The console has numerous wizards that facilitate just about any administrative task. In addition, SAN/iQ creates a level of abstraction from the storage device that makes working on an HP machine or on the LeftHand proprietary NSM equally seamless. That simplicity of management, however, can unleash some powerful features, such as an unlimited number of snapshots that makes optimum use of space by copying only the delta of changed data.

Another great feature automatically maintains as many as three copies of the same replica on different nodes inside the cluster to protect from simultaneous enclosure failures.

Thin provisioning, also noteworthy, virtually eliminates wasted space caused by inaccurate estimates. Thin provisioning is tantamount to issuing a capacity IOU to an application that will be honored automatically when the initial allocation for a volume is completely used. This feature not only saves from overallocating space, but also enables a utilitylike, buy-as-you-grow approach to storage.

The first script in my test plan was to define a primary storage location for a SQL server database over a four-node cluster and to create a secondary storage pool over the NSM for disaster recovery. To ensure maximum data integrity, the database had to have local and remote replicas automatically updated according to a schedule.

Using the SAN/iQ console, it took me minutes to group the four HP DL380s into a cluster, carve two volumes -- one for my database data and the other for the database log -- and assign them to the SQL server machine. Creating the remote cluster and setting up scheduled replicas of the database proved equally fast and easy.