Today’s file storage environments comprise a complex collection of storage platforms, file systems and operating systems that result in isolated islands of storage. Frequent outages occur when data is moved or new storage is provisioned due to the dependencies between clients and storage resources. Low aggregate utilization rates are common. Burgeoning capacity demands increase the operational overhead associated with fi le storage management. F5® ARX® devices allow you to break free from these constraints by introducing intelligent file virtualization into the fi le storage infrastructure, eliminating the disruption associated with storage administration and automating many storage management tasks. The result is a dramatic improvement in cost, agility and business efficiency. F5 Acopia ARX devices are high performance, highly available, intelligent fi le virtualization systems that dramatically simplify file storage management. ARX systems use industry standard fi le access protocols to communicate with clients and servers — CIFS for Windows® devices and NFS for Unix® or Linux devices. The ARX does not introduce a new fi le system, but acts as a proxy to the fi le systems that are already there. With the ARX, enterprises are not required to forklift upgrade hardware, or replace existing fi le systems, or install software agents across the enterprise, in order to gain the benefi ts of virtualization. Since it is based on industry-standard protocols, the ARX is compatible with the vast majority of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices and fi le servers, providing the benefits of virtualization across a heterogeneous infrastructure. The ARX is designed to handle the stringent performance and scalability demands of the enterprise. The ARX’s patented split-path architecture separates the data and control paths in the system. This allows the ARX to sustain very high performance levels for file access workloads while simultaneously performing complex operations such as storage management policy. Data path functions are handled at wire-speed rates, and control path functions have their own dedicated processing and memory resources. The ARX is the only fi le virtualization solution proven to scale to billions of fi les, with the ability to handle gigabytes of throughput. F5 ARX products have been designed with high availability and data integrity in mind. All ARX systems support automatic service fail-over between ARX devices in a cluster upon failure, and data integrity is ensured throughout the entire process. The ARX does not modify user data, nor does it create proprietary stub files on file storage assets. This ensures the integrity and accessibility of data at all times. The ARX provides superior system availability through hardware and network redundancy, as well as through enhanced software resiliency mechanisms. ARX devices are unique in their ability to monitor client demand, resource capacity and network conditions, and adapt in real time to respond to these changing dynamics. This allows ARX devices to perform unique functions such a dynamic load balancing and realtime placement of data on appropriate storage. It also eliminates much of the overhead associated with searching entire fi le systems in order to determine policy actions, as is common in other file virtualization approaches. The ARX provides easy-to-use management interfaces, including a command line interface (CLI) and graphical user interface(GUI). The GUI supports wizard-driven confi guration that makes even the most complex policies intuitive. The ARX offers comprehensive supportability and troubleshooting capabilities, including SNMP, extensive logging and reporting, automated “e-mail home” support, port mirroring and packet capture. The ARX series is powered by the F5 Data Management Operating System, which automates many storage management tasks that are performed manually today, and eliminates the disruption associated with those tasks. Its unique suite of storage management policies includes data migration, automated storage tiering, data replication, and dynamic load balancing.
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