- Product Profile
- Specification
Background
According to the latest IDC research report, by 2012, file-level data accounted for 80% of the shipment of the global storage market. The massive storage data based on files or created by unstructured content such as video, audio, images and web application programs is and will continue to increase exponentially. The stunning increase in files and data poses a big challenge to data storage, delivery and management for IT management personnel of enterprises. The only solution is to revolutionize the storage mode and adopt the storage system that integrates virtualization and strong scalability and sharing capability.
Featured by simple configuration and management, common protocols and high cost-effectiveness, the Network Attach Storages (NAS) is one of the most popular storage systems among enterprises. However, the traditional NAS relies heavily on the processor and I/O technology to realize strong scalability. At a given time point, it can only be scaled up to a limited extent.
The scale-out NAS solves this limitation. The scale-out NAS provides two independent expansion mechanisms, storage capacity and performance, to simplify management and trim the cost of ownership; in one namespace, the scale-out NAS can expand the storage capacity several PBs; scale-out supports the bottom-layer virtualization and creates resources that can be adjusted dynamically according to business needs; it also supports independently adjustment and instant expansion of the bandwidth and capacity. Thanks to these features, the scale-out NAS is an ideal integrated storage platform for companies.
The scale-out NAS Gateway (SONG) developed by Zhongke BlueWhale is such a revolutionary storage product.
BlueWhale SONG
The BlueWhale Scale-out NAS Gateway (BlueWhale SONG) is a scale-out NAS product developed by Zhongke BlueWhale. It can integrate the high-speed NAS gateway and the unified SAN storage system with the BlueWhale File System (BWFS) to provide high performance and strong scalability. By supporting scale-out, the NAS gateway the external unified protocol and file accessing capabilities; the unified SAN storage system supports both scale-out and scale-up to boost the I/O performance and storage capacity. Through BWFS, they can realize the storage virtualization and unified namespace. Therefore, SONG can provide high-performance and scalable file sharing services and supports various applications under the multi-computer, multi-workflow or cluster environment.
As a standard mature SAN file system, BWFS enjoys strong file management capability, scalability and a series of functions such as global data image protection and data hierarchical storage. BWFS serves as the storage virtual platform for SONG and SONG extends the BWFS's capabilities.
Now, BWFS can be run on various storage devices and is able to provide an integrated virtual data storage pool across different platforms. Therefore, enterprises can use the new technology and existing investment to custom-tailor the basic storage systems. Many users have to make a choice between the simple NAS sharing and high-performance SAN expansion when constructing the basic storage system. By integrating the merits of NAS and SAN, SONG can enable thousands of users to share and access files through the unified standard NAS protocol in the file system that contains billions of files and can use SAN's extra bandwidth to enable users who require a strong processing capability and low delay to share and access the SAN storage through the block-level manner.
SONG has inherited all the functions and features of BWFS, including advanced functions such as different storage strategies, intelligent failure detection, online capacity expansion, volume limit, performance counter and file image protection. As a scale-out NAS product, SONG also incorporates the automatic load balance, performance protocol optimization, high system reliability and embedded LDAP management.
Therefore, SONG can be used in high-performance computers and a wide range of information handling fields such as digital media storage management, exploration data analysis, designing and simulation and bio-chemical computation.
SONG Deployment Solution
The Scale-out NAS deployment solution is developed by Zhongke BlueWhale, a domestic leading storage product and solution provider, based on its years' experience in storage product R&D and marketing. It offers the BWStor series industry-standard disk array as the unified storage platform and fulfills business needs of various IT organizations by integrating BWFS as the core with SONG's outstanding scalability.
Features and Advantages of BlueWhale SONG
Main features
1. High reliability: The NAS controller adopts the advanced cluster structure and realizes high Active-Active availability; the BWFS meta-data controller realizes the high Active-Standby availability; the data file-level image protection is supported.
2. Strong scalability: The NAS controller supports scale-out and the unified storage supports both scale-out and scale-up; multiple file systems can be integrated to elevate the user service level.
3. Outstanding performance: The performance increases linearly with the increase in NAS controllers and disk array controllers; it also supports file SAN sharing and provides the incomparable processing capability and lowest delay.
4. High-capacity storage management: It can realize management of a storage capacity ranging from hundreds of TBs to several or even dozens of PBs.
5. High cost-effectiveness: The BlueWhale storage products are well-known for their outstanding cost-effectiveness.
6. Multiple additional functions: It supports directory binding hierarchical storage, snapshot and data migration interface support, image protection for metadata and data and strategy-based data distribution to fulfill special business needs.
7. Fulfilling various storage performance demands: It enables users to access the Ethernet through common NAS protocol and share or access files through the FC network using BlueWhale's private protocol under the same namespace.
8. Low TCO: Users can expand the capacity according to their needs; it is compatible with standard storage devices to cut costs; by supporting common file-accessing protocols, it supports various existing business applications.
Advantages
1. It adopts the unified global namespace and support file-level data sharing across Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.
2. It supports both common NAS protocol and external SAN file accessing and sharing, thus giving full play to the extra bandwidth of the storage devices to meet varied business needs.
3. The system supports multiple file systems, multiple storage strategies and directory binding, thus increasing the flexibility to fulfill different storage requirements for different applications.
4. Thanks to the strong scalability, it supports a ZB-level storage capacity, super-large files of 2 PBs, and more than 100 million directories and files. By increasing storage devices, the system can online expand its storage capacity, IO bandwidth and load capacity.
5. Underpinned with the SAN file system BWFS with multiple patented technologies, the system features enterprise-level data reliability. Through the file system log, fast FSCK, unique file-level accident isolation and support for multiple file systems, it maximizes the data safety for users. The stable operation and experience of over 100 large-scale data application programs have proven the strong reliability of BWFS.
6. The NAS gateway cluster, MDC based on a redundancy structure, full-redundancy SAN structure and BWMirror file-level mirror image technology prevent the single point of failure and ensure the stability of the storage system.
7. The system integrates the intelligent failure detection and performance counter to help users troubleshoot various failures and position and analyze IO, thus analyzing and optimizing the performance. The embedded anti-fragment allocation algorithm and online de-fragment tool can solve the fragment problem caused by continued operation of the system.
8. It provides a full range of data management functions including the quota, ACL, snapshot and data migration and is compatible with third-party products to provide solutions such as continued data protection and data filing.
9. It provides flexible storage solution configuration. It supports third-party disk arrays. Users can integrate all the storage spaces (LUN) into one virtual storage space under the multi-disk-array environment or use LUN separately in different file systems, thus configuring solutions flexibly. It supports multiple paths and can realize the multi-path function without using a disk array multi-path software program, enabling users to choose the disk array and operating system flexibly.
10. It supports up to 64 NAS controllers in a cluster or multiple NAS controller cluster to boost the scalability by increasing NAS controllers.
11. The storage capacity and file service capability can be expanded separately. Moreover, the system supports online dynamic expansion to realize a greater and faster data processing capability.
12. The large-scale NAS management system is largely simplified to centralize management and control and trim the IT management cost.