features including built in compression and end to end encryption, your backup or replication services can be met in a variety of ways to suit your requirements in an ever changing world.

The Broadberry XLstore built in replication services helps to deliver the most flexible storage needed to implement a tiered-storage model.

Compression

The Broadberry XLStore powered by NexentaStor has built in compression which can be enabled on any volume you decide to compress.
As this is built in to the file system there is no additional software to run, or any other system to attach. In the management console - just select the type of compression you require, select the volume and your done.
This can substantially increase useable storage capacity, and help with asynchronous volume replication over WAN (long distances).

This page will take you through the NexentaStor Community Edition, and give you a view of the things your NexentaStor powered storage can do.

Easy to use

NexentaStor was made with a hassled storage admin in mind. Actions are laid out in a simple to understand manner. You'll be at home in no time.

Easy setup

When you first install NexentaStor, an simple wizard helps you configure everything from network settings and disks to importing older volumes.

Meaningful Feedback

Useful feedback about the machine is provided via the browser. No need to dive into the guts of the machine. Detailed stats can be checked and viewed on disks, network, CPU and more.

One Click operations

Growing a volume has never been so easy.

NAS shares

NAS shares can be setup easily. You can choose to turn on deduplication, compression, and set various other settings.

Block targets

Easily setup volumes to share for your SAN.

Protocols

NexentaStor understands most of the commonly used NAS protocols. Access your data from any client machine.

Snapshots

Utilizing the power of the ZFS filesystem, NexentaStor allows you to instantaneously take shapshots of your data (which you can revert, or clone at any later time). Also easily setup automatic snapshotting of your data.

Data replication

Replicate a share into another NexentaStor box. Simply point to the machine, select direction, and go!

Disk backend

NexentaStor can understand ATA, FC, iSCSI as the storage backend.

Fault Notifications

NexentaStor will keep track of all aspects of your storage via Runners, and warn you when it notices any fault.

Easy Upgrades and Checkpoints

NexentaStor systems have worry free apt-clone based safe upgrades. If something goes wrong, simply revert the system to an earlier working state. Checkpoints can be taken in a snap.

Services

NexentaStor supports many common services like LDAP, NDMP, SNMP, etc.

Storage tuned console

NexentaStor has it's very own console, called the Nexenta Management Console, specifically written for storage management. It is completely TAB completed, so you can start using it immediately. This console provides advanced options that you may not see in the web based UI.