LSI Syncro™ adds Linux support

LSI Corporation has introduced the Syncro™ CS high availability storage solution, now with Linux support. Syncro CS makes high availability storage cost-effective and easy to deploy for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) and remote and branch offices (ROBO).

With added Linux support, Syncro CS now serves an even larger customer base. Syncro CS supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and provides the OS flexibility needed to easily integrate high availability storage into the datacentre.

Traditional high availability solutions are designed for large enterprise IT, private and public cloud, and Web 2.0, but are too complex and costly to deploy for SMBs and ROBO environments where high availability is also critical. Syncro CS brings shared storage and storage controller failover into direct-attached storage (DAS) environments at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional high availability solutions.

“With a substantial Linux user base in SMB and ROBO, LSI is pleased to now offer Syncro CS to meet their storage sharing and failover needs for business-critical data,” said Jas Tremblay, vice president of marketing, Datacentre Solutions Group, LSI. “High availability storage systems will become an important asset for businesses of all sizes as the value of data continues to grow.”

High availability is considered a universal business need regardless of business size or industry. When business-critical data is not accessible, the results can be lost revenue, lost productivity and reduced customer satisfaction. LSI® Syncro CS is designed to reduce downtime for critical applications, making failover latency transparent to the application or user. Syncro CS with Linux brings the robust data protection, high performance, low cost and low complexity found in DAS solutions and adds the additional benefits of shared storage and high availability.

“Linux has penetrated into all areas of IT infrastructures, and it has a growing share of datacentres, making this announcement on Syncro CS compelling,” said Doug Williams, senior director, Strategic Initiatives, Office of the CTO, Red Hat. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux has demonstrated industry-leading quality, stability and reliability, and the availability of Syncro CS running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux brings high availability for DAS environments to the datacentre in a new way, giving customers access to a promising technology that can significantly reduce the cost of many different architectures and workloads. Additionally, LSI Syncro combined with the software-defined storage and volume economics of Red Hat Storage creates valuable new use cases, especially around long-term storage repositories.”

Built on LSI MegaRAID® technology, Syncro CS solutions use two controller cards to allow system administrators to build a high availability, shared DAS solution. Syncro CS supports two deployment models:
· Syncro CS 9286-8e: Provides shared storage clustering using two volume servers and an off-the-shelf JBOD. This affordable high availability solution brings shared storage and controller failover to DAS environments.
· Syncro CS 9271-8i: Enables OEMs and system builders to use Syncro CS controllers to build cost-effective two-node Cluster-in-a-Box systems and deliver high availability in a single self-contained unit.