NEC 2007 Annual Report Download - page 32

3. Main R&D Achievements in Fiscal 2007
Developed Highly Reliable, Low-cost Next-
generation Grid Storage Architecture
~Spearheading global business expansion centered on
North American-born technology~
NEC has developed a highly reliable, scalable and cost
effective next-generation grid storage architecture called
HYDRAstor by combining grid storage technology developed
at NEC Laboratories America, Inc. with technologies and
expertise accumulated in the server/storage business. This
technology centrally operates multiple independent storage
devices, so as to facilitate the addition or deletion of capac-
ity or performance, and systems management during
rebooting following disruptions. HYDRAstor delivers a higher
performance than RAID (Redundant Arrays of Independent
Disks), which is considered to be highly reliable, at a low
unit price comparable with tape media.
In recent years, there has been explosive growth in the
amount of data handled by companies, including image data
and data that must be electronically stored over the long
term to strengthen internal controls. This has placed a
growing burden on corporate information system
departments in terms of day-to-day data management
requirements. In particular, the amount of so called
Secondary Storage data required for document archive man-
agement and system rebooting following disruptions is any-
where from 10 to 25 times greater than the core data volume
on corporate information systems. Accordingly, there have
been growing needs for storage solutions that deliver faster
recording and reloading speeds and reliability at a lower
cost. NEC’s HYDRAstor architecture was developed as a
revolutionary product to resolve these and other issues.
HYDRAstor aspires to be a next-generation grid storage
architecture that realizes a flexible and scalable storage
environment that enables customers to freely add and link
devices according to their storage performance and
capacity requirements in line with rising data volumes.
NEC was first to use the following three cutting-edge
technologies built into HYDRAstor in the storage field
(according to NEC research):
(1) Automatic configuration optimization technology
The detailed entering of settings is not required when
initiating use of the system. Increasing capacity merely
involves adding storage capacity, which is automatically
loaded into the system. Moreover, adding capacity does
not require shutting down the system due to HYDRAstor’s
interruption-free scale-out capabilities.
(2) Data duplication elimination technology
Duplicated data on the server and storage system is collected
to significantly improve storage capacity efficiency. This
technology compresses data to around one-tenth to one-
twentieth the capacity with conventional storage systems.
Further, despite the use of hard disks, this system reduces
costs to the per-unit capacity cost of tape media.
(3) Distributed resilient data technology
By dividing source data into several components and
affixing special codes, HYDRAstor ensures data resiliency
against threefold failures, for not only data stored on stand-
alone hard disks, but also data across multiple hard disks
or distributed nodes. This performance surpasses RAID
systems, which are considered highly reliable.
NEC aims to drive growth in overseas businesses over
the medium term. HYDRAstor is a core product that will
play a vital role in achieving this goal. By the second half of
2007, NEC plans to commercialize this product in the North
American market, where there is strong demand in this field.
NEC then plans to extend this product to Japan and other
regions to fuel global business expansion.
HYDRAstor R&D Team (NEC Laboratories America, Inc. (Princeton, U.S.A.))
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