The Pillar Axiom™ Storage System

The Pillar Axiom™ Storage System is the bedrock of the Pillar SAN/NAS Solution. It was designed from the ground up in response to the tiered nature of today's storage technology needs. Each tier has distinct applications, performance expectations, and reliability requirements.

Meet the Pillar Axiom storage system

In the Pillar Axiom storage system, all tiers of data reside on a single platform, with a single management interface, under a single software license. An integrated platform means:

• Flexible deployment and redeployment of storage to satisfy the immediate needs of your business

• Quick, easy access to archived data

• Simpler management needs fewer resources, reducing total cost of ownership.

A revolutionary shift in storage convergence

The modular architecture of Pillar Axiom storage system supports multi-tiered SAN and NAS in a single storage pool. System configuration is simple, controlled by flexible quality-of-service driven policies, reducing the operational expense and complexity associated with managing conventional storage products.

SAN, meet NAS. NAS, meet SAN

In the past, storage managers were forced to choose between the performance advantages of SAN technology and the cost-effectiveness of NAS. Pillar eliminates this tradeoff. It designed the Axiom system to seamlessly accommodate both SAN and NAS, giving both technologies access to the same storage pool.

Tiered Access: "High", "Medium", "Low/Archive"

Pillar has developed a unique approach to consolidating storage by enabling users to tier on a component level. The basic premise is that data located on the outside of the disk is more readily available than that on the inside of the disk due to disk I/O access methods. Pillar’s technology tiers data on each disk, placing “Tier 1”or "High Level" data on the outside of the disk, “Tier 2” or "Medium Level" in the middle and “Tier 3” or "Low/Archive Level" on the inside, providing intelligent algorithms to ensure priority access to each tier. This technology will change the way users approach tiering storage.














Tier 1 – highest performance and availability levels for mission-critical applications
Tier 2 – increased performance and high availability for mid-priority applications
Tier 3 – adequate performance and availability to support business utility applications such as file sharing

Product Quality – Long-term Testing

One of the most difficult tasks to overcome when designing a new storage platform is building and testing stability into it. Rather than rushing a product to market and having customers share this burden, Pillar took a different, although expensive route. They have over 150 Axiom systems installed inside of the Pillar organisation for development, testing and production puposes.

Systems are continuously running automated and manual test scenarios that include over 10,000 unique test cases. When not performing other tasks, systems are continuously transferring and checking data. We have already transferred over 20 petabytes of error free data.

Outside the walls of Pillar, Axiom systems have been installed at customer sites since November 2004. Initial installations were NAS systems. SAN systems have been installed in customer sites since the 2nd quarter of 2005.

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