To cope with the demand for increased storage capacity, continuous
availability, and improved performance, scalability, manageability,
and ease-of-use, enterprise system administrators can take advantage
of progress made in disk and tape array systems, libraries and
jukeboxes, and storage management software.
Consolidated Disk and Tape
Arrays
Because consolidation is a key trend in enterprise storage management
and centralized administration is considered a must, organizations
are purchasing both servers and storage in larger units. There
are many advantages to this consolidation and centralization.
Larger systems can more easily justify the overhead associated
with more sophisticated implementations while providing manageability,
scalability, and serviceability. In addition, centralized sites
experience greater uptime and increased performance, which translates
to lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
With data and storage availability becoming the most important
characteristics, RAID has gained very wide market acceptance
in all segments, with mirroring (RAID 1) remaining a strong contender.
This year, disk arrays will offer higher levels of system redundancy
(no single point of failure) and additional intelligence, with
automated volume management and adaptive RAID functionality overcoming
the RAID 5 write performance issue. Price per megabyte has decreased
at an average rate of 30 percent per year for the past 3 years
and will continue through 2002, with some configurations reaching
levels below 10 cents per megabyte.
Borrowing from the RAID concept, tape-system manufacturers are
developing redundant arrays of independent tapes (RAIT) for data-transfer-intensive
and continuous backup applications when you don't want a backup
operation to stop With RAIT, even if one tape in the array fails,
you can restore all the data.
Libraries and Jukeboxes
Falling prices will drop the cost of tape libraries and [optical
jukeboxes to an affordable level for workgroups. Libraries and
jukeboxes will offer multiple simultaneous paths to an array of
drives for very high performance and continuous backup operations.
One major advantage of libraries and jukeboxes is their ability
to be shared among multiple backup servers, allowing administrators
to consolidate backups and monitor them with more consistent policies
and procedures. Major library and jukebox vendors include ADIC,
HP, IBM, Overland, Quantum/ATL, and StorageTek.
Management Software
Robust configuration management and strong monitoring capabilities
are part of the new software developed to centrally manage storage
resources. Management software can now detect imminent failures,
performance bottlenecks, and out-of-bound conditions by extrapolating
from the data that the network and storage devices provide and
by taking predefined actions to deal with these events. Automation
in optimizing functions, such as reconfiguration and load balancing,
is one of the most anticipated improvements in management software.
Look for new developments in three areas:
~ Data management
This year several trends will materialize aimed at improving backup,
data replication, mirroring, and remote vaulting. This has been
covered in another White Paper (Traditional Applications- New
storage Needs)
~ Hierachical Storage Management
(HSM)
The Internet and e-commerce have created an environment in which
not only is more data generated, but also more data needs to be
retained and readily accessible. In this environment, HSM becomes
economically desirable
HSM automatically move data from high-cost to low-cost media,
based on parameters an administrator sets. These systems provide
different data storage tiers. As you move down the tiers, storage
capacity increases, cost decreases, and retrieval time lengthens.
For example, an HSM system might move data that hasn't been accessed
within the past month from a server's hard disk to a less costly
but slower first-tier storage device (e.g., an optical jukebox).
After another period of time elapses--perhaps three months--an
HSM system might move that data to a second-tier device (e.g.,
a tape library). HSM is also set to move data in the opposite
directions - from first or second tier to disk drive- according
to the need or according to a pre-established policy, for example,
calling back an application or a database at the end of each month
at payroll or accounting time. HSM with files is a mature product
capability. The ability to save off and restore databases or portions
of databases is relatively new and you should take the time to
make sure that the capabilities of the product you are considering
will meet your needs
~ Storage Resource Management
(SRM)
SRM software monitors the health, availability, performance, and
configuration of storage systems to provide built-in policies
and optimization advice. It helps administrators better diagnose
their system performance issuesand better manage their storage
resources. SRM, the fastest growing category of storage management
software, is an increasingly critical segment of the storage management
market and is becoming a key ingredient to network and storage
manageability.
~ File management
In heterogeneous environments, a major problem is finding
a system to efficiently handle a variety of file system formats.
In a NAS system, the native file system takes care of this. However,
in SAN systems, the problem has not yet been solved on a widespread
basis although many solutions have been put forward, ranging from
an on-the-fly conversion from one file system to another to the
use of a generic independent file system--sometimes referred to
as a "distributed file system." Many development activities
are under way, some of which are expected to mature this year
5 These file systems will allow the widespread use of data sharing.
CrosStor and Veritas lead the development of generic independent
file systems.
By: Farid Neema
PERIPHERAL CONCEPTS, INC.
351 Hitchcock Way, Suite #B-200
Santa Barbara, California, 93105
Tel: (805) 563-9491
fneema@silcom.com
This article was published in the Marh issue of Windows2000 Magazine