Your data is the most valuable asset that you have—it is what runs your business. Robust, scalable, and manageable storage is a top priority for your IT department. The high availability of storage, applications and services is a critical requirement for your business to be competitive. But even as data grows, you can lower storage management costs and still benefit from an easy-to-manage, high-availability storage foundation that scales as needed.

High Availability Storage Infrastructure, an important featured technology in the Asianux platform, satisfies these needs. It includes high availability service and application clustering, file systems—clustered file systems, network file systems (NAS), volume managers, networked storage systems and drivers (SAN)—and the management of all these components working together.

Overall, High Availability Storage Infrastructure protects your data in a way that lowers costs, simplifies storage management and, most important, keeps your enterprise running.

Versatile Linux Storage Management

Data storage and retrieval is an increasing problem for most large organizations. In recent years, many enterprises have seen a significant increase in data volumes, in terms of both production and retention. As a consequence, enterprises are continually seeking cost-effective storage methods that provide easy and reliable storage management. Asianux Server is ideal as a Linux storage server with its built-in support for iSCSI, and its ability to provide high availability for mission-critical workloads.

iSCSI is a new technology that combines SCSI, Ethernet and TCP/IP to create simple, yet powerful IP-based storage area networks (SANS). iSCSI SANs provide a high-speed, low-cost, long-distance storage solution for Web sites, service providers and enterprises, and is a central component in our Linux storage server.

iSCSI delivers several key advantages because it:

• Builds on stable and familiar standards.
• Creates a SAN with a reduced total cost of ownership. Installation and maintenance costs are low since the TCP/IP suite can use commodity hardware, which reduces the need to hire specialized personnel.
• Enables Ethernet transmissions to travel over the Global IP Network, eliminating any distance limitations.
• Provides a high degree of interoperability by reducing disparate networks and cabling, and by using regular Ethernet switches instead of special Fibre Channel switches.
• Scales to 10 Gigabit. This is comparable to OC-192 SONET (Synchronous Optical Network) rates in Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs).