Network file virtualisation

Exploding data growth rates are pushing bigger users to consider more intelligent ways of managing storage. And for those with more than a Tb of NAS (network attached storage), network file virtualisation looks the way to go. Not much argument about that – but more about how to do it, with storage virtualisation leaders like Rainfinity, Acopia, Neo Path Networks and Nuview proposing different solutions. Jack Norris, vice president of marketing for Rainfinity, which last month launched v4.5 of its system, says the choices are about how best to maintain data flows in 24 x 7 global user environments. The most popular method has been switch-based management, with an appliance parked in front of all the NAS. But Norris points to limitations, including its single point of failure, deployment and maintenance issues. Now, he says Rainfinity has solved those with a hybrid approach. “Our RainStorage appliance architecture is stateless – and we leverage industry standard namespaces – like DFS and Automount. “That means we’ve got scaleability, there’s no single point of failure and no bottleneck. With this system, users can virtualise very large environments without management or risk problems.”