Snapshot Power through Nextra Technology
Snapshots Reinvented!
The Nextra system implements a revolutionary approach to all aspects of snapshot creation and handling, overcoming traditionally known drawbacks. This breakthrough is made possible through Nextra's fully scalable grid storage platform, which is built on two main principles:
- The data modules are implemented as standard Intel-based servers that comprise – all within the same physical unit – the cache units and disks, interconnected by two PCI-X buses
- Every logical volume is stored as data portions distributed across all data modules and disk drives in the system
Several architectural advantages derive from these principles, including:
- Growth in the system's storage capacity is always accompanied by a parallel growth of its CPU power and cache memory area, ensuring full scalability of all internal processes, and of snapshot processes in particular.
- Data duplication is always performed internally within a system's modules, with a huge bandwidth supporting disk to cache communication and no need for cross-module communication.
- Each snapshot-related process is performed over all modules concurrently and over all spindles system-wide.
- An innovative (patent-protected) meta-data design supports a practically zero-time snapshot creation process.
- The basic data duplication mechanism is redirect-on-write (rather than copy-on-write), dramatically reducing the impact of snapshots on system performance.
Read XIV's
snapshot white paper for more details.
