Lenovo System Storage: Overview

The Problem

As schools and colleges rely more heavily on electronically-stored information, the amount of data that schools are obliged to hold increases significantly. To resolve this, many schools will purchase and manage an additional server (likely to be an additional fileserver or domain controller) or some form of basic storage like a NAS box.

A drawback to these solutions is that the data to be stored will be distributed across these additional servers leaving the school with increased running costs and complexity. More seriously, there is no redundancy because of single points of failure. Consequently, server failure has an immediate impact.

Consider the following:

• How are you managing your storage? Is it flexible enough to grow when you do?
• Do your students and staff regularly hit their storage quotas?
• How are you managing your backups?
• How much data are you managing?
• How do you see your storage requirements growing over the next two to three years with increased multimedia and video requirements?
• Do you have redundant access to your data? If a RAID controller or server fails, will you be able to still access your work?
• Does your storage support virtualisation and high-availability?

Storwize V3700 V2 Data sheet The 24-bay Small Form Factor version of the V3700 V2:

The Solution

Lenovo System Storage paves the way for schools to take advantage of consolidating and sharing their data with a SAN offering enterprise-class RAID storage. A wide range of connectivity options (high-performance Fibre Channel (FC), Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and/or iSCSI) are supported. With multiple host connectivity options and SAS back-end technology, Lenovo storage is designed to improve productivity through data consolidation, availability, performance and scalability.

The storage can grow as your requirements increase by adding extra enclosures. Maximum capacity is an incredible 3.68 PB. Smart SSD-optimised technology allows you to get the best performance without the expense of an all-flash array.