Analysis

IBM's affordable clustered file storage

posted on 24 April 2008 11:23

Scale-out File Services NOT expensive

IBM has a not very well-known Scale-out File Services (SoFS) offering that provides a clustered file service resource which can grow. It is, contrary to what I wrote here, not expensive. In fact it can be 40 percent less expensive than competing products.

Mack Basil, Global Offering Executive for IBM's Worldwide Storage and Data, me that SoFS is a Linux/Intel system with a rich set of functions. Amongst other things heays it provides:-

- clustered Samba support "unique in the market" with exceptional throughput for Windows clients
- ultra-fast throughput for NFS, HTTP...etc.
- ultra-fast file scanning capability million files per second
- built-in dynamic ILM support with fast, medium, slow and tape storage pools

Each system has its configuration tuned to a customer's needs. SoFS can begin in a configuration with a few terabytes and scale up to a multi-petabyte level.

Perhaps SoFS deseves to be better known.

^{[Chris Mellor.]}

tags: SoFS