Thursday, May 11, 2006

The Kilo-Client Project: iSCSI for the Masses...

A little bit over a year ago Netapp Engineering was challenged to build a large scale test bed in order to exploit and test various configurations and extreme conditions under which our products are deployed by our customers. Thus, the Kilo-Client project was born.

Completed, early 2006 the Kilo-Client project is, most likely, the World's Largest iSCSI SAN with 1,120 diskless blades booting of the SAN and providing support for various Operating Systems (Windows, Linux, Solaris) and multiple applications (Oracle, SAS, SAP etc). In addition, Kilo-Client, incorporates various Netapp technological innovations such as:

SnapShot - A disk based point in time copy
LUNClone - A a space optimized read/write LUN
FlexClone - A space optimized read/write Volume
SnapMirror - Replication of Volumes/qtrees/LUNs
Q-Tree - A logical container within a volume used to group files or LUNs.
SnapRestore - Near instantaneous recovery of a Volume or a LUN to a previous PIT version.

Today, not only, does the Kilo-Client project serves as an Engineering test bed but also as a facility where our customers can test their applications under a variety of scenarios and conditions. For more information on the Kilo-Client project click the link.

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