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Aberdeen Virtualizes SAN: The AberSAN delivers virtual SAN for local storage

Server and storage manufacturer Aberdeen LLC releases the SAN Virtual Appliance (SAN-VA) Plugin to its successful AberSAN scalable storage platform. The AberSAN brings the simplification of a network attached storage (NAS) server to the SAN environment by combining Fibre Channel and iSCSI block level connections with multi-user network sharing. The Aberdeen SAN-VA Plugin provides a virtual SAN on a VMware ESX server by utilizing internal disk resources on an AberSAN into a shareable pool of storage.

Introduced in early Q2 2010, the AberSAN scalable storage platform incorporates the ZFS file system, powered by NexentaStor. Aberdeen designed the AberSAN to grow as an organization’s storage needs multiply by removing storage and partition size limitations to deliver ease of use and flexibility.


“The AberSAN product combined with NexentaStor is a superior storage solution for virtualized environments compared to proprietary and legacy technologies,” stated Jason Yoho, vice president of business development for Nexenta. “Nexenta’s VMDC application enables customers to manage VMware, Citrix Xen and Hyper-V environments from a single integrated management console. Aberdeen’s AberSAN offering helps enterprise customers implement cost-effective, high performance storage by taking advantage of NexentaStor features like in-line de-duplication, unlimited snap-shots, thin provisioning, hybrid storage pooling, and native utilization of SSDs.”

The AberSAN Virtual Appliance Plugin provides a cost-effective, feature-rich virtual SAN solution from small and medium businesses (SMB) to large enterprises alike. When the Aberdeen’s SAN-VA Plugin is deployed on a single VMware ESX server, that server can share local storage resources with other servers in the environment. This is accomplished without the need for external storage arrays, host bus adapters (HBA), or costly switches. The included internal disk drives are detected and incorporated into the management console through a simple GUI. At that point, the local storage pool can be provisioned and allocated via the iSCSI protocol, which operates over standard Ethernet cabling.

The virtual SAN Plugin can be deployed on two AberSAN servers to enable high availability (HA). Multiple AberSANs can share storage with each other as well as additional Aberdeen Stirling VMware Certified servers. In this model, each AberSAN with the SAN-VA Plugin maintains mirrored data from the other SAN server. If one of the servers is lost, all virtual machines that were running on the failed server can restart using the storage resources of the remaining server. Reliability and uptime are optimized as applications are quickly brought back online.

“By consolidating the elements of a shared storage environment, Aberdeen’s AberSAN Virtual Appliance Plugin offers a cost-effective solution for providing highly available shared scalable storage to the VMware environment,” says Jack Tateel, Executive VP for Aberdeen. “Simply put, the SAN-VA Plugin transforms the AberSAN into a VMware Certified server that virtualizes the local storage, powered by NexentaStor.”


The AberSAN, based on the Intel® Xeon® processor 5600 series, can deliver future storage growth through 10Gbit Ethernet and 8Gbit Fibre channel connectivity to help customers manage large collections of infrastructure, including CPUs, storage and networking as a seamless, flexible and dynamic cloud storage environment.

Enterprise class data protection features are included with the AberSAN SAN-VA Plugin, including; Thin Provisioning technology, data mirroring, highly efficient snapshots, and WAN optimized IP replication. By consolidating all the elements of a shared storage environment into a single server, the Aberdeen AberSAN, with the SAN-VA Plugin decreases operating costs by minimizing consumption of physical storage resources and provides a cost-efficient solution for delivering highly available shared scalable storage to any VMware environment.

The virtual SAN unified storage AberSAN boasts breakthrough storage performance, managed shared storage improvements and virtualization benefits. A well equipped 8TB AberSAN scalable appliance with SAN-VA starts at an aggressively low $12,995 MSRP and larger models can be custom configured up to the 132TB AberSAN Z80.

Highlights include:

• ZFS in-line block level deduplication

• VMware Ready Certified

• Powered by NexentaStor 3.0 and optimized for virtualization environments

• Inherent virtualization enabling thin provisioning and I/O pooling

• Multi-user file-level and block-level Read/Write capable

• Simultaneous SATA/SAS hard drive integration with emphasis on expandability

• Intel Xeon processor 5600 series with 32nm fabrication

• Memory capacity up to 192GB/s

• RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 configurablee

• iSCSI, 10Gbit and Fibre connectivity

Availability and Support:

The AberSAN Z20 is currently available worldwide, and can be configured to meet even the most stringent requirements. Larger capacity AberSAN Z-Series scalable models 32TB AberSAN Z30, 48TB AberSAN Z50 and the 132TB AberSAN Z80 are available for immediate shipping. Customized shared storage servers can be configured via the Aberdeen Web site (http://www.aberdeeninc.com) or by contacting an Aberdeen account executive at (800) 552-6868 or +1 (562) 699-6998 from outside the United States. Aberdeen has a media recognized, industry leading 5-year limited warranty as well as a free 30-day trial assessment program with all of its branded servers.

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