Product Highlights

Incipient software provides a common suite of storage services software that can be deployed across a SAN environment. These services are delivered non-disruptively to applications and hosts, thereby requiring zero scheduled application downtime and no involvement of other IT groups when it comes to making changes.

Since Incipient software is vendor neutral, its common suite of storage services works identically for environments that include a variety of storage systems.

Incipient Network Storage Platform (iNSP) Software

iNSP storage services software include non-disruptive on-line data migration, network volume management, storage provisioning and copy.

Non-Disruptive, On-Line Data Migration

Data migration is one of the most critical processes today in the data center. Since enterprise data migrations occur constantly, they require extensive planning, preparation and execution.

With Incipient software, data center managers can non-disruptively migrate data located on any iNSP network volume. iNSP software will move the data from its current physical storage location without disrupting production environments.

Ideal Solution for Heterogeneous Storage Environments

Migrate volumes while data is "live"; non-disruptive to hosts and applications
Simplify and automate the volume migration process: [+] Detail
Details
- Decrease time required for planning
- Reduce application downtime (planned and unplanned)
- Reduce staff hours spent on routine operations
- Transform volume layout
Facilitate the following data migration scenarios: [+] Detail
Details
- Storage array commissioning and decommissioning
- Application load balancing to improve storage performance
- Permits incremental or gradual migrations, allowing appraisals of the performance impact of the migration with the ability to restore to the original location
Requires no reconfiguration of hosts; does not place load on servers

Network Volume Management

With iNSP, you can consolidate volume management to a single location in the network, independent of any host and across disparate storage arrays. iNSP allows the configuration of physical storage to be changed without impacting any host or application. iNSP provides the following volume layout types:

Encapsulated Volume [+] Detail

Encapsulated Volume

represents a 1:1 relationship of the host presented volume underlying array volume. This volume layout preserves the data on the array volume and is used as a best practice when the user wants to import existing data (data can then be migrated to alternate volume types) or preserve existing array based copy services.
Partitioned Volume [+] Detail

Partitioned Volume

represents a virtual volume containing a subset of the capacity of an underlying array volume.
Concatenated Volume [+] Detail

Concatenated Volume

represents an aggregation of two or more extents where an extent can be a portion of or an entire underlying array volume to form a larger network volume. Concatenated network volumes are useful for presenting larger capacity volumes to the host as a single storage device.
Striped Volume [+] Detail

Striped Volume

A striped network volume divides the logical address space of a network volume across equal sized regions (called stripes) and spreads the stripes across extents located on distinct array volumes. The ability to distribute data accesses across multiple underlying array volumes improves performance especially in random read applications.

Storage Provisioning

iNSP provides true end-to-end automated storage array provisioning and fabric zoning which lessens the administrative steps required to provision new storage. It provides deep discovery, polices, and automation to simplify the process of provisioning of arrays for heterogeneous storage, and provides a unified point of control. Storage administrators can provision an iNSP network volume to a host once, then grow, transform, migrate and copy volumes without any host configuration.

iNSP Storage Administrator [+] Detail
iNSP Storage Administrator

provides automated wizards which perform virtual volume configuration, growth, layout transformation, migration, and copy management. Resources (array volumes) used in these provisioning operations are allocated based on predefined policies created by the storage administrator, deep discovery and industry best practices embedded in the iNSP provisioning engine.
- Simple, Easy-to-use User Interface
Deep Discovery [+] Detail
Deep Discovery

performs probing and cataloging (discovery) of storage arrays and switches that are connected to an iNSP cluster. iNSP Storage Administrator discovers detailed configuration information about the layout of each storage array LUN, including detail "behind mappings" to the underlying physical disk drives. This information is used to make intelligent placement decisions when configuring iNSP virtual disks and consuming array LUNs. For example, both mirror sides of an iNSP volume would not be placed in the same failure domain (i.e. physical disk spindle).
- Discovery
Storage Pools [+] Detail

Storage Pools

allocate storage resources logically instead of physically. A storage pool is a collection of storage resources (bound array volumes) that contain all of the data for a specified set of iNSP network volumes. Storage pools can be grouped by customer (business unit), quality of service (QoS), or any combination that would be useful to an administrator. Storage pools simplify resource selection during provisioning operations by correlating storage types to appropriate server applications. When combined with iNSP authorization, administrators can effectively limit who can perform operations against the resources in a given storage pool.
Volume Classes [+] Detail

Volume Classes

provide the rules used to select array resources (array volumes or LUNs) as well as configure iNSP network volumes, migrations, or copies. Volume classes are user-defined provisioning templates used to specify RAID attributes, number of paths, minimum / maximum volume size and what Storage Pools to select resources from.

Copy Services

iNSP creates local point-in-time copies or clones of an iNSP network volume. Copies can be split off and accessed independently for use in business continuance operations or data distribution for application development or data analysis. Consistency groups assure data integrity for databases or applications that span multiple volumes.

Unlike array-based copy services, iNSP allows data to be copied between arrays from different storage vendors. iNSP is multi-vendor copy capabilities that provide you with the flexibility to use lower cost storage to contain copies for high-end production data.

Full volume point-in-time mirror based images (clones)
Multiple concurrent copies per source volume
Consistency groups to create a consistent point-in-time copy
Copies span across heterogeneous storage arrays and can cost effectively utilize storage tiers
Automated policy-based provisioning of Snapshot Copies

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Incipient

Storage Virtualization & Data Migration Software