StoneFly, a subsidiary of of Dynamic Network Factory (DNF), serves a line of hardware products that enable IP-based SAN storage in entry- to Enterprise-level networks. Various products are available from self-contained "IP SAN-in-a-box" offerings for SMBs to modular offerings targeted to tiered-storage Enterprise deployments.

At the core of and driving each of the products is the vendor's StoneFusion Operating System, which employs virtualization techniques to consolidate physical disks and make them available as virtually managed and accessed volumes to network host computers via iSCSI communications. The management interface of the software enables the creation and management of the virtual volumes, which are independent of the physical storage and can additionally support security protocols including CHAP. The control panel additionally facilitates report access (system health, configuration, sessions, usage patterns, etc.) as well as provides alerting controls (deliverable via E-mail, cell phone, and text messaging). Additional features (availability depends on the hardware model) of the core platform include active/active clustering, snapshots, and synchronous & asynchronous mirroring.

Three primary IP SAN hardware lines are available from the vendor.

The Integrated Storage Concentrators (ISCs) are 1, 2, 3, or 5U "SAN-in-a-box" products targeted to entry-level deployments. The rack-mountable enclosures support SAS, SATA, or TED (a "hybrid" drive combining both magnetic media and random access memory offered by the vendor's parent company) drives up to 24 TB in a single chassis and up to 70 TB total. Features include a dual-core Xeon-based architecture, 2 GB of cache, dual Gig Ethernet ports (a 10 Gb port is optional), support for RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5, 6, and JBOD, and a trio of hot-swappable, redundant power supplies.

The Hybrid Storage Concentrators (HSCs) are feature similar to the ISCs, but are served in a 3U rackmount chassis with up to 16 TB per chassis and up to 144 TB total in a system (SAS drives are not supported). The HSCs also add support for active/active clustering and clustering-plus-mirroring technology.

At the top of the line are the vendor's modular OptiSAN components, including 1U Quad-Core-based storage concentrators; 3U storage subsystems boasting dual (active/active) RAID controllers, up to 16 SAS/SATA/TED drives, support for RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 30, 50, 60 and JBOD, and redundant/hot-swappable cooling and power; and 3U expansion arrays (up to 3 expansion arrays supported per storage subsystem) each 3U themselves and including their own redundant power supplies. Overall, OptiSAN platforms can scale to up to 2 PB according to the vendor's literature.

New in the StoneFly product line are the vendor's StoneFlex NAS Gateways, Windows-based, diskless (they boot from the IP SAN itself) 1U boxes that provide file-based access to the StoneFly IP SANs. The StoneFlex NAS Gateways are initially offered in three flavors (the top of the line model supporting clustering of up to eight nodes), are based on Windows Storage Server, and feature StoneFly VSS agents (integrated with Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service) and support for Microsoft MPIO. Dual Gig Ethernet ports are standard on each of the models, with 10 Gb connections optional.

The StoneFly product line is available now; the new NAS Gateways are priced from $5,000 to $11,000.

Visit the StoneFly Web site for further information.