Compellent has released a new version of its Storage Center software. The latest release delivers drive-based tiered storage and thin data importing, which can cut the number of drives needed by 80%, the company said.

"The latest SAN manager software could mean reduction in capital expenditure by 75%, a cut in SAN management costs, deliver boot from SAN, recovery from any point in time, real time reporting, Microsoft volume shadow copy integration, unlimited snap shots and increased data availability," said Bob Fine, Compellent's director of product marketing.

Compellent's upgrade includes fast track, free space recovery, application optimizer, thin import and a new controller. Fast track places active data on the outer tracks of a disc drive to speed access while decreasing costs as up to 30% fewer drives are needed, said Compellent. With Free Space Recovery, the company said that normally unused space left over after applications are deleted can be reused. Application Optimizer tunes storage performance depending on the application being used.

End-users can set the size of data transfers within the SAN to match I/O performance for different applications such as video imaging, email and databases and its backwards-compatible Series 30 controller gives increased performance for enterprise applications.

As existing data is copied to a Compellent SAN, Storage Center 4.0 converts the data into thin-provisioned volumes. This Thin Import feature can reduce disc drive requirements by up to 50% and help IT departments reclaim storage resources previously wasted in their legacy systems, said the company.

"Thin Import might be one of the coolest applications of storage technology I've ever seen. Imagine being able to pull all the over-provisioned, over-allocated and under-utilized capacity off of your old expensive arrays and instantly apply just-in-time thin provisioning to those volumes," said Steve Duplessie, senior storage analyst at Enterprise Systems Group. "It is tantamount to taking your 25% utilized storage infrastructure to 80 percent in one fell swoop. Think of what that would mean for everything from footprint to backup -- the ramifications are staggering."

A Storage Center 4.0 QuickStart ILM Bundle costs around £30,000 ($60,000) with 7.2 terabytes of storage, a single controller, Fast Track, Thin Import and Free Space Recovery, among other software licences and standard three-year warranty.