If storage system outages prevent users from completing work or closing business, damage can be extreme, with lost opportunities and lost business. For most organizations, it is unacceptable to tell customers, suppliers or business partners: "The system is down, we can't help you right now". In e-commerce applications, an extended period of unavailability has the potential to put a company out of business, as customers click away from your site and onto a competitor's. Along with a target to maintain 100 percent availability, IT managers need to handle storage requirements that are increasing exponentially.
BlueArc recognizes that both of these goals are important. Its Si7500 Storage System(TM) is a network attached storage solution with an architecture targeted at meeting both scalability and availability needs. The system delivers scalability with wire speed gigabit rate file serving performance and the ability to add storage capacity online - up to 250TB.
This paper describes the Si7500 Storage System High Availability architecture and shows how the design meets the stated availability targets.