Utility Storage – Storage on Demand

BlueFire Managed Storage - OnDemand Storage of the type & mix you need.

At BlueFire we understand that data storage, business continuity and data archiving are vital to you. Organisations of all types are under increasing pressure to find cost-effective storage solutions that can cope with not just today's, but tomorrow's data storage requirements.

The Storage Dilemma

The factors behind the increased data storage burden are multiple. Business compliance directives mean that legally significant data must now be kept for much longer. New Data Protection regulations and an increase in what data companies must keep on file internally now also accounts for some of the increase. If we were to add email, file storage and other digital records to the mix - it's clear there is significant demand amongst IT Managers for flexible, fully redundant enterprise level storage, at affordable prices.

Outsourcing Your Primary Storage

Traditionally, managing a hosted primary storage network 'in-house' has meant a very significant capital outlay in both hardware and infrastructure terms, not to mention the internal skill sets that need to be paid for. New developments such as Storage-On-Demand are opening up new possibilities. More and more businesses are turning to BlueFire because we have the right partners, and the right experience to deliver high QoS Storage, but with major cost savings.

BlueFire Managed Storage

Drawing on new solutions from industry leaders like HP & Storage Virtualisation leader Datacore, as well as other primary storage suppliers such as EMC & Netapps, our engineers can design and implement solutions based on gigabit Ethernet NAS or SAN, fully meshed and redundant fibre networks, or clustered solutions that allow for storage virtualisation, bit level replication and mirroring – all within the solution, or also across different sites. In short, there's not much we can't handle.

Complete Flexibility

Businesses grow and mature of course and it's likely that your storage needs will also increase. So our primary On-Demand solution features a per gigabyte pricing model, allowing you to only buy what you need, as well as the ability to vary the performance level of your stored data (between high performance, medium and Low/Archive) thus accommodating further cost savings or continually changing capacity requirements.

Choice from the following OnDemand Storage Choices available in any combination.

1. DataCore - Ultra High Speed - Max I/O accelerated, cached read/write access, thin provisioning for databases, transactional applications and multiple SAN redundancy & high availability. Datacore also allows for active replication of this storage to the BlueFire Redundant Datacentre or back to your location. Datacore is a leading storage virtualisation solution that delivers enterprise storage solution. For what VMware is to servers, Datacore is the storage.

2. High Speed Fibre Channel - Single SAN delivered Fibre Channel High Speed Storage - Ultra Fast I/O Storage for databases, mail servers and transactional solutions.

3. iSCSI & Direct Attached Storage - High Speed Storage accessible via the network rather than dedicated fibre network. ISCSI delivers a lower cost of storage for vitualisation, servers and application hostings.

4. CloudNAS - Provide lower cost storage leveraging the NIrvinax Cloud Storage Platform. Push you archived or backup data up in to the cloud, providing inherent redundancy and scalability. As much storage onDemand as you need is presented to your network as a shared drive. Used for data that is not accessed on a regular interval, available at all times.

See the following tabs for more information.

Enterprise High Available File Services

Highly Available File Services providing access to files services across your organisation.

Active Directory Services with Identity Management

Providing Active Directory services securing your files services only to provide access to the resources you are entitled to. Enterprise Identity management in place to secure your information assets.

Anytime, anywhere access to files

BlueFire Portal provides Web Access to users' files, directories and documents through a Web browser. The portal user interface is similar to the windows explorer interface, and you can perform most of the same tasks as you would on your local machine. Mobile users can easily access internal resources, email, file shares and documents – in a format that is easily visible. While presenting the appropriate level of access depending on who the user is.

Collaboration

You work in a team and share files and folders.

Wide Area File Services

Wide Area File Services uses protocol-specific optimisations such as latency mitigation, object caching, metadata caching, and WAN transport optimisations to help ensure efficient operation of standard file-system protocols (Common Internet File System [CIFS] with Windows, and Network File System [NFS] with UNIX) over the wide area network (WAN) while maintaining file coherency, locking, security, and access policies to ensure data integrity. Fully transparent to the end user, your users will simply believe the server is in the next office.

Advanced Security and Anti-Virus Protection.

BlueFire, in conjunction with Symantec, provides a high-quality security service by seamlessly integrating essential technologies such as antivirus, antispyware, firewall, intrusion prevention & device control in the file system. It stops malware such as viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, bots and zero-day threats and prevents security outbreaks thus reducing administrative overheads & lowers total cost of ownership for endpoint security.

DataCore Storage Virtualisation On Demand.

DataCore Software provides storage virtualisation solutions that make storage and SAN infrastructures efficient, fault tolerant, flexible and virtual. DataCore™ fundamentally changes the economics of managing storage with innovative software that combines advanced functions and services.

The company's award-winning SANsymphony™, low-cost SANmelody™ disk server software, and new product lines provide unprecedented purchasing flexibility and future-proofing by empowering customers to fulfill portability and price/performance requirements across a broad choice of systems and devices.

Key Customer Benefits.

Maximise Resources: Leverage the benefits of virtualisation (cost savings, consolidation, asset optimisation, etc.) in the storage infrastructure.
Lower Costs: Cost-effective shared storage solution (SAN) for physical and/or virtual environments.
Higher Availability: Affordable Disaster Recovery (DR) & Business Continuance for customers of all sizes (SMB to Enterprise).
Ease of Use and IT Simplification: Storage management, consolidation, virtualisation, and data migration tools (SANmotion).
Better Utilization: Dramatically increases disk utilization to greater than 80% when compared to traditional non-virtualized storage which averages less than 25-40%.
Enhanced Performance and Productivity: Manage more storage with less effort and fewer resources by leveraging automation.

SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ software converts physical and virtual servers into storage area network (SAN) virtual storage servers, and is the perfect complement to end-to-end server, desktop and application delivery virtualisation. Like VMware, Citrix and Microsoft, DataCore is a portable software solution that survives multiple generations of hardware obsolescence.

Key DataCore Software Features.

Hardware Independent and Portable – DataCore Software runs on your choice of physical or virtual hardware: hardware servers, blade servers or VMs. Users can mix and match hardware or VM based storage servers in their deployments.
Open – Run on Intel/AMD platforms, blades and on all the major Virtual Server platforms – Citrix XenServer™, Sun, Virtual Iron, VMware, Oracle, and Microsoft. DataCore not only runs on these VM environments, DataCore can support all the major storage platforms and the storage can be consolidated and served to MacOS, Netware, Linux, and the many flavours of UNIX and Microsoft – providing optimum storage resource utilisation.
Feature rich and value-packed – thin provision storage capacity, simplify the migration of data via SANmotion, accelerate storage performance, create high-speed snapshots for fast disk backup and recovery.
iSCSI and Fibre Channel – networking independence, support for both storage protocols in a single storage server.
Storage I/O Performance Acceleration – self learning sophisticated caching software
Auto Grow & Thin Provisioning – presents very large virtual volumes to applications, but only allocates disk blocks dynamically on writes as the application consumes it. Thin provisioning maximizes disk space utilization by serving thin slices of storage from the storage pool as needed and enhances productivity through automation.
Disk to Disk Snapshots – provides fast point-in-time copies of volumes used in backups, testing and other applications.
Asynchronous IP Mirroring – adds the ability to replicate storage to remote disaster recovery sites over IP connections.
Fail-safe Data Protection - Synchronous Network Mirroring (HA) & MPIO supports Auto Fail-over Fail-back for business continuity and fault tolerant data protection.
“Carry Forward” Value Protection Program – a unique value-add offering for customers to “buy only what they need, when they need it,” that provides the utmost flexibility. Users only pay the difference in cost should they add options, upgrade to higher capacity, or upgrade to larger scale platforms at some future time.

DataCore Storage Virtualisation is the foundation for Total Enterprise Virtualisation.

High Speed SAN – Fibre Channel

SANs evolved to address the increasingly difficult job of managing storage at a time when storage usage is growing explosively. With devices locally attached to a given server or in the server enclosure itself, performing day-to-day management tasks becomes extremely complex, backing up the data in the data centre requires complex procedures as the data is distributed amongst the nodes and is accessible only through the server to which it is attached.

As a given server outgrows its current storage pool, storage specific to that server has to be acquired and attached, even if there are other servers with ample storage space available. Other benefits can be gained—multiple servers can share data (sequentially or in some cases in parallel), backing up devices can be done by transferring data directly from a storage device or media to another device or media over the SAN network instead of taking a costly hit on performance on the host.

Storage area networks capitalise on the best of the storage and network technologies to provide a low latency, high bandwidth interconnect which can span large distances, provide high connectivity and good management infrastructure from the start.

Solution at a Glance

Enterprise-class Storage
High Performance distributed across multiple servers with low latency

Ideal Solution
for databases, virtualisation & Highly Available Storage/Clustering Requirements.

Unlimited Growth
Just add more storage as you go

Access
Access to storage via Fibre Channel Network.

Simple Integration
Server and OS agnostic
Dedicated BlueFire Experts On Demand - 24x7x365

High Availability
99.99% uptime guarantee

Virtualization Ready
enterprise failover solution for dedicated virtual servers; maximize your VM uptime.

Utility NAS - iSCSI

Built on an enterprise-class platform, with high performance applications in mind, the beauty of Utility NAS is that you only pay for the storage you use, and you have access to more storage the second you need it. Just as important, it's the definition of user friendly. Setup is also quick and application integration is easy and users are able to access it via the network.

It is the logical fit for those wanting a fully managed, file-based storage service, but don't necessarily need the full performance or added cost of their own dedicated file storage. Simply put, you pay only for the storage you use, and you grow it when you need to.

Direct Attached Storage – Dedicated Storage attached to a server.

A DAS is a dedicated storage device that's added to your environment. It's an ideal solution for applications requiring a lower-cost, entry-level cluster to maintain availability. Also, if you're simply looking for an economical way to expand your storage, DAS is a smart alternative.

Scalable On-Demand
Highly scalable, whether you need to add 146GB or 6TB, disks can be added as you need them

Responsive
Monitored by dedicated support teams 24x7x365 and protected by our 1-Hour Hardware Replacement Guarantee

Flexible
Multiple configuration options for a variety of storage needs including transactional databases, media downloads and archiving

Dedicated
Dedicated solution ensures you are the only one accessing data on your drives and can help satisfy requirements for certain compliance programs

Easy
Adding a DAS is easy on your budget and eliminates the complexities of growing your storage by adding another server to your configuration

Solution at a Glance:

Inexpensive, Enterprise-class File Storage
Distributed across multiple servers with low latency

Ideal Solution
for archiving, production & test and development, File Serving, Virtualisation.

Unlimited Growth
just add more storage as you go

Easy Access
API-free integration and access to storage

Simple Integration
server and OS agnostic

Dedicated BlueFire Experts On Demand
24x7x365

High Availability
99.99% uptime guarantee

Virtualization Ready
Entry-level failover solution for dedicated virtual servers; maximize your VM uptime without SAN

Easy
Adding a Utility NAS is easy on your budget and eliminates the complexities of growing your storage by adding another server to your configuration

BlueFire CloudNAS - Instant access to secure, scalable cloud storage

BlueFire CloudNAS for Linux or Windows is a fast, secure, and easy way to gain access to the benefits of Cloud Storage. Through the CloudNAS your organization has access to unlimited storage via the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network™ (SDN).

Download and install to turn any server on your network into an infinite capacity filer accessible by many of your existing applications and processes.

CloudNAS for Windows Key features:

Virtual drive mount via CIFS
Drag & Drop data backup and restore
Domain controller support for access control
Share and private modes
Storage and access management, on a master account or per user basis, via the Nirvanix Management Portal (Web-based UI)

Shift storage CAPEX to OPEX

Troubling economic conditions and credit markets have further stressed the traditional model of buying storage ahead of when it is needed using CAPEX dollars which are growing more by the day to justify. Business customers can now buy secure, highly reliable storage on demand at 80-90% of the cost of traditional models and shift their CAPEX purchases to OPEX, lowering their risk and significantly reducing their overall IT storage costs.

Unlimited Cloud based Storage OnDemand.

Leverage a Storage Delivery Network - SDN to gain access to unlimited utility storage on demand. Perfect for archive, backup and non high I/O demanding storage.

Move encrypted data offsite

Nirvanix CloudNAS is the world’s first software-only NAS solution accessible via CIFS, NFS, or FTP. It offers enhanced secure data transfers to any of Nirvanix’s globally distributed storage nodes using integrated AES 256-bit encryption and SSL options.

Mission

Deliver Enterprise IT Infrastructure as a Service to businesses delivering cost efficiencies, economies of scale, no single points of failure by leveraging best of breed systems with fixed costs with service level guarantees . The ability to leverage a little or alot based on your requirements in order to delivering a better and more cost effective IT environment than what they can do yourselves.

Established

Market Leader in Managed Services in Asia Pacific Region
12 Years established experience
Stable Profitable Business with 90% of revenues contracted monthly fees.
Service Level Guarantees with Financial Penalties.

Industry Knowledge

BlueFire is marketing leading in the IT Infrastructure as a Service market place and has 12 years of experience in the delivery of these services.

Certifications

Microsoft Gold Partner
Citrix Gold Partner
Citrix Ready
VMware VSSP
Symantec xSP

Experts by any definition.

Highly Trained, Certified Infrastructure engineering experts – experts by any definition.

Ownership - BlueFire is owned by Dimension Data.

Founded in 1983 at the inception of networked communications with a simple vision – to do great things - Dimension Data is a specialist IT services and solutions provider that helps clients plan, build, support and manage their IT infrastructures. Today we are positioned at the forefront of networking and communications in 47 countries around the world.

By continually building on our knowledge and expertise in IT infrastructure technologies, we have become a recognised global leader in the provision and management of specialist IT infrastructure solutions. We plan, build, support and manage IT infrastructure solutions that help over 6,000 clients achieve their business goals. Drawing on our experience in network integration, security, converged communications, data centres and storage, contact centre and Microsoft technologies, we deliver a full lifecycle of IT services.

Dimension Data at a glance

Founded in 1983
2008 revenues of $4.5 billion
Listed on the London Stock Exchange and the Johannesburg Securities Exchange Limited
A client base that spans all industry sectors including financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, manufacturing, government and education
Over 11,055 highly skilled employees
Established global footprint coupled with unrivalled experience in emerging markets
Strategic partnerships with leading technology vendors, including Cisco and Microsoft
Recognised industry leader with 56 industry awards in 2008

www.dimensiondata.com.au

Delegated Management, Tools & Control Panels.

BlueFire provide delegated management tools to allow our clients to self manage, administrate and have visibility to the functioning performance of their infrastructure service.

Environmentals

Environmental control units that give a 100% SLA-guaranteed temperature and humidity within a certain range, plus the most advanced pre-action fire-suppression systems available.
Raised floors and zone-4 certified for earthquakes.
Dual-feed 12KV power supply from PG&E, plus N+1 redundancy with redundant power feeds.
UPS modules and PDUs with static switches on front end and emergency redundant back-up diesel generators.
Fully-redundant, roof-mounted, 1500-ton, Liebert system with common ducting, plus security via the elimination of water-filled piping from the datacenter space.
CRAC units in the electrical and UPS rooms.

Security

All premises are closely monitored and guarded, 24x7x365, with sophisticated pan/tilt CCTV covering every part of the facility and security guards posted at all entrances.
Access to servers is restricted to a limited number of authorized engineers and security is strictly enforced using the very latest technology, including man-trap technology, motion sensors and controlled ID key-cards.
BlueFire has many customers who demand high security, including financial services clients, hedge funds, pharmaceutical companies, lawyers & accountants.

Data Center and Collocation

BlueFire is a leading IT infrastructure provider delivering highly scalable hosting solutions. Our state-of-the-art data center achieved ISO 27001, reflecting a consistent, reliable and secure operating environment to support customers worldwide.

24x7 physical security with guards, cameras and biometric monitoring keeps.

BlueFire Primary Datacentre – Optus Tier 1 Datacentre is certified under ISO27001 (Information Security Management Systems ISMS, certification for EXPAN™ Co-location services at its Ultimo Data Centre in Sydney).

ISO 27001 is a globally recognised standard governing security of information and network systems. Optus’ accreditation follows a thorough assessment of its hosting services including the identification and implementation of rigorous controls to meet the information security needs of its corporate and government customers.

Connectivity

National MPLS Network across Australia.
BlueFire Data centre’s have 8 x Carrier Connections – Optus, Uecomm, Digital River, PIPE Networks, Pacnet, Powertel, AAPT, Soul & Telstra Services.
Redundant Internet Services provided by Optus, Uecomm & Digital River.
Dark Fibre connects multiple datacenters & available across Australia.

Infrastructure

Compliant State of the art data centre.
Enterprise Class Hewlett Packard Blade Servers.
Nightly backup & Disaster Recovery Services.
Proactive monitoring of servers, devices and backup systems.
State of the art security, content security – anti-virus, spam & patches, intrusion prevention and layer 7 data analysis.
Redundant high speed Storage Area Networks (SANs)
Hardware maintenance & Upgrades Included
Secure access controls to data centre: two factor authentication, biometric scanners.
24 x 7 x 365 Network Operation Centre (NOC) – Service Desk.
Backup power systems and built-in redundancy.
Minimal Latency and no single point of failure.
Adheres to Microsoft best practices for infrastructure deployments.
Active Passive cluster server configuration for ultimate resilience, plus seamless failover when a cluster node is unavailable or taken offline for maintenance.
Redundant and load-balanced servers increase reliability.