Today, whether we’re at work or home, we don’t think twice about plugging our appliances into electrical outlets to instantly receive the power we need. After all, every house in America does not have its own power plant so why should every department within a large organization have its own IT infrastructure?

* Centralized data protection and security

In contrast, large businesses deploying utility storage are more concerned with performance, efficient storage utilization, guaranteed storage availability and future scalability costs. Storage area networks or SANs, based on IP, represent the more popular way of interconnecting a large number of application servers with different classes and grades of storage systems. They have a low number of servers and small IT departments. But a single iSCSI array represents a single point of failure, can be difficult to scale and limits performance to that of the individual system. iSCSI arrays, like NAS systems, are single systems that can centralize storage for a small number of attached servers.

They don’t need to build a storage utility model to service multiple departments and large numbers of servers. Small businesses are interested in simplicity and low costs, and will generally select an entry-level iSCSI array. Surprisingly, many small businesses are not interested in utility storage.

* Infinite storage capacity that can be resized, reused, reallocated and shared

Server captive data is difficult to protect, reallocate, share and reproduce when it’s kept on disk drives within individual servers. Removing data from workflow and departmental servers and delivering storage to those servers like a utility has been an IT goal for the last 10 years.

There are three basic attributes that distinguish IP SANs from iSCSI storage arrays. (Figure 1)

Before any user decides on the appropriate utility storage solution, they should consider the architectural attributes of an IP SAN. Because SANs are networks, they are open and support all popular server operating systems, applications and storage systems. These IP SAN attributes, are continuous real-time data access even during component or system failure low scalability costs to maintain a consistent CAPEX over time and the ability to deliver high peak load performance to a large number of utility storage customers. Because IP SANs deliver these three key attributes in addition to the utility properties of iSCSI, they are becoming a popular network-storage solution for IT professionals seeking utility storage.

Performance

* A fast and highly reliable infrastructure where data resides away from the server

By delivering data storage capacity as a centralized utility you not only remove the data from the server and centralize it onto a network, but you can eliminate or greatly reduce the number of disk drives directly attached to workflow servers. Utility storage delivers:

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

* Agent- and license-free storage services to deliver different grades and levels of capacity for hundreds of individual and distributed servers.

show tremendous momentum in iSCSI. There are many IT professionals considering an iSCSI IP SAN as a means to finally deliver their utility storage services to large numbers of application servers. In 2003, worldwide iSCSI revenue amounted to $18 million. The market showed a 32 percent revenue growth over last quarter. In 2004 this soared to $113 million.

The latest quarterly storage numbers from International Data Corp.

For example, you can use a storage system with FC drives rated for 200 MB/sec and 10,000 IOPs for application servers requiring high performance, and use a SCSI storage system with ATA drives rated for 40MB/sec and 3000 IOPs for application servers requiring lower performance.

This allows the IT professional to select the storage systems that best fits the performance and reliability needs of varying application servers receiving utility storage. Utility storage, like electricity, needs to deliver the required data performance to the application server. This delivers raw random read/write performance that is from 4 to 15 times greater than small arrays and can easily support from 10 to 200 standard application servers. IP SANs can utilize any type of storage system. IP SANs are designed to sustain high levels of random read and write operations. Intelligent IP SAN switches have high-speed architectures utilizing network processors, real-time operating systems and powerful backplanes. A single IP SAN switch can sustain 300MB/sec or 600MB/sec (when clustered) of random read and write requests and well over 60,000 IOPs. After all, slow electricity would halt your appliances and slow data performance would halt your application servers.

Often, companies believe that Blackberry ismore secureand employees end up in trench warfare with their IT department. The idea of removing the “Blackberry Tax” is not new at all: it was in fact the cornerstone of Windows Mobile’s strategy when Push Email was introduced.

What the iPhone adds is better web browsing and shininess, we guess. Employees could use their own device, there’s no need to have a Blackberry server and wireless data plan and so on. . . By the way Nokia has support for Exchange too. There lies the real problem.

We did not fork the $749 required to read this gem, but according to Simon Sage from Intomobile, the report says that iPhones can save on many fronts: cost of the device (the employee buys it), the back-end infrastructure (no need for a Blackberry server), efficient web browsing. This sounds like an April’s Fools, but Intomobile has picked up areport from Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester that seems to think that the iPhone could be a real communication asset to companies.

Secondly, Blackberry has a much better deal on international data. Blackberry might be better in on-board data encryption too… that’s another story. But we think that the lack of physical keyboard on the iPhone kills it for those who type a lot.

Corporate users require easy and rapid access to data that may be globally distributed. IT managers must deliver on these requirements; ensure rapid disaster recovery capabilities, and accomplish it without breaking the bank. The demands on Storage Area Networks (SANs) go far beyond where they were only a few years ago. The five key factors defining today’s metrics for a successful, global, enterprise SAN deployment, are cost: bandwidth, reach, latency and case-of-access. It is no longer good enough to just provide a large pool of scalable storage with good performance.

* True QoS functionality enables traffic to be consistently classified, prioritized, and queued at line rate speeds

The maturity and robustness of iSCSI with Error Recovery Level 2 (ERL 2) support, combined with the throughput, distance, and economy of scale advantages of Neterion’s Xframe 10 GbE solutions, present a complete framework for deploying globally dispersed, ubiquitous, enterprise SANs. The key points are:

These enhancements ensure robust and highly-available system operation across geographically diverse enterprise networks. The completion of the entire iSCSI protocol, as defined by IETF RFC 3720, provides the full error recovery features as required by storage managers.

* 10 GbE coexists natively with currently deployed 1 GbE infrastructures.

* 10 GbE continues to benefit from emerging Ethernet advancements, such as hardware-based iWARP support (RDMA over TCP/IP) that further optimizes performance and reduce CPU utilization.

Total Cost of Ownership Advantages

Another key advantage of 10 GbE iSCSI over FC is the management of bandwidth. Both iSCSI and FC are block level protocols (as opposed to filelevel protocols like NFS/CIFS), but unlike – FC, where unused bandwidth in a dedicated channel is wasted, complete iSCSI implementations with ERL 2 can optimize bandwidth usage by automatically allocating bandwidth from unused connections.

Fibre Channel was designed as a campus-wide network, not to exceed 100 miles, and because of its sensitivity to delay; there are many issues with supporting it over WANs.

Furthermore, 10 GbE iSCSI SANs are not subject to distance limitations like FC-based SANs. These limitations negatively impact network costs making it very difficult to cost-effectively provide global access to a FC SAN.

* Ethernet offers seamless integration, with the LAN, MAN and WAN, enabling native sharing of data anywhere in the world.

* Ethernet is based on well-proven protocols, management tools, with a wealth of trained experts worldwide.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Since iSCSI can be implemented at the software layer, existing servers can be upgraded with off-the-shelf iSCSI software with ERL 2 support allowing them to become a member of the SAN. The virtualization capabilities on an Xframe adapter also ensure that IT managers have the most power to manage bandwidth for best performance.

Upgraded servers with 10 GbE Neterion Xframe adapters enables a single, high performance, easily managed IP network for data and storage.

All costs including initial capital expenditures, maintenance fees, systems integration and management, ongoing support, physical space, port density, power, cooling, upgrades along with soft costs (e.

There are always costs with deploying SANs, but the real differences are the costs of staffing, training, and managing a FC SAN versus iSCSI. Calculating TCO for a SAN requires evaluation of more than just initial hardware costs. Because Ethernet is already widespread in the data center, the incremental management costs with 10 GbE iSCSI are negligible in comparison. Although these costs can be difficult to quantify, they are very real and can drive up the TCO. , slow network performance and downtime due to overloading) must be considered. Additionally, the simplification stemming from a converged Ethernet network results in savings on other hidden costs like downtime, problem tracking, and resource drains. g. In fact annual recurring management costs can range from 30% to 50% of the, initial hardware investments.

For global SANs, the cost savings of this consolidation with 10 GbE iSCSI versus FC can be tremendous. Instead of an under-utilized five-chassis data center that can have an initial hardware cost between $750,000 and $1,200,000 and annual management costs that can run between $252,000 and $372,000, consolidating to a single chassis configured with a Neterion 10 GbE adapter drops the hardware costs to between $150,000 and $250,000 with management costs to less than $56,500. The potential for consolidation savings are also significant.

While Fibre Channel (FC) has satisfied the early demands for SANs, the evolution of the Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) from Neterion have enabled a compelling alternative for building Global SANs.

Optimized Efficiency and Consolidation Advantages

10 GbE iSCSI Full Error Recovery And Distance Advantages

Furthermore, IT managers can still leverage their existing FC investments by bridging from their 10 GbE iSCSI SAN to the FC networks.

Random seek time are also extremely fast, due to the solid-state nature of SSDs.

This program is freeware, for use in single-user and multi location (up to 5 concurrent users). tecnosonline.

As of July 22, 2009 is available “Free Enterprise”, a new management software for small businesses and artisans developed by totally free Tecnos (www. E ‘is your first time here?

Staff must dependably send and receive email and wireless messages, refer to records and attachments, and access calendars and contact information.

surplus Exchange servers and storage arrays); unnecessarily complex processes; and, excessive administrative overhead. Because enterprises typically grow in a piecemeal fashion, the result is often disconnected and/or duplicated infrastructure (e. g.

Network-level failures can be averted by deploying failover and multipathing services that provide Exchange servers with multiple paths to storage, with server traffic intelligently rerouted to an available path for business continuity.

How to better handle this situation? Today’s IT professionals have a wealth of solutions at their fingertips to help implement best practices for optimizing Exchange environments.

The key is to make the right choice–a comprehensive solution that delivers the entire gamut of storage services is needed so that you are not left with niche solutions, adding more work and frustration instead of alleviating it.

* Disk mirroring for data redundancy

Microsoft Exchange is specifically designed to deliver high-volume collaboration capabilities and fast transaction rates. Yet because Exchange is so widely used, its storage can be especially challenging to manage effectively.

Disaster Recovery That Works

Exchange administrators cite capacity management as their biggest problem. Their Exchange environment can host hundreds or thousands of active mailboxes, multiple servers, and terabytes of constantly growing email storage capacity.

* Impactless backup that can be completed within the backup window and doesn’t burden Exchange servers.

Services should include:

The result is inevitably inadequate protection from disk-, cabinet-, and network-level failures that sabotage data availability. Strong business continuity tools can enhance a typical Exchange environment. Even if one or more niche data protection solutions have been implemented chances are they are only providing a portion of, the necessary protection.

* Remote data replication for disaster recovery

Exchange administrators can dynamically carve and, provision capacity from this storage pool on an as-needed basis with just a few mouse clicks at an easy-to-use, centralized console.

The underlying disk interfaces are hidden, and all storage provisioning and storage services for an unlimited number of heterogeneous application and file servers can be controlled from this console.

Recovery must always be fast and accurate, even after disaster.

As message volumes and file attachments consume gigabytes of disk space, Exchange administrators are left struggling with this onslaught of data. Backup times increase relentlessly, compounded by regulatory compliance, where email messages must often be stored for lengthy periods of time.

A comprehensive solution should offer a capacity-on-demand storage service that automatically prevents out-of-space conditions by monitoring disk space consumption and providing proactive, just-in-time capacity provisioning, as well as using virtualization to leverage and repurpose existing storage and know-how. “

In this storage model, capacity management is easier because all disk resources are joined into a “storage pool.

* Multipathing for protection against network node failures

In today’s 24X7 business environment, to maximize availability and business productivity, a practical storage solution for messaging/collaboration data needs to deliver advanced storage services that protect data and improve its accessibility.

This way, a disk containing Exchange data can be mirrored to a second disk, which may reside on the same or on a different storage array of a different vendor/type/interface, providing a layer of cabinet redundancy over and above the RAID redundancy at the disk drive level. To protect against disk failure, look for a solution with synchronous and asynchronous mirroring capabilities to create redundant data sets. The disk subsystems themselves can be located in different locations to protect against a localized disaster.

* Point-in-time snapshots for rapid, – granular, non-disruptive recovery of individual mailboxes and entire data stores

There’s constant demand for more capacity to store emails/attachments–and to store them longer to comply with regulations such SEC 17a-3 and SEC 17a-4-which can lead to last minute purchasing of disk, manual reconfiguration of physical disk resources, and wasted storage capacity due to overprovisioning.

Another problem for administrators is Exchange servers running out of disk space.

Achieve High Availability

Simplify, Centralize Storage Infrastructure and Management

It is crucial to choose a storage infrastructure solution that delivers a remote replication service providing automated off-site data protection.

Administrators should be able to specify a variety of policies to control the replication process, giving them a granular and flexible mechanism for keeping an extra set of data off-site for rapid recovery.

Now there is a new brochure on the original site of the software house that shows in detail the main features of this useful application.

A few weeks ago was presented Free Enterprise, an excellent free business software for small businesses and artisans. And ‘your first time here?
I remember that Free Enterprise, in addition to being free, is used in single-user or up to 5 users simultaneously, and all

Usually, an organization thinks to implement ERP (enterprise resource planning) software to align business objectives with latest technology solutions, to enhance customer confidence and stakeholder commitment, to optimum utilization of organization’s resources and assets.

Trail balance, balance sheet, cash in hand, cash in bank, top supplier, top customer, ABC analysis, dead stock, WIP (work in progress) and other important reports are ready at any point of time.

It helps in achieving better efficiency in organization reporting. It also improves financial management. ERP software helps you to optimize your human resource management and asset management. ERP software streamlines the supply chain management and improves customer relationship management.

Enterprise resource planning software ensures data security and data sc alability: organization can customize the enterprise software according to their requirements. During implementation and after go-live, IT department responsibility is higher than other department.

There is a misconception that, ERP is for IT department and they will get more benefits, but it is not true. It gives better ROI (return on investment). It adopts systems that address changing technologies. Organization can increase turnover with same human resource.

Benefits of ERP Software

ERP system introduces efficiency and improvement of its business processes.

Good enterprise software helps you to achieve transparency and availability of data across all business functions. This de cision would be based on accurate information, which will give positive result and increase productivity.

It gives right information at the right time to the right people for effective decision making.

Ultimately, the user is going to use this enterprise resource planning software.

Top management should understand the need of detailed user training. Proper training gives better output from the new system. Lack of proper training to user results wrong entry and create problem.

[Web 2.

Pricing and Availability

Users can personalize these widgets and create interaction between them using the Interaction Editor. Widgets can be easily integrated with existing enterprise software and can embed Ajax, Flex and any technology that can be displayed in a browser. DreamFace Widget Platform

The Widget Library provides pre-built widgets that can be customized by developers. Widgets are cross platform, desktop or mobile (Android, iPhone)and can be displayed in any website.

DreamFace Social Networking Framework

DreamFace Social networking framework manages user profiles with single sign-on, the platform is open so it can be easily connected to existing enterprise identity management systems such as LDAP to comply with corporate security policies. other than that, it has similar features as any social networking site that we know. I have not tested it though.

DreamFace 2. A mobile micor payment service is also provided with the mobile package. 0 provides live broadcasting or publishing to mobile devices and users receiving alerts can interact with their DreamFace widgets and applications directly from their mobile.

0 will be available under a dual-license open source model that is based on GPL 3. dreamface-interact ive./services. DreamFace 2. 0 Beta 1, including the enhanced widget platform and the new mobile services features, will be available this month. 0 Beta 2, including the social networking framework, will be available next month. DreamFace 2. html. The company offers annual technical support subscriptions in silver, gold, and platinum editions, with pricing beginning at $2,500. DreamFace 2.

0. More info at www.

Storage accounts for a significant portion of total IT infrastructure costs. According to Krishna Chandler, senior analyst, storage, at iSuppli, “Storage hardware accounts for between 45 and 75 percent of IT hardware spending annually depending on the nature, of the company and how effectively it manages data.

SATA has not been considered for enterprise class applications up to this point because performance, reliability and ruggedness of the drives could not match that of SCSI and Fibre Channel.

Off-line — archives, infrequent access, low priority in business operations data organization important for easy access when required, disk-to-disk back-up and tape archives

Is it truly, a Tier-1 mission-critical transaction based application? * Can the application itself be offloaded to SATA RAID?

Tier 1

SATA RAID provides the performance and availability required for Tier 2 (near-line) storage at the most attractive cost per MB. SATA is also the best choice for Tier 3 (off-line) given the need that government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA have imposed on search and retrieval of company records containing both structured and unstructured data.

Online — mission-critical, transaction based, continuous access high value data, maximum security, and availability, must be redundant

* Can the data of a Tier 1 application be moved to SATA RAID for use and analysis? How frequently can this download occur (freeing up space on the existing Tier 1 storage subsystem)?

The SATA 2. A SATA RAID implementation costs a fraction of SCSI or FC-$1. 05 per GB for SATA versus $5. 50/GB for FC and $5.

But is SATA ready for the enterprise? 5 specification was recently released and with new features such as Native Command Queuing, 3Gb/s transfer rates, Port Multiplication, and Port Selection, SATA RAID holds great promise for the enterprise. With SATA II products on the horizon IT managers searching for high-performance, scalable, reliable and redundant technology will undoubtedly turn to SATA solutions. 15/GB for SCSI.

Tier 2

The IT department is judged based on application availability and response time. Two areas to consider when evaluating your applications for storage cost savings are:

In order to maximize performance and availability while maintaining storage costs, IT managers should develop a process for prioritizing applications based on business criticality and the impact of the application and its data on company operations. If any application goes down it’s a reflection on the IT department’s ability to maintain any of the company’s applications, including mission-critical systems.

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For most companies cost savings can be achieved by implementing a storage architecture that consists of three basic levels:

The process of evaluating and prioritizing the company’s data using an ILM strategy leads to the obvious conclusion of a tiered storage architecture where data is stored based on requirements related to performance, availability and economics.

But again, is SATA suitable for enterprise applications?

The answer is yes. SCSI and Fibre Channel remain the preferred technology for transaction processing, but there is much broader application for SATA than ever before. This is not to say that SATA is a storage panacea, ready to take on enterprise storage requirements across the board.

Nearline — application based, active to infrequent use, medium to high value data, reliability and availability are important, redundancy required for recovery purposes

Evaluating Data Center Requirements

ILM and Tiered-Storage Architecture

Tier 3

Malfunctions with these applications could lead to loss of revenue, an inability to conduct business, or operational breakdowns which hinder the company’s ability to manufacture, deliver – and/or support products. Traditionally mission-critical applications are defined as those applications where downtime, or faulty execution, may have catastrophic results for the company. In order to determine where SATA is best suited in the data center we must analyze the applications, their role in the enterprise, and the data/information they produce.

The sheer size of this expense coupled with increasing demands placed on storage systems by government regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Sarbanes Oxley, has the prudent storage manager implementing an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) program with a multi-tiered storage infrastructure. Today there are new options available for scalable, reliable, high-performance storage that will help storage managers meet ever-expanding storage requirements.

Moving the Application or the Information

Rotational speeds are at 7,200-10,000rpm. MTBF hours of SATA drives are now a minimum of 600,000 with some drives exceeding one million hours. The new opportunity for SATA emerges where the line blurs between on-line Tier 1 storage and near-line Tier 2 storage, and in the management of all data (Tier 1 and Tier 2). As such, there is little question that SATA should be playing a larger role in the data center. Within the last year all of this changed.