Friday, August 1, 2008

Hosted Malware Protection - save hardware and personnel

Here is a great money and time saving idea. And best of all it is not much more than buying the software and managing your Anti-Malware protection yourself.

Panda Managed Office Protection is a web-based subscription service that removes the cost and management overheads of hardware, personnel and other resources dedicated to antivirus for SMBs.

As a Hosted Service, it provides an always up and easy to use web console which allows organizations to manage their protection anytime from anywhere, reducing complexity to the maximum. Since Panda Managed Office Protection can be installed and managed remotely it can also be the ideal solution for branch offices from large organizations which are not connected to the LAN, without additional infrastructure investments.

NavigateStorage, a premier Panda Security Partner offers Panda's Technologies. Why not give it a try today ---no obligation. .

Thursday, July 31, 2008

NetworkWorld Clear Choice Test - Show me the money"

In the July 28, 2008 edition of NetworkWorld, a great magazine, a comprehensive comparative test was conducted on the leading iSCSI Storage Area Network vendors. These vendors included NetApp (FAS2050), Compellent Technologies (Storage Center), HP (StorageWorks 20121), Dell (Equallogic PS5000XV), Lefthand Networks (NSM2120), StoneFly (Storage Concentrator), FalconStor Software (NSS-S12), Reldata (9240 Unified Storage Gateway), Nexsan (SATABeast) and products from Kano and D-Link which both ranked at the bottom.

NavigateStorage has reviewed the NetworkWorld study and found it to be very informative from a "technical" standpoint and well worth the read but we urge folks to be aware of the technical issues but don't forget the realities of today's business environment. Fact of the matter is that some of the arrays such as the NetApp FAS2050 at $69,960 scoring 4.2, the Compellent StorageCenter at $68,800 scoring 4.1 and the Lefthand Networks NSM2120 at $96,000 scoring 3.9 should rank highest at those prices... what would you expect?


Now I can't comment on the HP StorageWorks but I can comment on the StoneFly array at $26,436 scoring 3.9 equal to the Lefthand Networks array. My experience has been that the StoneFly, dollar for dollar, provides the outstanding performance, interoperability, data protection, enterprise features, management and performance. And if HA, full features and scalability are to your liking, check out the StoneFly OptiSAN. Just contact us for the full scoop. It is well worth the look see.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Storage Virtualization

According to Wikipedia, Storage virtualization refers to the process of abstracting logical storage from physical storage. The term is today used to describe this abstraction at any layer in the storage software and hardware stack.

But in more understandable language, storage virtualization means taking the chains off storage and allowing it to meet the needs of a company that has created virtualized servers and now recongnizes that the new bottle neck they created is storage.

Yesterday NavigateStorage, my company founded in 1999, organized a webex for just such a company. They had successfully installed VMware and had created a couple dozen virtual servers and suddenly found that their storage consumption was far out stripping their installed capacity. Knowing that they needed more they contacted us and asked for help. The company felt that they needed about 6TB immediately and would probably grow to about 10TB over the next year or two.

The solution we proposed was a storage array, certified by VMware and designed to allow virtualization. The cost was $17,000 including 10 - 1TB drives, 5 empty slots for growth, unlimited telephone support and 3 years of next business day service. And more importantly it was designed with a GUI that made the process easy and affordable. Our solution basically presented a "pool of storage" to the GUI and permitted them to intelligently use the storage to meet the needs - both the known needs, as well as, the unknown needs. For example in a true virtualized environment the user could:

* Truly optimize storage utilization
* Create volumes that can include drives of dissimilar sizes
* Support multiple RAID levels on a single drive
* Support RAID migration and drive roaming

The solution we presented, a family of solutions really, was specifically designed as simple to use, cost-effective storage for business environments, and to complement leading applications such as VMware:
• As storage requirements grow in future years, the array provides an extremely cost effective growth path that leverages a customer’s investment throughout the lifecycle of the product.
• A key market differentiator of the solution is the systems 10GbE high performance architecture, which enables either 8 1GbE ports or a true 10GbE interface in a single storage appliance. And you can migrate at your own pace.
• Real time volume expansion, along with virtualized storage, simplifies the allocation of storage as new virtual machines are brought on line.

"Virtualized servers create a rational consolidation point for early adoption of 10GbE iSCSI SANS since they provide good economic leverage and they can take advantage of the increased bandwidth."

If you would like to also see this informative storage virtualization webex please let us know.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Why archive email, IM and more?

Enterprise Archive Solution (EAS)

Email and file archiving that both optimizes storage and provides easy access for discovery and review

As the amount of unstructured information such as business critical email messages and office documents continues to grow, organizations face increasing challenges managing content servers and keeping data storage costs down. Compounding the challenge of growing data storage maintenance and capital costs is the need to be able to retrieve any corporate information (current and historic) on demand. Industry and government regulations such as the new FRCP, Sarbanes-Oxley, SEC 17a-4, HIPPA, the Data Protection Act, and the USA Patriot Act—as well as the ability to respond to legal discovery requests—have made the capability to efficiently capture, protect, find and recover relevant emails and files a top business priority.
ZANTAZ Enterprise Archive Solution™ (EAS) is a highly scalable and flexible archiving platform that enables your organization to capture and preserve email messages, attachments, and files in a way that both optimizes storage and allows immediate access for discovery and review by courts, regulators, administrators, and end-users. Powered by IDOL, EAS automates the processing of enormous volumes of information, dynamically exposing the patterns, linkages and meaning within.

Reducing the cost and hassle of mailbox management for both IT and users

ZANTAZ EAS applies corporate policies to selectively offload email messages and files from servers into the archive. The EAS single instance storage algorithm eliminates wasteful redundancy while preserving and managing each specific instance of a file or message. When combined with highly efficient compression, the result is unparalleled storage optimization, with an overall reduction in stored content volume of 50 to 90 percent. Reduced storage requirements and more stable, responsive servers translate directly to a dramatic reduction in storage and back-up costs as well as productivity gains for both administrators and end-users, who no longer have to deal with mailbox quotas or unstable servers and can easily and transparently access all archived information.

Ensuring ongoing compliance with internal and external regulations and policies

By consolidating email messages, attachments and files into a centrally managed, scalable repository, ZANTAZ EAS gives your organization control over its valuable information assets—control that enables you to maintain ongoing compliance with internal corporate governance policies and procedures or externally mandated regulations. With EAS, administrators can set automatic retention and disposition policies for highly granular control over the information lifecycle.

To comply with corporate policies, information can be automatically classified based on specific keywords contained in messages and files or on metadata, such as address fields, date fields, and subject fields. EAS also supports mailbox journaling, capturing a copy of all email messages in the archive and ensuring preservation even if deleted or moved by users prior to archiving. And
ZANTAZ EAS Supervisor provides capabilities to closely monitor and supervise emails and attachments.

Providing cost-effective, enterprise-wide support for legal discovery

In the event of a legal discovery request, your ZANTAZ EAS enterprise-wide archive can be searched with unparalleled security, scalability and performance driven by the IDOL platform on which EAS is built. By storing corporate information in an EAS repository, you avoid the need to manually search each desktop and server, dramatically reducing the time and cost involved in searching for information as well as the possibility of missing relevant information. Furthermore, with EAS, archived information can be rapidly reviewed and tagged within the context of a specific legal matter, with legal holds enacted to ensure the preservation of the information throughout the duration of the case. Proactively managing corporate information with EAS minimizes the risk of legal fines and penalties as well as the lasting damage to corporate brand equity that can result from litigation.

ZANTAZ EAS Product Family

The products in the ZANTAZ EAS family all share a common, distributed architecture built on the IDOL platform and engineered for robust scalability, performance and flexibility. The uniquely versatile architecture supports a wide variety of document storage options, including SAN, NAS, and onsite or hosted compliant media. In addition to EAS for Exchange, EAS for Notes, EAS for SharePoint, and EAS for Files, the EAS product family includes:

NavigateStorage, one of the original Value Added Resellers since 2001, is expert in this technology and available to help you get just the right solution for your business. Drop us a note or call 978-318-9000