RAID by Active Storage to Store Metadata Volumes Critical for Media SANs

Active Storage, Inc. announced the introduction of Innerpool, a new class of RAID storage solution designed to reliably store Metadata volumes that are critical to Media focused SANs (storage area networks).

An Innerpool card installed inside an Xserve

Featuring an innovative ‘Zero U’ design, Innerpool actually resides inside a SAN’s Metadata Controller – yet provides powerful on-board RAID storage via 2.5" rotating media drives or performance-tuned Intel SSD drives.

Innerpool is installed in pairs, one in each Xsan Metadata Controller and hosts the critical Metadata LUN, rather than tasking the storage systems that host data volumes.

"Customers have long asked us to build a smaller version of our ActiveRAID system to host the relatively small Metadata volumes," said Active Storage, CEO Alex Grossman. "We’ve studied the solution for a long time, and developed patent-pending technology to deliver all of the reliability and performance that we’re known for – even on-board 72-hour battery backed cache, all on a card that fits inside of an Apple Xserve or Mac Pro."

Noted SAN architect and author of Xsan 2 Administration: A Guide to Designing, Deploying, and Maintaining Xsan, Dr. Robert Kite, was clearly impressed. "Active Storage are clearly doing the most exciting thinking for SAN architects like me. With Innerpool they have elegantly solved one of the most common sticking points in getting the most out of your SAN – Innerpool lets me move my Metadata volume off of my primary storage controllers to a self-contained, battery backed, redundant fibre channel volume that’s actually inside my Primary and Secondary Metadata Controllers."

"With Innerpool I can now free up RAID controller resources and unlock performance. I can conserve fibre channel ports, and I don’t have to add more resources or take up any more rack space. I’m simply leveraging the existing Metadata server host systems," said Dr. Kite. "Innerpool allows incredible flexibility; it allows a small installation to get the most out of a single ActiveRAID, or help large and complex multi-SAN environments squeeze every bit of performance out of large SAN volumes that span several ActiveRAIDs."

Innerpool Features
Innerpool, with a patent-pending design, is a self-contained RAID system, based on a pair of PCI Express cards, each that hosts a powerful RAID processor, two ports of 4 Gigabit Fibre Channel and two drives that can be either 7200 RPM 2.5" drives, or Intel SSD drives highly tuned to deliver up to 3.5X performance typically associated with SSD drives.

The cards connect one of their two Fibre Channel ports to the SAN, and to each other over the remaining ports to provide a fully redundant and mirrored copy of the Metadata volume on each Innerpool – allowing fully redundant and automatic failover/failback functionality.

Innerpool was designed with ease-of-use in mind and can be up and running in minutes, and managed remotely using the Active Storage management suite.

Innerpool will be available through Active Storage resellers in June starting at $2499.00.