Enterasys Replaces Fibre Channel SAN with LeftHand Networks iSCSI SAN on the Dell 2950 Platform

LeftHand SAN Delivers Accelerated Response Times, Reliable Disaster Recovery and Significant Cost Savings


LeftHand Networks®, the leading provider of highly available open iSCSI SANs, today announced that Enterasys Networks, the Secure Networks CompanyTM, has deployed LeftHand’s open iSCSI SAN solution with its SAN/iQ® clustered storage software on a Dell PowerEdge 2950 platform, and improved its disaster recovery capabilities, increased its overall ease of use and management and optimized its virtualized environment. With the LeftHand solution, Enterasys drove significant savings in SAN administration, hardware and support while accelerating response times to meet its demanding business needs.

“With the ability to easily self-provision new storage and configure it virtually real-time, the responsiveness to our business demands has increased dramatically,” said Dan Petlon, vice president System Quality and IT at Enterasys Networks. “The LeftHand SAN solution has exceeded our expectations, providing a flexible, cost-effective and easy to manage enterprise-class SAN that supports and helps to optimize our virtualized data center environment – all on a Dell hardware platform that we know and trust.”

Enterasys’ business is built on delivering secure network solutions that ensure the confidentiality, integrity, availability and performance of IT services. With LeftHand’s highly available 90 terabyte iSCSI SAN solution, Enterasys was able to strengthen its disaster recovery system and provide an added level of protection for its users. Using LeftHand’s powerful replication capabilities and a storage node at a remote site 300 miles away, Enterasys was able to deploy a fast and reliable disaster recovery solution with significantly increased data recovery times. In addition, IT responsiveness increased as a result of the ease and simplicity of provisioning and configuring added capacity. The company was able to maximize its system efficiency and save money by deploying a mix of SAS and SATA disk drives within its LeftHand SAN, matching each application with its precise performance requirements.

“We needed a more nimble IT environment that would enable us to quickly adapt and align with our business – our existing Fibre Channel SAN simply couldn’t get us there,” added Petlon. “We recognized after significant research and testing that the most flexible and adaptive technologies were iSCSI-based. With a data center virtualization architecture based on Dell server platforms, this solution allowed us to optimize our virtualized data center environment and leverage our existing Dell investments to realize significant economies of scale.”

LeftHand Networks’ award-winning SAN/iQ clustered storage software supports the Dell PowerEdge 2950, providing maximum platform choice and flexibility for customers’ SAN deployments. When combined with the Dell PowerEdge 2950 server, SAN/iQ converts the server into an iSCSI storage node that delivers enterprise-class SAN capabilities when clustered, providing customers an easy-to-deploy, highly available SAN complete with a rich feature set, advanced data protection and centralized management.

“LeftHand is committed to providing customers with maximum platform choice and flexibility for their SAN deployments. With our LeftHand-branded NSM storage products, Virtual SAN Appliances and our open iSCSI SAN portfolio that supports Dell, HP and IBM hardware, LeftHand delivers highly available enterprise-class iSCSI SAN solutions that help optimize almost any environment,” said Larry Cormier, vice president of Marketing, LeftHand Networks. “Enterasys’ deployment of a 90 terabyte LeftHand iSCSI SAN on the Dell 2950 platform is another proof point that, by allowing customers’ business needs to properly drive their storage hardware decisions, LeftHand Networks continues to make storage networking easier than ever.”