Startup Candera Inc. this week rolled out an appliance that links Fibre Channel storage arrays and server-attached storage to form a heterogeneous pool of resources that can be provisioned from one spot.
Called the SCE 510, the appliance connects to a Fibre Channel switch port and controls the management and provisioning of multivendor storage arrays, host computers, switches and host bus adapters. From its position in a storage-area network (SAN), it can enact rules an IT administrator sets that affect how storage is added, removed or moved around the network.
Candera’s appliance also works out-of-the-box with a variety of storage devices from vendors such as Brocade Communications Systems Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., EMC Corp., Emulex Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
When placed in a SAN, the SCE 510 discovers and monitors storage devices and then reports on I/O patterns and fault management. Using policies, the appliance enables the provisioning of storage. As storage is added to a network, the SCE 510 creates a profile of it, which it uses when storage needs to be reallocated.
S. ‘Sunni’ Sundaresh, Candera’s president and CEO, claims that customers often use a collection of tools from different vendors to manage and provision their SANs.
“The management problem is solved in the storage subsystem in a homogeneous environment or in a heterogeneous environment with software running on host servers,” Sundaresh says.
Candera competes with other virtualization vendors such as HP, IBM, DataCore and FalconStor. Unlike DataCore, FalconStor and IBM products, which are installed on an off-the-shelf server, Candera’s box is specially built using ASICs.
The SCE 510 will be available this quarter in a redundant, clustered configuration. Replication and chargeback capabilities will be added in future releases. The company would not reveal prices.