Key Points
- Coraid EtherDrive’s unique architecture delivers high throughput and a flexible SAN topology that can support the most demanding virtual computing environments
- Coraid can be deployed with VMware or Xen virtualization platforms to create a flexible, high-performance virtual infrastructure
Virtualization has transformed the data center and is changing all aspects of IT operations — including greater demands on storage and availability, and unexpected bottlenecks in performance. Current SAN technologies (Fibre Channel, iSCSI) are too expensive, too complex, and poorly adapted for dynamic virtualization workloads.
EtherDrive was purpose-built for these challenges. Coraid has radically simplified virtual storage networking with Ethernet simplicity and performance, enabling unique advantages for virtualized environments:
- Massive bandwidth to disks
- Less head contention
- More independent disk heads
- Unlimited scalability (>60k nodes)
Typical virtualization environment:
VMware SAN
Finally! An affordably fast SAN solution for your VMware ESX/ESXi server!
EtherDrive SAN solutions use the open ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) lightweight network storage protocol. Simple. Easy to understand. Easy to use. AoE uses Ethernet to transport ATA disk commands without the burden of TCP/IP overhead delivering Fibre Channel speeds at Ethernet prices!
Coupling Ethernet technology with SATA hard disk drives, EtherDrive SAN solutions exploit commodity components to deliver affordable, fast SAN solutions that are budget friendly! EtherDrive SAN solutions are easily scalable from a 4TB single storage appliance to a multi-petabyte system by simply adding more storage appliances.
Affordably Fast SAN for VMware Infrastructure
EtherDrive SAN products deliver Fibre Channel speeds at Ethernet prices in an easily scalable, reliable, and simply elegant solution. The EtherDrive Host Bus Adapter (HBA) for VMware ESX/ESXi enables the server with ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) technology to deliver affordably fast EtherDrive SAN solutions for the virtualization environment.
Enabling ESX hosts to work natively with EtherDrive storage is an highly effective way to take full advantage of VMware Infrastructure features including VMotion and VMFS.
EtherDrive SAN is comprised of one or more LUNs providing shared storage for VMFS and RDM. Installed in the ESX server, the EtherDrive HBA presents the LUN on the EtherDrive SAN as a locally attached standard SCSI device to ESX. The software driver and HBA perform the translation of the SCSI disk requests to AoE requests and transmit them to the EtherDrive SAN. As responses return from the EtherDrive SAN, the reverse translation occurs in the HBA software driver.
At a fraction of the cost of a comparable iSCSI adapter, the EtherDrive HBA installed in the ESX server coupled with EtherDrive SAN delivers the promise of affordably fast SAN to satisfy the increasing storage demands for the virtualized environment. Dual RJ45 Ethernet connections provide 2-Gigabits of bandwidth on a single low profile PCI-E slot. The PCI Express interface provides dedicated I/O bandwidth for I/O-intensive applications common to the virtualized environment. Installing multiple HBAs in an ESX server provides scalable bandwidth and path redundancy. EtherDrive SAN scales efficiently, quietly and affordably providing ESX users with the promise of SAN.
CORAID EtherDrive products facilitate building fault tolerant SAN solutions that complement the virtualization environment of ESX. With dual interfaces on the HBA, automatically aggregated bandwidth provides maximum performance. If either path to either port fails, the LUN is still useable. Adding multiple HBAs to each ESX server provides HBA redundancy as well as aggregated bandwidth performance.
Maximize the Virtualization Environment
Providing high-performance shared storage, EtherDrive SAN maximizes VMware’s Infrastructure technologies including VMotion technology, View virtual desktop management, and VMFS clustered file system. The encapsulated state of a virtual machine stored on EtherDrive SAN shared storage with VMFS cluster file system allows both the source and the target ESX server to access virtual machine files concurrently during VMotion operations. EtherDrive SAN delivers enterprise-class storage for thin provisioning, data duplication, snap shots and cloning.
Powered by ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE)
The Coraid EtherDrive family of SAN products is built upon ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE), an open lightweight storage area network protocol. Designed for simple, high-performance access of SATA storage devices over Ethernet networks, AoE gives the possibility to build SANs with low-cost, standard technologies. AoE is a thin protocol layer directly on top of Ethernet. Packets are addressed to devices using their MAC address. Since AoE is a non-routed protocol it does not require TCP or IP layers, eliminating unnecessary processing. The simplest possible way of sharing a disk drive through a network, AoE is simple and direct. With fencing and reservation capabilities, AoE is the perfect technology for building affordably fast SAN solutions for the virtualization environment. EtherDrive SAN powered by AoE - a simply elegant solution.
Simply No Need For …
Unlike iSCSI implementations, EtherDrive SAN is built on the open AoE protocol so there is simply no need for IP addresses, complex IQN naming schemes, or Enterprise Unique Identifiers (EUI). Unlike Fibre Channel implementations, EtherDrive SAN is built upon today’s affordably fast and reliable Ethernet technology so there is simply no need for costly FC fabric infrastructure with associated configuration complexities and WWPN management. As an un-routed protocol, AoE is inherently secure so there is simply no need for CHAP authentication and zoning complexities.
Based on a datagram protocol, the EtherDrive HBA ports are automatically aggregated by the ESX driver so there is simply no need for configuring port bonding on the Ethernet switch. Since the EtherDrive HBA software seamlessly aggregates multiple ports across multiple HBAs, there is simply no need for wrestling the complexities associated with multipath IO configuration.