Storage Optimization Techniques: Review the Benefits of Thin Provisioning Introduction For several years Wikibon has been studying the benefits of virtualization and thin provisioning. Our research spans dozens of detailed customer interviews and studies of many hundreds of customers over several thousand storage volumes. Our objectives in conducting efficiency analyses are to identify not only the hardware impacts on issues related to utilization and energy consumption but more importantly the hard-to-quantify green software aspects of technologies. The Wikibon Energy Lab process defines and validates various testing procedures to determine, for example, energy consumed by specific products in various configurations. Storage Systems 101 Typically, storage arrays consist of an array controller, which controls the major functions in the system, and the spinning disks in the array. Imagine further the floor is populated with lots of open space and a large 15’ plank comes to the builder to be laid out. Enter Storage Virtualization and Thin Provisioning
Tape backup VS disk backup. The best tape backup software - EaseUS Todo Backup Server New trends in storage now make it easier than ever for companies to expand their data capacity. However, many companies continue to rely on tape backup as the primary media for backing up their data. When talking about backup storage people always think in terms of scalability of performance, reliability, security, and usability issues. The basics of backup management haven't changed much over the past year, but new products and technologies have made it easier to address these issues, making extreme scalability in disk-based data backup much more feasible and desirable than the traditional tape backup. Comparing in speed - As a primary target for backup, disk has quickly become accepted as the optimal media. Backing up directly to disk will speed up the backup process and also significantly reduce restore times for individual files. Comparing in costs - Disk-based backups don't suffer from the same incremental restore penalties experienced by tape drives. Disk versus tape technology
Tape Backup vs Hard Disk Backup: What Does the Future Hold? I was frequenting Spiceworks earlier today and came across a post asking if “tape was legacy”. I think what they were asking is whether backup to tape is the kind of legacy technology today that we see with VHS—there are still a few out there but the technology is on its way out. I realize that there are still advantages with tape when it comes to large volume backups and the ability to physically move the backup media to an offsite location. Let’s do a quick comparison of tape and disk storage to consider the advantages of each: Capacity “As of 2011, the highest capacity tape cartridges (T10000C) can store 5 TB of uncompressed data” (source Wikipedia), while hard drives have followed Kryder’s law (much like Moore’s law) and doubled areal density every two to four years putting disk drive capacity currently somewhere around 4 TB. Speed Several tape drives I’ve looked at have write speeds approaching 500 MB/s with LTO-5 claiming speeds of 800 MB/s. Cost Ok, so there you have it. Cheers!
VM-aware storage provides better migration, performance and more VM-aware storage is a hot topic right now in the virtualization world, according to storage and virtualization expert Stephen Foskett. In the past year there was an increase in storage developed specifically for virtual machines. These storage systems enhance data migration, performance and integration with virtual server environments. However, some VM storage products will only work well if virtual machines are the only workloads running on it, which may not benefit organizations that haven't virtualized their entire environment. In this podcast, Foskett discusses the benefits and drawbacks of VM-aware storage, and where he sees the technology going in the future. How are vendors making VM-aware storage different from traditional storage, and what are some of the common features that can be found with it? Stephen Foskett: That's really a major industry trend right now. You mentioned VM-aware storage having better data movement and performance.
Understanding Clones Features | Documentation | Knowledge Base | Discussion Forums Prev Contents Last Next A clone is a copy of an existing virtual machine. Changes made to a clone do not affect the parent virtual machine. If you want to save the current state of the virtual machine, so you can revert to that state in case you make a mistake, take a snapshot. Why Make a Clone? Installing a guest operating system and applications can be time consuming. Clones are useful when you must deploy many identical virtual machines to a group. An MIS department can clone a virtual machine for each employee, with a suite of preconfigured office applications. With clones you can conveniently make complete copies of a virtual machine, without browsing a host file system or worrying if you have located all the configuration files. Full and Linked Clones There are two types of clone: A full clone is an independent copy of a virtual machine that shares nothing with the parent virtual machine after the cloning operation.
SAN Based replication ? no problem.. latency.. Problem.. | Interestingevan's Blog Disaster recovery has become something which is moving higher and higher up agenda on companies “to do” list. Its becoming increasingly more apparent what the costs to a given business are when companies suffer downtime and/or loss of data.. people are starting to think about the monetary cost to the business is when services or applications are unavailable to both internal staff and more importantly customers and with the big push of server virtualization over the last few years.. where is application data/file data/the application server itself sitting ? on the SAN; so it makes sense to leverage that existing infrastructure in the SAN and use some form of SAN based replication. So what do you do to make sure the DR solution you have in mind is feasible and realistic ? Firstly make sure you pick the right technology First port of call is sitting down with the customer and mapping out the availability requirements of their applications. Mirrorview A-Syncronous (EMC) EMC RecoverPoint
Limitations of host-based mirroring for stretched clusters | Dirty Cache For data mirroring, EMC SRDF is sometimes used in such a setup that both servers write to one location only (the “far” server writes across dark fibre links to the local storage). EMC has similar tools (Mirrorview, Recoverpoint, etc) for other storage platforms than Symmetrix. SRDF cluster with passive target This, as said, has the disadvantage that if the active storage system (or the whole site) goes down, the cluster still goes down and has to be manually restarted from the failover site. SRDF cluster failure recovery Host Based Mirroring A seemingly attractive alternative exists for replicating storage across multiple datacenters: Host Based Mirroring. As Oracle Automatic Storage Management (ASM) fulfills all of these requirements, many customers choose to move away from Unix style volume managers and use Oracle ASM instead. The idea is that if a site failure happens, the cluster keeps running without recovery as storage on both locations was active anyway. License cost CPU overhead
Interestingevan's Blog | Datacentre Musings Storage architecture choices: SANs By Yuval Shavit, Features Writer Storage area networks (SANs), which were once available only to large enterprises that could afford to pay steep premiums for the best storage, are increasingly moving downstream. SANs combine the benefits of shared storage with those of direct-attached storage (DAS), and newer technologies make them affordable even for small businesses. This article will explore why storage area network (SAN) devices may be right for your clients. Storage acronyms: SAN, NAS and DAS The three main ways of connecting storage to servers are SANs, network-attached storage (NAS) and DAS. SANs and NAS both separate data storage from servers, allowing servers to share those resources. Benefits of SANs Why storage area networks? Because SANs can consist of several physically separate drives or arrays, they also offer replication and disaster recovery features. SANs also complement server virtualization. Cost of SANs A traditional SAN works on a Fibre Channel (FC) network.
Cloud Computing vs. Virtualization EmailShareEmailShare Like the article? Cloud computing and Virtualization are both technologies that were developed to maximize the use of computing resources while reducing the cost of those resources. They are also mentioned frequently when discussing high availability and redundancy. While it is not uncommon to hear people discuss them interchangeably; they are very different approaches to solving the problem of maximizing the use of available resources. They differ in many ways and that also leads to some important considerations when selecting between the two. Virtualization: More Servers on the Same Hardware It used to be that if you needed more computing power for an application, you had to purchase additional hardware. Enter virtualization. Most virtualization systems allow the virtual servers to be easily moved from one physical host to another. Cloud Computing: Measured Resources, Pay for What You Use Cloud computing grew out of the concept of utility computing.
Data Center Infrastructure,Storage-Design Guide: SAN Distance Extension Using ISLs - Brocade Community Forums - 36627 Synopsis: Designs with best practices for a two-site data center disaster recovery solution using Brocade Fiber Channel ISL connections over extended distance. Contents Overview The most common reason for extending a Fibre Channel (FC) storage area network (SAN) over extended distances is to safeguard critical business data and provide near-continuous access to applications and services in the event of a localized disaster. Designing a distance extension solution involves a number of considerations, both business and technical. From the business perspective, applications and their data need to be classified by how critical they are for business operation, how often data must be backed up, and how quickly it needs to be recovered in the event of failure. From a technology perspective, there are several choices for the optical transport network and configuration options for the FC SAN when it is extended over distance. Purpose of This Document Audience Objectives Restrictions and Limitations
What is RAID (redundant array of independent disks)? - Definition from WhatIs.com What is RAID? RAID (redundant array of independent disks; originally redundant array of inexpensive disks) is a way of storing the same data in different places (thus, redundantly) on multiple hard disks. By placing data on multiple disks, I/O (input/output) operations can overlap in a balanced way, improving performance. Ask your RAID questions at ITKnowledgeExchange.com A RAID appears to the operating system to be a single logical hard disk. In a single-user system where large records, such as medical or other scientific images, are stored, the stripes are typically set up to be small (perhaps 512 bytes) so that a single record spans all disks and can be accessed quickly by reading all disks at the same time. In a multi-user system, better performance requires establishing a stripe wide enough to hold the typical or maximum size record. There are at least nine types of RAID plus a non-redundant array (RAID-0): RAID-0: This technique has striping but no redundancy of data. Glossary