Startup aims storage solution at providers - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Startup aims storage solution at providers

By Sonia R. Lelii, eWEEK
January 22, 2001
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Startup-aims-storage-solution-at-providers/0,139023166,120150532,00.htm

Compared with their enterprise counterparts, SSPs and ISPs are a needy bunch. With large numbers of customers whose storage needs are constantly fluctuating, storage service providers and Internet service providers demand storage servers that are flexible and scalable.

Cereva Networks startup believes it has the answer. The company, which launched last week, is planning to release a storage system this quarter designed for service providers. It will include integrated network and switch capabilities tied to common storage disk array and will be able to scale up to 230 terabytes. By the end of the second quarter, the company plans to pump that up to 920 terabytes. That is comparable with Hitachi Data Systems' Lightning 9900 series, which scales to 37 terabytes, and EMC Symmetrix, which scales to 23 terabytes.

Beta tester Peter Kirwan, chief technology officer for NaviSite said Cereva's system is custom-fitted for ISP user. A key feature is that additional servers can be deployed disrupting the system. Virutalisation software turns the physical disk drives into logica pool.

"They thought of all the features you would never do for an individual enterprise company," Kirwan said. "The way they made the system, you can hook up lots and lots of server to it, run a huge amount of bandwith, and you won't have performance problems."

One analyst said Cereva's product, which has yet to be named, is the first of its kind in the centralised storage market. "This (device) is very unusual," said Arun Tanega, an analyst at Enterprise Storage Group. "It's different than anything else that is out in the market right now. This is a huge challenge (Cereva) has taken on, both in the investment of money and the kind of talent it takes for a challenge like this."

Cereva's device is not for IT managers who need to scale to only 1 or 2 terabytes of data, Tanega said.

The system is built for the Internet, not for individual enterprises, company officials said. Products such as EMC's Symmetrix and Network Appliance's filers are built for the traditional enterprise storage user. Service providers have to deal with the changing needs of customers, who may need 500MB of storage on month and several terabytes the next.