| Massive scalability |
- Supports billions of files (up to 21 petabytes of storage) in a single file system
- Supports up to 256 file systems
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| Flexibility |
- Allows access to data in a single global namespace, allowing all users a single, logical view of files through a single drive letter such as a Z drive
- Provides efficient distribution of files, images and application updates and fixes to multiple locations quickly and cost effectively
- Offers internal (SAS, nearline SAS) and external (tape) storage pools, and automated file placement and file migration based on policies—it can store and retrieve any file data in or out of any pool transparently and quickly, without administrator involvement
- Provides multiple storage tiers for flexible, efficient management of petabytes of files
- Supports industry-standard protocols: CIFS, NFS, FTP, HTTPS
- Includes up to two dual-port 10 GbE cards per interface node, which provides each interface node with more flexibility, connectivity and performance enablement; offers additional connectivity to manage multiple data streams and functions (NDMP, TSM, antivirus or asynchronous replication, or both)
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| Operational savings and total cost of ownership (TCO) |
- Consolidates multiple individual filers and their management, thereby avoiding problems associated with administering an array of disparate NAS storage systems
- Localizes files to improve file access performance and reduced network costs
- Automates file placement by transparently moving files to another internal or external storage pool, optimizes your storage resources and offers tremendous time and cost savings in administering petabytes of files
- Enables automated file migration to external storage devices (for example, tape), managed by Tivoli Storage Manager, to help lower TCO by up to 40 percent over the long term
- Helps conserve floor space (up to a petabyte of data in less than a square meter), is highly scalable and can help reduce capital expenditure and enhance operational efficiency; its advanced architecture virtualizes and consolidates file space into a single, enterprise-wide file system, which can translate into reduced TCO
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| Performance |
- Can scan billions of files in minutes with the robust IBM Active Cloud Engine, then take action (for example, migrate, backup, delete, replicate and more)
- Leverages two dual-port (all ports active) 10 GbE interface cards offering high bandwidth and additional connectivity in each SONAS interface node to manage multiple data streams and functions (for example, backup, replication, antivirus)
- Offers scale-out performance by adding more interface nodes (front end) and storage pods (back end)
- Provides fast asynchronous replication performance with the ability to define up to 10 replication processes per node
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| Data protection |
- Asynchronous replication for site-to-site protection provides disaster recovery and business continuity
- File system and fileset-level snapshots (up to 256 per file system) provide a way to partition the namespace into smaller, more manageable units
- File-level cloning provides a full file copy at better granularity
- Tivoli Storage Manager integration provides very efficient and extremely fast backup and restore processes, and policy-driven migration of files to an external or tape based disk
- NDMP support provides both full and incremental file backup
- Provides RAID 6
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| Cloud storage |
- IBM Active Cloud Engine enables ubiquitous access to files from across the globe quickly and cost effectively
- Self-managing, autonomic system enables capacity, provisioning and other IT service management decisions to be made dynamically, without human intervention or increased administrative costs
- Seamless elasticity allows you to scale computing resources up or down, as required, to meet changing organizational needs without service interruption
- Highly resilient and secure applications and an underlying infrastructure help meet expected levels of availability, reliability and integrity
- Highly standardized environment facilitates simultaneous service deployment and upgrades for all users, no matter where they reside
- Economies of scale lowers the cost of service access
- Clouds can provide rapid access to computing capacity at a lower cost of ownership, enabling organizations to perform operations that may have previously been unaffordable or impractical
- New release of Tivoli Productivity Center 5.1 enables applications to perform SONAS provisioning
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| Antivirus |
- Integrates with McAfee and Symantec Antivirus, enabling users to secure data from malware and leverage the most commonly deployed ISV antivirus applications
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| Management |
- Command line interface (CLI) and browser-based, simple, intuitive, state-of-the-art administrative GUI provides icon-based navigation, informative graphics and SONAS visualizations that streamline storage tasks and display real-time capacity, performance and system health
- Optional Tivoli Productivity Center 5.1 can manage SONAS, providing discovery and visualization, health status monitoring and capacity usage reporting; version 5.1 also enables applications to perform SONAS provisioning
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| User interface |
- Offers CLI and browser-based, simple, intuitive GUI
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| Advanced features |
- IBM Active Cloud Engine in SONAS is an industry unique, powerful capability designed to leverage the integrated Tivoli Storage Manager backup and archive client to increase efficiency when backing up billions of files
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