Advanced Functionality at No Extra Cost

PS Series arrays match ease-of-use with ease-of-doing-business. Advanced features are included in the standard array offering, so there is no need to purchase expensive add-ons. New features can be incorporated into an existing group through firmware updates.

For example, a PS Series group delivers:

• Online scalability. You can expand array capacity or overall group capacity while online and with no impact on users or availability. Hot-swappable hardware means that failed components can be replaced while data remains online.
• Thin provisioning. In the right environment, administrators can improve storage resource utilization by using thin provisioning to logically over-allocate SAN volumes. Thin provisioning enables you to meet current and future storage needs and eliminates the difficulty of adding storage to operating systems or applications that do not support online expansion.
  
  To an application or operating system, a thin-provisioned volume appears to be fully allocated. However, the group initially allocates only a portion of the volume size. As the volume is used, more space is automatically allocated, with no disruption in availability. Increased usage triggers automatic notifications, so administrators can make adjustments as needed.
• Cloning. Cloning a volume creates a new volume with the same size and contents as the original volume. Cloning is commonly used in multiple server deployments. For example, a master image of a system can be created and then cloned for each server. Cloning can dramatically reduce overhead when deploying replicated servers, such as blade servers or Web servers.
• Snapshots. A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of volume data that protects against mistakes, viruses, or database corruption. Snapshots greatly simplify and improve the performance of backup and recovery operations. Both on-demand and scheduled snapshots are supported.

To recover data from a snapshot, you can set the snapshot online, restore the volume from a snapshot, or clone the snapshot. Cloning a snapshot creates a volume that contains the volume data that existed at the time the snapshot was created.

• Replication. A replica represents the contents of a volume at a specific point in time. By replicating volumes from one group to another, you can set up a simple, yet robust disaster recovery plan that protects against catastrophic events. Groups can be located in the same building or separated by an unlimited distance. Both on-demand and scheduled replicas are supported.

To recover data from a replica, you can clone a replica to create a new volume; replication will continue as usual. If a disaster occurs on the primary group, you can promote a replica set to a new volume and snapshots—temporarily (with the option of failing back to the primary group) or permanently.

• Failback. Failback functionality enables you to temporarily host the volume on the secondary group and later return to the original replication configuration. In some cases, you can fail back by replicating only the volume changes that occurred while the volume was hosted on the secondary group.
• Scheduled operations. As needed, you can set up schedules to create volume snapshots or replicas at a specific time in the future or on a regular basis.
• Volume collections. You can organize volumes into collections. This enables you to perform a snapshot or replication operation on all the volumes in the collection simultaneously, ensuring that the resulting set of snapshots or replicas are consistent.
• Multiple storage pools. In a PS Series group, storage can be divided into multiple pools. This allows you to organize storage according to usage, providing more control over resource allocation, while maintaining a single system management view. You retain the advantages of storage consolidation while gaining the ability to easily segregate different workloads.