NetApp FAS270C 

A storage device that can work both as a NAS and a SAN device

The world is moving away from direct-attached storage to network storage and when the word network storage is mentioned, two words-NAS (Network Attached Storage and SAN (Storage Attached Network)-come to mind. Most network storage products available in the market work as either NAS or as part of a SAN, but this NetApp storage filer can work as NAS as well as a SAN device, supporting both FC

(Fibre Channel) and iSCSI protocols.

The device has got an array of 14 hot swappable disks with each having a capacity of 144 GB, bringing the total capacity to 2 TB. The 14 disks are accessed by two independent interface units, each having two Gigabit Ethernet ports, FC optical and copper interfaces, 1 GB ECC RAM, CPU and console-management ports. The device also supports cluster failover mode, in which case if one unit fails, the other can take its place to keep serving files to the clients. However, the cluster failover feature has to be licensed separately and is not included in the price of the base equipment. For increasing the total storage capacity, three such devices can be connected together to bring the total to 6 TB.

To work as a NAS device for Windows and UNIX/Linux clients, the device has got built-in NFS (Network File System) and CIFS (Common Internet File System) servers. The filer can be made part of a UNIX/Linux NIS and Windows domain. Apart from that, it also provides mapping between UNIX and Windows users automatically, if they use the same usernames. If the usernames are different, you can define your own mappings. For security, it supports both Windows and Unix/Linux style security for files and directories. For a SAN environment, you can either use Ethernet-based iSCSI protocol or FC protocol, or both. An FC-based SAN requires other FC equipment such as FC switches and FC HBAs (Host Bus Adaptors) for the servers. However, all these protocols-NFS,

CFS, iSCSI and FCP-require extra licenses to be purchased.

Powered by NetApp's Data ONTAP 7G OS, the device supports a dynamic virtualization engine, using which organizations can shrink or expand storage utilization depending on their needs. This means that the various volumes that you create on this device for any type of client can be dynamically resized as per the requirements. In addition to that, the device also supports adding more disks to existing RAID volumes-a feature absent in other devices.

While planning for storage capacity, most organizations take an approach of buying in advance the total capacity that they require for their current as well as future needs. This leads to higher upfront cost and resource under-utilization, as in most cases, no organization is going to use the entire storage capacity right from day one. To help in decreasing costs in such cases, the FAS270C lets administrators make SAN volumes that are larger in size than the actual physical space on the disks. This way the users will see the available space demanded by them, and when their data starts reaching a level when the actual physical capacity may fall short, administrators can add more disks or filers to the present hardware to meet growing storage requirements, in a manner totally transparent and oblivious to users.

For data protection, the device provides RAID 4 and a special mode called RAID dual parity (DP), which can protect data even from dual disk failures. RAID DP requires two disks for storing parity information, unlike RAID 4, which uses only one disk. But using an extra disk for parity provides better protection than traditional RAID implementations, which provide protection from only single disk failures. For data protection from accidental deletes and virus attacks, the device has a provision to take snapshots of the data. You can reserve the amount of space that you want to give for snapshots and then schedule the device to click snapshots. One can also take manual snapshots of the data at any point of time.

Traditional data backup has been host based in which the backup device is connected to the server, which hosts the files. But, the FAS270C also supports backup to Ethernet and FC TapeSAN backup devices, which connect directly to the network.

Management is provided through Telnet, serial console, Web browser, SSL, SSH and SNMP including SNMP traps. For operation reliability, it has got dual power supply system. Most storage systems use write caching to increase performance, but in case of a dirty shutdown, which can happen because of power failure, cached data is lost leading to inconsistency of data. However, an in-built battery in this device prevents such data inconsistencies because of dirty

shutdowns.

The Bottom Line: The filer gives all options to integrate it into your infrastructure the way you want. Attractive and modular pricing-you can choose and pay for only the features and protocols that you want, apart from the price of the base equipment.

Anoop Mangla