Incipient announced that its flagship software product, the Incipient Network Storage Platform (iNSP) software suite. The iNSP suite is the industry’s first storage virtualization solution that is embedded on industry standard director-class intelligent Fibre Channel (FC) switches.

For the first time, users will be able to migrate data within a storage area network (SAN) using switch-based storage virtualization software without disruption to applications. iNSP supports the Cisco MDS 9000 Series of intelligent FC switches with the 32-Port Storage Services Module (SSM).

This integrated solution greatly reduces the complexity and cost of managing SAN storage and is the first true enterprise-class storage virtualization solution on the market. Incipient has certified iNSP’s interoperability with arrays from top tier storage vendors that include EMC, HP, HDS and IBM. iNSP is now available through Incipient and its business partners.
“We are very pleased to have the Incipient Network Storage Platform software as one of the intelligent fabric applications that can be hosted on our market-leading Cisco MDS 9000 Series Switches,” said Buck Gee, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s storage business unit. “As a strong supporter of open standards, Cisco has helped to develop the Fabric Application Interface Standard (FAIS), a standard for intelligent network-based storage applications. We look forward to continuing our long-standing relationship with Incipient as it introduces its solution to the marketplace.”
iNSP provides companies with a cost-effective and non-disruptive data migration solution by eliminating planned downtime previously required when adding or repurposing storage arrays. iNSP also offers an opportunity for substantial cost reductions for storage array lease and maintenance fees by shortening the amount of overlap time between new arrays scheduled for production and older arrays scheduled for decommissioning. In addition, for companies choosing to introduce Tier 2 storage into their SAN, iNSP facilitates the process. iNSP can automatically and quickly provision new Tier 2 storage and then seamlessly migrate data between storage tiers regardless of the storage array vendor – providing a true heterogeneous data mobility platform to a SAN environment. This allows companies more flexibility and choice of storage vendors; buying storage based on business requirements and taking advantage of discounts offered by their choice of outside storage vendors. Key features of iNSP include the ability to:

Create storage pools that manage storage array volumes logically. iNSP allows administrators to assign and migrate to volumes that meet user defined requirements such as availability, cost, QoS or performance.

Support precise data placement. iNSP includes comprehensive information about the array volume and its physical disk drive relationship to allow users to automatically match application requirements to storage requirements.

Prioritize data migration tasks. Administrators can use iNSP to manage the priority of data migrations to mitigate any application performance impact that may occur if data is migrated during periods of peak application activity.

Automatically allocate storage. The policy engine contained within iNSP allows administrators to create storage provisioning rules across heterogeneous arrays that automatically allocate storage to applications based upon user defined templates, deep storage array discovery information and provisioning best practices.

“iNSP has been well received in the marketplace through our beta and early access programs as enterprise customer demand for network-based SAN virtualization and management applications begins to increase,” said Ric Calvillo, CEO and co-founder of Incipient, Inc. “Furthermore, iNSP delivers the scalability, high-availability and non-disruptive data mobility services enterprise customers require. We set out to build a storage virtualization software solution fully embedded on industry-standard FC director class switches, and we are excited to deliver iNSP to the storage market as promised. iNSP on the Cisco MDS platform is a true enterprise-class storage virtualization solution, and we look forward to capitalizing on the pent-up enterprise demand in 2007.”