LeftHand Networks

Simple, Scalable iSCSI SAN Solutions

LeftHand Networks were one of the first compnies to specialise in Ethernet based storage. Rather than using proprietary storage controllers with capacity and performance limitations, LeftHand uses embedded virtualisation software to aggregate multiple x86 hardware platforms together as a single storage system.

This approach delivers a simple to deploy, easy to manage system that can grow as needed.

Every LeftHand SAN includes a comprehensive enterprise storage management feature set, at no additional cost.

There is no need to pay for replication software, or software that enhances snapshot functionality and the expensive software support contracts that come with them.

LeftHand sells systems that include both hardware and software and support contracts cover both hardware and software support

Advantages of LeftHand

By scaling out instead of scaling up behind a controller with capacity and performance limitations, LeftHand SANs have some advantages over legacy storage systems.

Because each storage node adds to performance when capacity is added, you never have to over-purchase up front. Legacy storage vendors will ask what is your expected growth rate and have you select a controller based on those assumptions to avoid painful controller upgrades, however, that means you are likely to purchase a more powerful and expensive controller up front even though you don’t need it at that particular point in time. With Lefthand you only purchase what you need today because you can grow in the future without having to worry about painful system upgrades.

A LeftHand SAN also scales non-disruptively. No need to redefine RAID groups or reconfigure zones when you increase capacity and performance. Adding a storage node is point and click, the system does the rest. Keep adding nodes to your system and avoid the capacity and performance limitations imposed by controllers.

Integrated Data Protection & System Reliability

Business continuity has changed. Years ago when most storage systems were designed, IT equipment was located at one site, locations where employees worked were centralised, and the most important aspect impacting delivering business continuity with IT systems was system reliability.

Legacy storage vendors increased system reliability by designing in redundant components, but system reliability alone doesn’t cut it for today’s business continuity needs. IT equipment is geographically dispersed, information is critical to every employees job and they require access to it 24x7x365 so not only is it critical that systems don’t fail because of a single internal component, systems must stay online even in the event of power and air conditioning outages, or multiple component failures.

LeftHand provides a comprehensive set of integrated high availability and disaster recovery features with every SAN. Designed to protect against more than just component failures, LeftHand delivers on today’s need for business continuity.

Integrated Disaster Recovery

Disasters happen, entire sites go down. To provide true business continuity storage systems must be able to sustain site failures. LeftHand’s remote copy provides a simple way to store a 2nd copy of data at a remote location. LeftHand is definitely not alone with this capability, however, the devil is in the details. There are many issues that arise when implementing DR and you should be sure that any storage system is doing more than just making a copy of the data the remote sit.

The first issue is capacity utilisation at the remote site. This may seem out of place when discussing replication but many solutions require you to reserve more than 100% of the original size of the data. This is because they actually need multiple copies of the data at the remote site because one is just a snapshot and the other copy is required so you can actually mount and use the data. This forces people to spend a lot of money on storage for extra copies of data that shouldn’t be needed. LeftHand thinly provisions our remote copies, so no only do you avoid having to guess how much space to reserve, the copy of data at the remote site is just that – a copy. It takes up the exact same amount of space as the original data.

The next issue that crops up is bandwidth. Because storage systems are constantly trying to keep the data at the remote site updated, depending on how much changes in a day, the replication can take up a large portion of your office’s internet connection bandwidth – not good. To alleviate this issue, LeftHand provides bandwidth management functionality or some people call it bandwidth throttling so you can define how much of the bandwidth can be used by replication. If you’re thinking about DR, make sure any system you’re considering has this ability.

It’s easy to create and maintain a copy of data at a remote site, it’s a bit more difficult to make that copy a primary that can be written to and fail your applications over to it. Be sure to investigate the processes and procedures required to fail over to a remote site. LeftHand provides a simple wizard that walks administrators through the steps required.

Failback is even more difficult, not only can it be a completely different process than failover, but some systems require that you send ALL of the data back to the primary site – not just the changes that occurred while the remote site was primary. This means you may have to consume all of the internet bandwidth until the entire data set has been transferred or worse yet, you have to ship a system back to the primary site, set it up and do a copy locally. Neither are elegant solutions. LeftHand’s failback requires that only the changes that occurred are sent back to the primary site greatly simplifying and speeding up the failback process.

For more information about Lefthand Network SANs or how SDT can help you virtualise or consolidate you companies storage contact us on 01344 870 062 or click here to request a call back from one of our consultants.