HYDRAstor is not only easy to manage, but easy to deploy, as it layers non-disruptively into almost any existing IT infrastructure. As backup and archive data amounts grow, nodes can be non-disruptively added to increase search and retrieve performance as well as scale storage capacity. Each node is an industry-standard server with processing power built-in, so read/write performance is enhanced with each node addition as well.

With the HS8-Platform Series, NEC delivers a new standard of storage offering possibilities previously thought impossible with current technologies. With its grid architecture and integrated data management services, HYDRAstor offers a number of unique capabilities that reduce the cost and complexity of storage.

 Layers into Existing Environment

Through its use of industry standard access protocols, NFS and CIFS, HYDRAstor integrates seamlessly with a wide variety of email, filesystem and document management applications and has been optimized to accept large volume data streams from backup and archive applications to produce immediate benefits, including reduced restore times, improved backup windows, and reduced storage capacity need.

HYDRAstor has been validated with leading backup and archive software applications. Each Accelerator Node comes with multiple 1GbE or 10GbE NIC ports, connecting Accelerator Nodes to one or more backup and/or archive servers to maximize throughput.

HYDRAstor’s key benefits include:

Unrestricted scalability:

HYDRAstor HS8’s unique grid architecture enables both performance and disk capacity to be independently and linearly scaled to meet your requirements.

• Accelerator Nodes (AN) scale performance from 2.7 TB/hr to 148.5 TB/hr per hour to reduce backup and archive times and enable fast access to stored data when needed.
• Storage Nodes (SN) scale disk capacity from 157.5TB to 17.3PB as one logical pool of capacity, eliminating today’s costly and labor intensive siloed capacity challenge. And with enterprise deduplication across both backup & archive data streams, IT has only one system to manage.

Self-evolving system:

• HYDRAstor HS8’s grid storage architecture introduces a "community of smart nodes" which allows IT to non-disruptively and transparently introduce ever greener nodes, faster processors, and higher capacity hard disk drives. No more forklift upgrades, no downtime and no manual data migration.

HYDRAstor Grid Architecture Features

• Support multiple generations of node hardware in one grid
• Non-disruptively add multiple generations of nodes to existing grid
• Capacity automatically discovered without provisioning
• Existing data automatically load balanced across nodes
• Data resiliency level automatically maintained via DRD

Effortless management:

Through its patent-pending DynamicStor™ technology, HYDRAstor HS8 moves beyond the realm of "thin provisioning" to "no provisioning". The web browser based GUI allows for quick and easy monitoring of deduplication ratios, capacity utilization and trending, and system status.

Enterprise deduplication:

HYDRAstor HS8 maximizes storage efficiency without risk of data loss through its patent-pending DataRedux™ technology. DataRedux eliminates redundant data across and within incoming backup & archive data streams to enable HYDRAstor to reduce storage requirements by 95 percent or more.

Patent-pending Distributed Resilient Data™

DRD technology protects deduplicated data beyond today’s RAID technology. With DRD, IT can dial in their desired data resiliency level; at the default setting, DRD delivers 300 percent more resiliency than RAID5 with similar capacity overhead but with no performance degradation. The unique combination of DataRedux and DRD allows IT to safely deduplicate data without risk of data loss even with multiple hard drive failures. Find out more about HYDRAstor’s unique enterprise deduplication.