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IBM System Storage N series Gateway for SAN Storage Environments

Unify NAS, FC SAN, and IP SAN under a common architecture

  
Overview   |   Features and benefits   |   Specifications
 
 
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Gateway data sheet (819 KB)
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Highlights

  • Heterogeneous unified storage environment—Designed to provide unified storage access for multiprotocol, multivendor storage environments


  • Versatile—Single, integrated architecture designed to support concurrent block I/O and file serving over Ethernet and Fibre Channel SAN infrastructures


  • Storage consolidation—Designed to enable organizations to consolidate UNIX®, Linux®, Windows® and Web workloads with existing SAN storage, thereby helping to increase storage utilization


  • Builds on existing SAN infrastructure—Designed to integrate into existing SAN storage environments, helping to optimize investment protection and ROI


  • Data management—Designed to provide advanced data management solutions that maximize availability and can help to reduce operational cost significantly


  • Comprehensive software suite—Designed to provide robust system management, copy services, virtualization technologies and disaster recovery and backup capabilities across all SAN resources


The challenge: Improving storage utilization and access

As enterprise storage requirements evolved from direct-attached to networked storage, many enterprises made significant investments in multiple storage architectures—direct-attached storage (DAS), storage area network (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS)—to support the different access methods required by various business solutions. The result was often inefficient and underutilized storage environments. A critical IT management challenge is to optimize the use of existing storage to improve efficiency and return on investment (ROI) while continuing to support different access methods for different business solutions throughout the enterprise.

You may not be ready to replace existing storage systems with new, unified ones. Instead, you might be looking for ways to broaden the use of current infrastructure and improve return on investment by provisioning SAN capacity for new business solutions requiring FCP, iSCSI or NAS access and remote access.


The solution: IBM System Storage N series Gateway

The IBM System Storage™ N series Gateway product line is a network-based unified storage solution designed to provide Internet Protocol (IP) and Fibre Channel (FC) protocol access to SAN-attached heterogeneous storage arrays. The N6000 and N7000 series ordered with a Gateway feature code can help you make the most of the dynamic provisioning capabilities of Data ONTAP® software across your existing Fibre Channel SAN infrastructure to support an expanded set of business applications. The IBM N series Gateway is based on the Data ONTAP microkernel operating system, which is designed to unify block and file storage networking paradigms under a common architecture. The N series Gateway offers a comprehensive suite of advanced data management capabilities designed to help you consolidate, protect and recover mission-critical data for enterprise applications and users.

The IBM N series Gateway is designed to deliver the performance and capacity to meet access requirements for enterprises of all sizes. N series Gateway systems are intended to deliver industry-leading performance, offer terabytes of managed capacity, and be configured for simultaneous active/active access with secure failover across two independent systems in a cluster

The N6000 and N7000 series Gateway product lines support the attachment to both N series EXN1000, EXN3000 and EXN4000 disk storage expansion units; IBM Enterprise Storage Server® (ESS) series, IBM XIV® Storage System, IBM System Storage DS8000® and DS4000® series; as well as a broad range of EMC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, 3PAR and HP storage subsystems. You can now take advantage of the N series Gateway capabilities to help improve business efficiency and reduce data management complexity with a variety of storage subsystems.


N7000 series Gateways

Common features N7000 Hardware summary N7000
  • Simultaneous multiprotocol support for FCP, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, FTP


  • File- and block-level service in a single system


  • Data ONTAP® software


  • 16 TB maximum volume size


  • Broad range of built-in features


  • Multiple supported backup methods including disk- and host-based backup and tape backup to direct, SAN and GbE attached tape devices

  • Up to 1.176 Petabytes (PB) or 1,176 TB raw storage capacity supported from SAN-based storage resources


  • 16 GB to 64 GB ECC memory


  • 512 MB to 4 GB nonvolatile memory


  • Up to 52 full-duplex 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet ports


  • Up to 56 4-Gbps Fibre Channel ports


  • 10-Gbps Ethernet adapter card (optional)


  • Quad-port 4-Gbps adapters (optional)


  • Dual FC LVD SCSI Tape adapter


  • Dual redundant hot-plug integrated cooling fans and auto-ranging power supplies


  • 19" rack-mount enclosure

N6000 series Gateways

Common features N6000 Hardware summary N6000
  • Simultaneous multiprotocol support for FCP, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS, HTTP, FTP


  • File- and block-level service in a single system


  • Upgrade up to 840 TB of physical capacity while avoiding service disruption


  • Support for Fibre Channel and SATA disk drives


  • Data ONTAP® software


  • 16 TB maximum volume size


  • Broad range of built-in features


  • Multiple supported backup methods including disk- and host-based backup and tape backup to direct, SAN and GbE attached tape devices

  • Up to 804 TB raw storage capacity


  • 4 GB to 21 GB Cache memory


  • 512 MB to 4 GB nonvolatile memory


  • 10 GbE adapter card (optional)


  • Quad-port 4 Gbps adapters (optional)


  • Up to 8 Performance Acceleration Modules


  • Diagnostic LED/LCD


  • Dual redundant hot-plug integrated cooling fans and auto-ranging power supplies 19” rack-mountable



 
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A product guide comparing all of IBM System Storage products

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