Benefits of Compaq ENSA ENSA virtualizes storage, allowing vast amounts of storage to be pooled across an enterprise for use by heterogeneous application servers located anywhere. Storage resources can be allocated online from a single, common pool, scaling from gigabytes to petabytes, and beyond as needed. Data can be replicated instantly for backup, testing, additional application access, or for user-initiated backups and restores. Customers can manage distributed primary and backup storage resources centrally with new policy-based management practices, including dynamic allocation, automatic redeployment, intelligent data replication and protection, and performance tuning. These elements communicate amongst themselves and act cooperatively to solve storage and data management problems.
Customers see only a reliable, available utility that dispenses storage upon demand.
Compaq is delivering ENSA in a phased approach that began last year with Fibre Channel-based storage products that allow the distribution of storage resources over distance. The next phase is the creation of a storage network in which multiple hosts have access to common storage. As a first step, Compaq recently introduced a network backup solution the Enterprise Storage Backup Solution which allows multiple hosts to share a common tape library. During the next few years, the company will announce solutions that will enable customers to create virtual pools of storage they can access from anywhere in their enterprises. ENSA provides investment protection with a comprehensive framework based on core technology, software, and services that allows all of a customer's existing storage assets to become part of the overall storage utility.