Unify your data center

Data centers around the world are filled with digital islands. That’s because Network Attached Storage (NAS) and other file servers are very economical for storing large amount of data. But whilst they are easy to setup, these appliances offer confined storage spaces. As a result, users must remember precisely where they stored their files and IT personnel must struggle to migrate, consolidate and backup all the information they contain. Learn how Tiger Technology poolIt can help unify your existing data center, for a fraction of the cost and time.

 

Microsoft DFS, a step in the right direction

Nearly a decade ago, Microsoft introduced its Distributed File System (DFS) with Windows NT 4.0. The DFS allows multiple Microsoft Windows servers to be accessed through a single drive letter or namespace. However, within DFS, each of the individual physical file servers must be accessed through a different folder. All files located in a given folder must therefore reside on the same physical device. When the device is full, you can’t add content to that folder anymore.

Proprietary Scale-out NAS

A number of companies are spending lots of money promoting their proprietary “scalable NAS” solutions. On the promise of a better world, they want you to replace your entire storage infrastructure with theirs. These specialized storage solutions do offer the benefits of dynamic capacity growth with a single namespace but they rely on proprietary technologies and file systems (ex: OneFS from Isilon). Once you commit, you’re vendor-locked: every TB of data your company will ever need will have to be purchased from this vendor. Many businesses cannot afford the capital expenditure, nor the downtime associated with a complete storage overhaul. They must do the best they can with what they have.

Just “pool it”

poolIt is a new and affordable software tool that lets you pool multiple file servers into a single namespace. Within seconds, poolIt will conceal multiple inbound locations within a single virtual namespace. When accessing the pool, users are presented with a “logical merge” of all resources (aka pool members). This means that files stored on different servers having an identical folder structure will appear to the users as if they were stored in one and the same place. The pool can be configured on individual workstations or on server heads so it can be re-shared to multiple users.

Non-destructive, fast and safe for your data

Add or remove servers from the pool at any time to grow or shrink the total pool size. poolIt won’t move files unless it is instructed to do so. Add a server to the pool, and all the files and free space it contains become part of the pool. Dismount a server and its content disappears from the pool, but nothing gets lost. Your files are still on the server. To ensure total data integrity, all accesses are carried through standard operating system functions. In addition, there is no visible performance hit.

No more broken links

poolIt offers all the tools an IT specialist needs to explore the pool’s content. You can schedule or manually migrate files from one pool member to another. These migrations do not affect users or applications, as links and file paths remain intact. This lets you easily manage individual file location and consolidate content prior to releasing a pool member so it can be easily decommissioned or repurposed somewhere else. Your office personnel, web editors and creative content designers will never complain about broken links anymore.

Each file in its place

When writing new files to the pool, simple policies are used to decide where they will get stored. By default, poolIt writes new files to the top priority pool member until it gets near-full, at which point it starts writing to the next pool member, and so on. But poolIt also lets you better match the type of storage with the value of your data. Policies, such as “File-type”, can be used to discriminate target destination based on file type. For instance, it might be a good idea to store important documents on fast and secure servers that gets backed up daily while storing iTunes media and web downloads to a slower NAS that only gets backed up weekly.

Affordable and easy to use

Managing storage infrastructures and keeping up with constant data growth requires lots of time and energy. With its patent pending technology, poolIt is the first virtualization software tool designed to work with existing storage infrastructures and file systems.

With poolIt you can:

  • Combine multiple servers into a single namespace
  • Easily expand capacity of your storage pool without affecting users
  • Migrate data from one server to another transparently
  • Implement tiered storage for better matching the type of data with the available resources
  • Make use of all the available space distributed across your multiple servers
  • Keep recently used files on primary servers and transfer aging files on remote servers
  • Create very large storage pools safely and easily
  • Easily move and repurpose storage resources within your facility

Experience poolIt today!

Evaluating poolIt is safe and easy. Just load the software on a workstation or a server head, activate your trial license and start pooling servers!