Compellent 'Blocks' ILM

Compellent Technologies Inc. plans general availability next week of an application that simplifies information lifecycle management (ILM) in its storage arrays.

The Data Progression application runs on the vendor's Storage Center SANs, automatically grabbing blocks of inactive data inside files and moving them from Fibre Channel to lower-cost SATA drives. (Compellent's SANs, which typically range from 3 Tbytes to 7 Tbytes, mix and match SATA and FC drives.)

The software, which costs about $10,000 to license on a typical system of about 5 Tbytes, also automatically categorizes tiers of storage based on drive type, RAID level, and media type. Customers have the option of reprioritizing the levels via the product's user interface.

"It's not real sophisticated, but it's a good way for SMBs to get ILM," says one industry analyst, who asked not to be named. He says existing products from EMC, Pillar Data Systems, and others have the ability to automatically port data by file or application to cheaper storage tiers. But few do it by access frequency alone, and they're usually bigger, more expensive, or more sophisticated than Data Progression, requiring more knowledge and preparation from users.

For smaller companies, that level of input may simply be too much trouble, particularly for administrators juggling a range of data center and storage tasks.Compellent also claims the new application simplifies block-level ILM, whereas other lower-end products deal only in files.

Compellent's new application has reportedly been in beta test with a group of existing customers. One of these, Ryan Fletcher, head systems engineer at Whitehall City Schools, Ohio, was among the beta users of Data Progression. He claims to have automatically migrated 85 percent of data for 3,500 users to SATA from Fibre Channel, "without any manual intervention." He says that has increased performance and availability on his Fibre Channel disks. At press time, Fletcher was unavailable to comment on his selection process or the costs involved.

Compellent is also releasing another, similarly priced Storage Center app called Instant Replay, which uses an integral iSCSI card to link the SAN directly to an IP router. The vendor claims this lets users replicate data to a number of remote servers without taking down the SAN, and to test a replication to one server while actually replicating to another.

Compellent appears to be happy with its focus on small to midrange companies, where it appears to be making a living for itself. The firm has 80 employees, roughly 200 customers, and about 75 business partners. It scored $15 million last May bringing total funding to $38 million. (See Compellent Corrals $15M.)

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and SwitchCompanies mentioned in this article: