StoneFly unveiled StoneFusion 6.1, a new more robust release of the company's intelligent network storage platform, which is integrated into all StoneFly IP SANs to provide block-level provisioning and centralized storage management, control and monitoring of logical storage volumes.

Key Updates

• StoneFly's entry-level Integrated Storage Concentrator (ISC) line of IP SANs now supports SAS
• StoneFly Reflection(TM), designed for local, campus and remote mirroring, now offers improved asynchronous replication
• Enhanced system management now available with SNMP, and additional options offered for SAN boot
• Performance improvements for larger virtual server environments

Updated ISCs with SAS Support
StoneFusion 6.1 expands StoneFly's tiered IP SAN offerings to now include the ISC line. All ISCs can now utilize Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) and 10,000- and 15,000-RPM Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives in the same chassis. With SAS drives, the ISCs better support transaction-intensive as well as high-definition video streaming and other business-critical applications requiring high disk performance. At the same time, they also provide improved IP SAN options for tiered storage flexibility.

Improved StoneFly Reflection
StoneFly Reflection has undergone a number of improvements since the 6.0 release. With StoneFusion 6.1, three asynchronous mirrors are available for each volume to allow data to be copied to three separate locations on the WAN to further bolster disaster recovery initiatives.

StoneFusion 6.1 also delivers higher levels of monitoring for Reflection volumes, with a new history and status summary screen that displays all asynchronous activities. Using the "guest login" feature, remote administrators can now log in to check replication status of their volumes copied to an alternate DR site.

Enhanced System Management Features
Also, new Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) support allows customers to receive StoneFusion notifications and alerts, including availability of storage resources and volumes, through standard SNMP monitoring tools including HP OpenView and IBM's Tivoli.

This release also expands StoneFly's support for SAN Boot technologies with support for bootable iSCSI initiators from Intel, Qlogic and emBoot.

Support for Larger Virtual Server Environments To support growing virtual server implementations, StoneFly has doubled the number of storage volumes per IP SAN to 200. Additionally, StoneFly now supports more iSCSI connections per SAN, with up to four 1Gb or 10Gb ports per SAN, depending on the configuration. Previously, only two iSCSI ports were available on each IP SAN.