Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Apr 12, 2010 @ 05:43 AM
A business rises and falls on its data storage. Ready access to business critical information is the backbone of a business in today’s information dependent world. Having the right storage server for your business is essential if you’re going to increase productivity, have reliable performance and do it all without breaking your IT budget.
The good news is that there are several options for business storage servers. From hosted services to locally attached storage, a business can pick and choose the types of solutions that best fit its business, its processes and its needs.
Hosted Storage Server Options
One of the most common models used by businesses today is a hosted storage server option. When you use this kind of solution, the service provider hosts the relevant hardware and software on their premises. They manage data backup, and they handle everything from operating system upgrades to redundancy to throughput.
The obvious advantage to a hosted solution is that you don’t have to put much up front in the way of capital expenditures. You don’t need to pay for storage servers or for network infrastructure. You don’t need to hire a storage manager or pay for training for one of your existing server admins or engineers. In addition, with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) you can often wind up with increased uptime and reliability over an in-house solution.
Network Attached Storage Server Options (NAS)
Another business storage server option is Network Attached Storage. With this model, your company purchases specific devices that plug into your network. These devices are, essentially, storage devices that can be accessed and utilized by many servers.
The advantage to a NAS model is that you can adjust your storage capacity and manage your storage resources much better than with traditional servers or hard drives. If your Exchange server runs out of space, you simply allocate more space on the NAS device, for example.
Storage Area Network Server Options (SAN)
A Storage Area Network is a network separate from your data network that’s devoted solely to storage. The SAN provides space to servers, and it also provides storage to users. A SAN is especially useful in that it has certain built-in redundancies that aren’t always present in some other types of business storage server options.
One downside to this model is that it requires a good bit of additional infrastructure to support. In addition to network equipment, you need a SAN administrator to monitor performance, make changes and adjustments and to optimize the overall use of the network resources.
Disk Attached Storage Server Options (DAS)
This is the oldest model of storage solutions. This model includes the use of dedicated storage servers, each of which has its own hard disks and is limited to its own hardware. This type of solution is not just out of vogue, it’s really obsolete for most businesses. The risks involved in such a configuration are significant, both in terms of performance and in terms of disaster recovery.
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Wed, Feb 03, 2010 @ 07:00 AM
This post is taken from Mike Workman's recent blog post, Pass the Morton's Salt.
When I was quite a bit younger some really great folks at IBM gave me the opportunity to help start a Hard Disk Drive OEM business. I was part of the Storage division in San Jose California. At the time we built proprietary, non-standard products with all custom mechanical and electrical parts.
The writing was on the wall, the future lay in using high volume, and hence lower cost parts. Not only did this amortize engineering costs (NRE), but tooling and test process costs could be amortized over a much larger volume as well. The idea was – use custom parts only where they provided a distinct competitive advantage. Then, build designs that could be sold into many products, not just one.
IBM wasn’t alone in this, the rest of the world was trying to gain leverage by producing standardized components as well. Seagate was building an empire out of providing 5.25” standard form factor drives to everyone, including the IBM PC (AT back then). But IBM had invented the disk drive, and its leadership was furious about ceding the high volume low cost drives to the likes of Seagate, and Conner Peripherals. Besides, it was clear that before long, the mechanical advantages of smaller form factors and advancing technologies would obsolete the “big drives” that were sold two or four spindles to the refrigerator sized box.
The IBM AS400 group had the same idea: Build smaller drives with advanced IBM technology to sell to internal customers like the AS400 and IBM PC groups. While the AS400 came from the “custom” world, the IBM PC guys new that they needed best of breed cost in all their components, and the thought of being locked in to some over-transfer-priced HDD from another division was repugnant. The Rochester team made an “almost standard” product: Little things like non-standard mounting holes were rendering their drives incompatible for PCs inside or outside of IBM.
I was asked by “The Chairman” and a few San Jose execs to build an entrepreneurial program inside IBM – the goal of which was a) To build a standard form-factor and interface HDD, and b) Build one packed with enough technology like MR heads to allow even the high-end storage guys to incorporate it into a modular version of the product. Unfortunately the IBM Rochester team was heading in a similar direction, so a political battle ensued in which after a squabble, I landed in Rochester, Minnesota. As my California friends said at the time “He really must have pissed someone off to be sent to Minnesota”. From Rochester (home of the Mayo clinic) I managed what I named Allicat – an enterprise class drive in reliability and performance that fit Industry standard electrical and mechanical specifications. The “Alli” in Allicat came from the Alliance of San Jose and Rochester. At 2GB, 5400 RPM, SCSI and IPI-2 interfaces, the drive was the beginning of the OEM HDD storage team within IBM. We went from about $0 top-line revenue to about $4.6B in the next 11 years.
Disk drives today are indeed labeled as a commodity. Lots of definitions of a commodity exist including simply something that is bought or sold. I maintain that when most of us think commodity, we think about a product that has minor differentiation against others that are adequate substitutes. Table salt for example: Nobody says “Please pass the Morton’s Table Salt”. Instead, salt is salt, and rarely is anything but “Please pass the salt” heard at any table. Likewise, gold is gold, wheat is wheat, etc. Differentiation of one commodity over another is usually at the fringes -- fringes which are desperately held on to by manufactures (But when it rains, this salt still pours!).
Moving up the food chain buyers of PCs and Servers that incorporate HDDs always make sure that their commodities include two or more sources. Same for muffin fans, chassis, cables and connectors.
What about storage arrays? Well the more complicated the system, and the smaller the volume requirements are for a system, the less easily it is commoditized. After all, the how many Golden Gate bridges are needed in the world and how standard is the interface between the bridge and the terra firma it sits on? So the truth is, while buyers try and push arrays toward the commodity spectrum, it is difficult to substitute one array for another at some level. Training, management, interoperability, application APIs are all different enough that one vendor is much easier than three, and disparate types of arrays at some level cost the buyer money by shear reason of their differences.
What are some of the consequences of commoditization in the storage business? Here are a few, I am sure that many of you can add to this list:
- Disk will continue as a commodity.
- SSD will become a commodity. Manufacturers will struggle valiantly but much like the HDD business, that large OEMs will drive toward standardization and multiple sources as volumes increase. One might argue that we are nearly there already, but firmware maturity is still disparate amongst manufacturers.
- The number of manufacturers of SSDs will grow for awhile, and eventually decline as margins force consolidation.
- Flash memory used in SSDs will become a commodity. Today there are still some differences but there will be a convergence.
- Plug-in Cache modules (PCIe based Flash Memory) will converge into a commodity. Right now many players are striving to differentiate themselves, but the pace will be fast and furious and largely decided by large volume OEM’s wins.
- As SSDs reduce in price and increase in capacity, there will be larger and larger a substitution of SSDs for HDDs.
- A trend toward SSDs over HDDs will cause all storage arrays to be re-architected. Today’s arrays are not built properly for maximum utilization of the performance benefits of SSD. This will affect everybody in the business. Pillar’s advanced Axiom architecture is already under development. This will be fun.
Oh, and I like Minnesota, really. Sure it is cold, but that wasn’t the real problem. Rather, it was how long it was cold. And thank goodness for the commoditization of salt, because they use a heck of a lot of it.
- Mike Workman, Chairman & CEO, Pillar Data Systems
Posted by Crystal Nichols on Wed, Dec 23, 2009 @ 08:00 AM
The marketplace for Enterprise Storage Management (ESM) is changing rapidly. Storage utilization is growing in many enterprises by as much as 60 percent to 100 percent each year. Experts suggest that the ESM market will continue to grow by at least 10 percent a year for the foreseeable future. For your business to keep up with these trends, you need to not only know what’s going on but also know what types of solutions will best fit your business’s needs.
It’s important, first of all, to recognize that ESM encompasses more than just technology. Your people and the processes your company uses are also an integral part of ESM. Implementing a new technology is futile if it doesn’t fit your company’s culture, the way it does things, and even its business purposes.
ESM and Business Continuity
Some of the most pressing issues in ESM right now are the twin imperatives of disaster recovery and business continuity. As data need grow in volume, the ability of backup systems to keep pace without demanding network or SAN resources is no easy task.
Still, an effective ESM solution has to take disaster recovery and business continuity into account. As many as 90 percent of companies that experience a significant data loss due to a disaster will go out of business within five years. Just under half of businesses never open their doors again after a disaster. Effective ESM can greatly improve the odds of your company to survive these kinds of trials.
ESM and Heterogeneous Environments
Another significant problem for ESM right now is heterogeneity. Today’s enterprise is typically no longer a one-vendor shop. Enterprise IT personnel recognize that you need best-in-class solutions for many business functions, and that a single-vendor solution is almost never the most efficient way to go.
This is, of course, a challenge in many IT areas, not just ESM. Heterogeneity affects performance management and data sharing as much as it does ESM. However, an effective ESM solution is one that’s able to serve multiple environments and still keep utilization and management from becoming a logistical nightmare.
ESM and Legacy Data
A third issue facing ESM today is the issue of legacy systems. When you transition a business function from one environment to another, you will ideally pull archived data along with the transition. In cases where this isn’t possible, you not only need to maintain the legacy system, you need to provide an effective storage solution for that data.
A workable ESM solution takes into account legacy data. If the ESM can’t offer legacy data to both old and new systems, it still needs to be able to preserve the data for whatever archival purposes are required by business process or by industry regulations.
The Right ESM Solution for You
When you’re choosing an ESM, you need to focus on several factors. All of these issues should be addressed in the process of evaluating solutions:
• Necessary data performance throughput,
• Availability of business-critical data and applications,
• Scalability,
• Backup and Recovery,
• And, of course, your budget.
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Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Oct 12, 2009 @ 08:37 AM
Enterprise storage, in the most basic sense, is the use of a centralized storage system to manage, protect and provide access to the enterprise’s data. An enterprise storage solution gives connectivity to that data from whatever source or application can effectively use that data.
It’s important to understand, first of all, how enterprise storage is different from basic consumer storage. Enterprise storage requires vastly larger amounts of storage capacity. Enterprise storage also utilizes different and more advanced technologies than consumer storage.
Types of Enterprise Storage Solutions
Historically, there have been three different types of storage solutions available to the enterprise. Direct Attached Storage (or DAS) was, historically, the first to come about. Direct attached storage is storage that’s directly connected to a host computer. In this model, access to the data is provided through the enterprise’s Local Area Network.
For obvious reasons, DAS has fallen out of vogue. It has significant limitations, not the least of which is the impact that this solution has on the rest of the data network. DAS exists today only in the sense that the storage media are attached to storage server nodes, which may or may not be attached directly to the LAN.
Network Attached Storage (or NAS) is exactly that sort of storage. It refers to a storage device that’s part of a server located on your LAN. Network Attached Storage takes the form of data servers that are directly integrated into your LAN architecture. Network file servers typically make up an Network Attached Storage solution.
NAS has its limitations, as well. NAS doesn’t offer compatibility with certain applications, for example. In addition, NAS still can create something of a drag on your Local Area Network.
A Storage Area Network (or SAN) is probably the most widely-used type of enterprise storage solution today. SAN lets you connect more than one host to a storage device. This frees up your server resources in a number of ways, and gives you many more options when it comes to things like redundancy and failover. In addition, a SAN tends to create less drag on the Local Area Network, because much of the passing of data takes place only in the SAN environment.
Choosing the Right Enterprise Storage Solution
When it comes time to choose an enterprise storage solution, there are some things to keep in mind.
First of all, you need to choose a solution that is scalable. The explosive need for data storage means that a system that isn’t scalable can be obsolete in months.
You also need a secure storage solution. Make sure your solution is secured against threats on the network. Make sure your solution has backup and disaster recovery options, as well.
Finally, you need an enterprise storage solution that meets regulatory compliance issues. Depending on what industry your business is in, this may or may not be particularly difficult, but it is an issue that needs to be brought up before you choose a solution, rather than after.
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Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Oct 05, 2009 @ 06:00 AM
One of the biggest concerns of CIOs, IT managers, SAN administrators and even network engineers is the issue of storage provisioning. Storage provisioning, in a nutshell, is the process of assigning storage in order to optimize the performance of your Storage Area Network (SAN). Provisioning can be a tremendously tedious process, as any SAN administrator can tell you.
Why is storage provisioning so taxing? Well, for one, storage provisioning requires you to go through several steps, all of which must occur in a specific order. You have to assign LUNs (Logical Unit Numbers), verify that data storage and data recovery routes are available to users when they need them, create alternate routes in case of a partial failure, and make sure that the SAN can accommodate expansion. Once everything has been engineered and set up, you have to thoroughly test the SAN before you can commit your valuable data to it.
The good news is that a process known as automated storage provisioning has risen in popularity. There are a number of programs that perform automated storage provisioning. These programs are designed to lessen the workload of the SAN administrator, and to free her up for other less-tedious tasks.
There are different types of automated storage provisioning you should be familiar with. Each type represents an increasingly complex level of automated storage provisioning, and what sort your business uses depends on how intense and complex your needs are.
Application-Aware Provisioning
This sort of provisioning provides solutions for business services by adapting your storage situation to the needs of the application. For example, a given application in your organization might have threshold requirements for applications or application data. When the data or the application service level hits the threshold requirement, this type of automated storage provisioning software kicks in and alerts the SAN administrator. This kind of solution runs across virtualized volumes, providing a great deal of flexibility as well as tools that will simplify and automate the provisioning efforts.
Policy-Driven Provisioning
Another sort of automated storage provisioning is policy-driven provisioning. This type of software lets you set business-specific policies. These policies kick in to assign and to configure your storage space and paths so that the application can run properly. This kind of automated storage provisioning will help you maintain your service level objectives, also through the use of thresholds. Here again, this type fo solution will automated many of the tasks involved in expanding your SAN.
You have many choices when it comes to choosing an automated storage provisioning solution. HP is one of the most widely-praised vendors, but there are others, too.
If you want to greatly increase the reliability and service level of your Storage Area Network and free up your valuable IT resources to address other tasks, you should consider an automated storage provisioning solution.