smartSAN Control

When we designed our software we wanted to make certain that it is easy to use and help system administrators accomplish their objectives in very little time. Our smartSAN Control interface lets you control the entire storage network from a single screen.

Our web interface allows the user to access and control all the necessary administrative tasks on one easy to use screen. There is no single point of failure; there is no need to connect to one specific location. Our smart detection control mechanism lets the user connect to any point in the system network and gather the necessary information on all data storage systems.

The following is a list of some of our advanced software features, many of which are found in more expensive storage systems:

Just-in-time usage (Thin provisioning)

You can create any size "virtual" volume, regardless of whether or not the actual hard disk space exists. As the volume grows with actual user data, more disks can be added to the system only as needed. For example, a user can create a 10TB volume with only a physical 200GB disk drive in service. AS the actual user data approaches 200GB another drive can be added just in time. This allows for capital expenditures to be staged over time.

Automated, cost-effective Management of Inactive Data

smartSAN Control has the ability to automatically move data based on its importance to different tiers of storage. Important information like emails, calendars, organization documents, legal documents can be automatically assigned to the most robust/reliable and most frequently backed up storage on tier 1. Secondary documents and all personal data can be moved to tier 3 storage which may employ less expensive SATA disk drives with no back-up requirements.

Cost Saving Data De-Duplication

Storage resources are often wasted with numerous copies of the Organization's data. smartSAN clustering software allows global organizations to work from within the same file store. The software will automatically keep only a single copy of any resource and tracks the location of that resource.

Advanced Disaster Recovery

Our smartSAN replication technology was designed to consume less disk space, bandwidth and management than traditional storage solutions. Most replication technologies need to replicate the full size of the storage set to its destination which can take anywhere from hours to days. smartSAN replication only transfers the existing changes for a large savings in organization bandwidth and productivity. Disaster recovery replication points are easily configurable and manageable and testable.

Fast Data Restore

smartSAN recovery points can automatically keep track of every change down to the last letter of a document. In the event of document corruption, an administrator can reverse within seconds any changes, effectively removing any malicious modifications. Only those changes that have transpired from the recovery point would need to be restored back to the storage, often only taking minutes depending on the number of changes, saving endless hours of costly downtime for an organization.

Flexibility for Virtualization in the Data Center

smartSAN virtualization saves organization resources by allowing users to create an efficient shared storage pool. This pool can be comprised from any storage that exists on the network. Disks that are unused in one department location can be easily added to other unused drives from another location. Plus with "thin provisioning" the storage pool can easily dynamically grow to meet any new needs of the organization.

smartSAN virtualization was also designed to work seamlessly with current server virtualization technologies. Marner solutions are compatible with the existing server virtualization software that is available today (VMware, XenSource, MS Virtual, etc.). The result is a significant improvement in storage utilization, performance, flexibility and cost for end users.

Performance Growth Path

Marner clustered file services easily configure to the performance needs of the organization. Often the upgrade path was expensive proprietary solutions with down times. Marner's cluster software distributes the file input and output operations across multiple storage controllers matching even the highest performance requirements.