gridstore - the power of many

NASg Platform line

The NASg Platform is software that combines the compute resources from many machines in a network to create a shared storage grid. The NASg platform consists of two components:

1) NASg Management Console
2) NASg Nodes

NASg Console

The NASg Management Console is a Microsoft Windows based MMC Snap-in that directly integrates with the Microsoft Systems Management Framework and controls the NASg platform.

The NASg Console operates out-of-band from the NASg platform so there is no dependency on the console in order for a grid to operate.

Key Features of the NASg Console include:

MMC Architecture - ensures seamless integration with existing Microsoft Systems Management Tools and resources such as Active Directory. The NASg Console can be snapped into an existing console and take advantage of tools sets and work in a manner familiar to the administrator.

Grid Based Console - The NASg Console is accessible by the administrator from any node within the grid. Administrators do not need to be tied to their desk in order to access the console.

Remote Access - The NASg console is fully available over remote connections and has been designed specifically for Managed Service Providers or remote administration.

Remote Installation - A NASg platform can be deployed in minutes to exiting desktops, servers or NAS devices from a single console. Any machine within a domain can be quickly setup with NASg access. All nodes within a grid can be remotely managed through the NASg Console to eliminate time-consuming client setup and management.

Real Time Monitoring - The NASg console allows administrators to monitor and control a NASg platform in real time with numerous WMI events or SNMP events to provide insight and actionable analysis (Not available in beta 1).

Analytics - Gain better insight to storage utilization through analytics. NASg Console provides analytics in various rollups from hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly intelligence gathered from the real time monitors. (Not available in beta 1).

NASg Nodes

Each NASg node communicates through a NASg software component that resides on every machine in the gridstore. This is the core of a NASg installation and provides the communication platform over which all events take place. The NASg core platform is a small piece of software (300 KB) that loads as a service at machine startup and governs how that machine interacts with other nodes in the grid. At setup, each node is designated as one of the following node types:

Server - Server nodes provide storage resources to a gridstore and process requests form other nodes in the grid for storage resources. Each server node works independently from other nodes and is responsible to ensure its consistency with other nodes. A server node can be any machine in a network that has direct attached storage resources. These can be existing file servers and NAS devices or NASg enabled storage nodes.

Client - Clients nodes consume storage resources from a gridstore. A client node can be any machine in a network and typically would be client desktops / laptops or servers that access and consume storage resources. In a NASg platform, the client node (along with the windows access rights) controls access to resources in the grid and requests appropriate locks etc in order to access a file. The gridstore appears as a standard CIFS based network disk on a client machine.

Peer - A node can be both a Server and Client of the gridstore. There may be times when it is desirable for an existing file server to contribute storage resources to a gridstore and also utilize this storage. A Peer node allows this to be achieved.

Each of the configurations above is available through the one NASg platform executable. All of the above configurations can be set through a startup parameter or the node that can be set via the NASg console.

Availability: The NASg platform will be available for partners to purchase and download directly from the Gridstore website. A single site license is required for each small-medium sized business customer and starts at $800. Partners can contact us for further information on license costs.