Reliability Beyond Enterprise Storage

Traditional Enterprise Storage uses RAID 5/6 to protect from data loss due to disk failures and redundant system components to ensure availability in the event of system component failures. As these systems grow in scale, adding more and more redundant fail over components increase the overall system complexity and cost significantly.

Low cost NAS also offers RAID protection but typically does not provide the redundant system components to reduce the cost. For smaller, standalone NAS systems that claim the protection of RAID without redundant components throughout the system - they are just a single component away from failure. This single point of failure has proven to be one of the main limiting factors of low cost NAS products.

The innovative approach of NASg enables reliability and availability beyond what is possible with RAID and redundant components - at a fraction of the cost. NASg eliminates the cost and complexity of building a highly available system by using many simple and low cost NAS devices like storage building blocks in a grid - where any number of these nodes can fail entirely without loss of data or system down time. And if nodes fail, they are quickly and simply replaced by attaching another low cost node to the network and turning it on - this eliminates system degradation and the risk exposure common with RAID rebuilds.

Eliminate Single Points of Failure

NASg has no single point of failure - every node in a grid is an equal peer node - there are no central controlling nodes or clusters of nodes that can fail. With traditional storage systems, the server, even with redundant parts is still a single point of failure (and can fail). The unique combination of a grid architecture with many small peer components and redundancy spread throughout the grid creates a structure designed to withstand many concurrent failures without data loss or system downtime.

Eliminate Rebuild Exposure

For anyone who has had to wait to rebuild a RAID array while system performance degrades by 50% or more and where the potential of another disk failure before the rebuild completes means total data loss - this time can seem like an eternity and the result is not always what you expected. If you google "RAID rebuild failure" - you will find an entire industry dedicated to data recovery due to failed RAID rebuilds.

NASg eliminates rebuild exposure in two critical ways. First, NASg allows failures beyond 1 or 2 disks. This can be 4,5,6, 10 or 20 storage nodes depending on the size of your grid and the fault tolerance you set. Second, NASg drastically reduces the time it takes to rebuild. RAID rebuilds utilize the maximum system resources available which is why performance is seriously degraded during this period. This process is serial and constrained by processing power to rebuild large quantities of data. NASg breaks this limitation. NASg Parallel Rebuild distributes the workload in parallel across every available node in the grid. This approach can harness hundreds of times the processing power and operate in parallel to drastically reduce the rebuild exposure.

Eliminate the Cost of Redundant Systems

It is complex and expensive to build large storage systems with redundant components. It is also complex and expensive to operate these systems. They require greater expertise and increased maintenance as well as increased power, cooling and space - this is the "Enterprise" premium you pay for reliability.

NASg eliminates the need for this waste of resources. By replacing large complex systems with small, simple, easily replaced nodes in a grid - complexity and cost is eliminated. And when failures do occur, it is inexpensive to have a few extra low cost, low powered storage nodes on standby to automatically take over for you.