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All About Data SANity!

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Runaway growth in data storage needs could spell disaster, if left

unattended. With storage and management of sensitive information topping their

priority lists, CIOs are moving away from older server-attached models to more

sophisticated network storage architectures like NAS and SAN

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Businesses are witnessing an explosion in the volume of data. Whether it is the result of the Internet, e-mail or increasingly

top-heavy and media-rich application software, there seems to be a sudden spurt

in the volume of data all around. And it brings along a host of other problems

for the CIO: data replication, lack of cost-effective data-sharing technologies,

abundance of unattended files, and stale data that its creators use, forget

about and never delete from their disks. Conservative estimates from IDC place

data growth at approximately 80% per year. From a not-so-measly 184,641

terabytes of stored data worldwide in 1999, IDC projects that new data storage

will grow to almost 2,000,000 terabytes by 2003.

CIO TIPS

Review you needs Storage networks are not for everybody. You should review your company’s

storage needs and resources before buying. For instance, if you do not have to

share large amounts of data you could probably continue with a LAN.

NAS or SAN? Or both Once implementers have their priorities straight, they can determine which

type of storage networking is best for them. While NAS and SAN provide similar

storage pooling and management capabilities, it’s how they do it that

determines which is better for a particular application or business

installation.

Affordability and RoI Even when you have decided to implement network storage, the return on

investment may not justify the costs involved. A comprehensive SAN could cost

crores of rupees, putting them beyond the reach of most small enterprises. So it

is important to ensure what benefits you are expecting and whether you can

afford a SAN or should you settle for a NAS.

Manage your resources Make sure you have the in-house resources, the people who understand how to

manage it. Otherwise you could seek consulting or outsource depending on the

scale of your requirement.

Interoperability Companies implementing a SAN often buy hardware from one company, software

from another company, while a third company supplies the components needed to

connect everything together. This could pose serious interoperability problems.

So, it is very important to check the compatibility of the various solutions you

are implementing before investing.

Scalability and upgradation Your requirements are expanding at a pace faster than you can imagine. So it

is essential to build your systems that allow easy upgrades and are highly

scalable.

 Network securityData protection is crucial since information is becoming a company’s most

valuable asset. The loss of critical data can cripple a company’s ability to

operate effectively. The lack of industry standards also heightens concern about

security and the ability to prevent unauthorized access to data. All necessary

safeguards must be built into your network architecture.

The new economy has arrived with a new generation of

applications that are data-fed, data-driven, and data-intensive. Today, no

aspect of enterprise computing deserves more attention than maintaining and

storing corporate data. According to a random survey conducted by Dataquest

across 20 large organizations, it was revealed that about 60% companies were

planning to enhance their storage capacity by 25-50%. CIOs are increasingly

abandoning traditional storage means that will no longer be able to handle the

mountains of data their companies generate. Topologies for storage within the

corporate IT infrastructure have proliferated. Server-attached storage (SAS) is

out; networked storage–including network-attached storage (NAS) and storage

area networks (SANs)–is in.

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According to IDC worldwide, networked storage solutions will

show a robust combined annual growth rate of 67% from 1999 through 2003, while

the growth rate for attached storage solutions will decrease by 3% during the

same period. In 1999, only $2.2 billion of the $30 billion spent worldwide on

disk storage was spent on SAN or NAS devices, but this is shifting dramatically

now. IDC predicts that by 2003, combined NAS and SAN acquisitions will exceed

one-third of the estimated $46 billion-disk storage market. "Till about two

years ago, no one was talking about network storage and the market was almost

negligible. But things have changed dramatically over the last few months. Every

large enterprise that wants to get into high level of computing is now

interested in network storage," says Anupam Nagar, country sales manger,

storage, H-P.

SAS shortcomings

NAS

NAS is a complete storage system that is connected to

an IP-based network. Essentially, a NAS is a specialized server optimized

to store, protect and share data. NAS devices own and manage their own

storage, with their own file system, operating system, hardware and

software. In addition, high-end NAS devices can be connected over an IP

network into a ‘network storage cluster’, offering very high

performance and limitless scalability. Such a cluster would typically sit

behind the servers, on a dedicated Ethernet connection. Because the NAS

has its own file system, it is particularly appropriate for deployments

where multiple application servers access a common file system.
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The traditionally used server-attached storage model does not

serve increasing business needs any longer. This model, which uses servers, each

with its own directly attached storage devices, creates islands of information.

Whenever more capacity is required, administrators add additional disk space to

existing servers, or add new servers. Back-up is on a local tape drive or a

shared drive over a network. "The SAS mechanism might be fine for

individual needs or for a small setup. But it gets difficult to manage over a

large network," says Nagar.

As business requirements dictate increasing amounts of

storage space, the shortcomings of managing islands of storage directly attached

to servers have become more pronounced. Managing backup of isolated storage

devices also needs additional manpower and cost. And since it cannot be easily

scaled or even reallocated, organizations are forced to over-buy. Organizations

cannot keep enhancing their IT budget to match the growth of storage

requirements.

Utilization of storage capacity in the direct-attached model

is often lower than necessary. As a result there is lot of wastage and network

performance suffers. As storage management gets more complex, there are more

points of failure. "Now more than ever, the scalability of your storage

systems is a critical factor in your company’s ability to compete. The

traditional storage solutions do not fully deliver on the demands of the

Internet age. They are simply not designed to handle the unexpected spikes in

demand for data-driven services, to accommodate the 24 x 7 availability

requirements of today’s end users, or to be managed across globally

distributed networks," says KP Unnikrishnan, country head, marketing, Sun

Microsystems.

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Downtime can be disastrous

Downtime can be disastrous

The new economy enterprise needs constant access to inventory

and to customer, employee and external Web databases. Files need to be accessed

instantly with zero downtime. There is a need for effective data management

systems that can produce instant results on actions taken. Most e-commerce

transactions or datawarehousing applications are built around databases, which

need a strong and failure-free foundation of storing, updating and querying

data. Otherwise, downtime costs can be disastrous. "To maintain the

performance of your systems, you need to have a strong foundation and downtimes

have to be minimized," says PK Gupta, director of engineering, Legato.

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SAN

SAN, on the other hand, is a combination of

fiberchannel infrastructure (hubs, switches, directors, and server host

bus adapters, also known as the FC Cloud), hardware devices (disk and tape

drives with FC interfaces) and software to manage the SAN. Because there

are many components that must interoperate seamlessly, a SAN is both more

complex and more expensive than a single NAS installation. However, once

installed, a SAN is scalable to enormous size. Data traffic is offloaded

from the existing network backbone to the SAN, improving network

operations. SANs treat data

Downtime costs vary from industry to industry, based on

dependency upon technology and typical labor costs. Companies that are the most

dependent upon automated systems, such as energy and telecom enterprises, accrue

an average of nearly $3 million in losses for every hour of downtime, based on

lost revenue and employee idling, according to an October 2000 Meta Group study.

IT-dependent manufacturing companies and financial institutions suffer per-hour

revenue losses of $1.5-1.6 million. Health care, media and hospitality/travel

companies, less dependent upon IT infrastructure, lose $330,000-636,000 of

revenue per hour. Modern storage-recovery requirements present a problem for

conventional business-continuity planning. The proliferation both in the volume

of data and in the type and topology of storage platforms can affect the

efficacy of all recovery plans.

Towards network storage

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As more and more companies are realizing the need to protect

data and enhance storage capacity, the movement towards network storage is fast

catching on. "Increasing downtime costs and the limitations of the

server-attached model have led to the development of network storage. It makes

your infrastructure much more scaleable and flexible," says Gupta. There

are two different approaches for network storage: storage area networking (or

SAN) and network attached storage (NAS). Both SAN and NAS facilitate the sharing of a pool of storage devices, use network

technologies instead of direct attached and have the goal of simplified management of storage. There

are, however, fundamental differences between the two technologies.

SANs solve the LAN-to-storage bottleneck by using fiber

channel or Ethernet technologies to take storage off the server entirely.

Storage is centralized, so individual servers can access tape and hard disk

drives as needed. That translates into more efficient use of storage space and a

much higher level of scalability. In comparison, a NAS is basically a

stripped-down server that is specifically designed for file services, such as

sending, receiving and storing data files. It has its limitations, as it doesn’t

usually provide effective backup. However, it offers significant cost saving,

which is a big advantage over SANs.

DATAQUEST conducted a random

survey of 20 medium and largescale organizations to ascertain their

approach to data storage. 



Some interesting facts emerged:

  • 60% of respondents said they had a disaster recovery program in

    place while another 40% said that they were working on it. This

    shows a high level of readiness towards disaster recovery among

    organizations.
  • 60% of respondents said they planned to increase their data

    storage between 25-50% in the next 12 months. 20% of respondents

    indicated that their storage enhancement would be greater than 50%.

    This has to do with the increasing data-volumes with organizations

    get networked and e-enabled.
  • 40% of respondents mentioned that they were planning to shift to

    network storage architecture within the next 12 months. A further

    40% were undecided about their plans to move to network storage.

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"SAN is more suitable for very large-sized organizations

that need high-end transaction capabilities. But in terms of mass deployment,

NAS will definitely become more popular as more people can afford it," says

Sanjiv Nangia, director, LanBit–an organization focused on the NAS segment.

It’s happening in India!

The trend is catching on in India as well. The Dataquest CIO

survey found that 40% of large organizations are planning to go for network

storage architecture in the next 12 months. Corporate users are beginning to

realize the significance of data as a strategic corporate resource. Says Aman

Munglani, senior analyst, IDC India, "The large-sized businesses (>500

employees) have been the primary driver behind new storage purchases." NAS

is also expected to do well in India as long as the product is positioned as

complementing the previously installed storage solution rather than as a total

replacement alternative. IDC India’s research indicates that Indian customers

are seeking scalability rather than total replacement of their existing

solutions. Says MS Sidhu, MD, Apara Enterprise Solutions, "We have been

operating in this space for the past five years. India is a very mature market

for this segment and holds good promise for future in this segment. Currently

more and more customers are setting up their own data centers. Besides, the

Internet data centers (IDCs) are fuelling this growth consistently."

Outsourcing Storage

Faced with an ever-expanding volume of Web traffic, some companies now

outsource their data storage needs

With the Internet becoming increasingly critical as a

part of any company’s business strategy, data volumes have multiplied

exponentially. It has been found that most companies need to double their IT

staff annually to keep up with the deluge of data that they’re accumulating at

an astounding rate.

Many firms are finding that the solution to their data management might not

lie in buying more storage but with learning to manage more data with fewer

bodies. For some companies without the budget or the inclination to do

everything in-house, that means outsourcing storage to third-party storage

service provider (SSP) companies that use their own massive investment in

infrastructure and IT talent to manage the data of multiple companies.

Presently, a few companies are willing to take the risk of letting a third

party store their data, particularly when it may be stored next to data from

other companies–possibly competitors. It’s certainly a harder prospect for

the traditional enterprise, so entrenched in keeping its data under lock and key

at its very own facilities. But while traditional companies are loath to let go

of their data, dot-coms and other Web companies simply don’t have the luxury

of choosing either an in-house storage scheme or an outsourcer. Their businesses

are essentially up and running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which means it’s

all data, all the time for these companies.

The US storage market has seen a proliferation of players in the data-storage

segment right from the big players like EDS, IBM Global Services to smaller

players claiming to be storage service providers. The market in the US seems to

be set for a period of consolidation according to analysts.

But the Indian storage scene is different. India’s position on the learning

curve is much behind the US and there are limited players offering storage

outsourcing. T Srinivasan, country manager, India, EMC, feels that the most of

the large IT-savvy organizations in India are currently consolidating their

requirements and moving from server-based to network-based storage. Financial

institutions and telecom firms will be the prime movers in this direction.

Outsourcing of storage requirements for these companies is not on the cards

since most of them have made investments in their own data centers and

infrastructure. Storage outsourcing will gather momentum only when customers

understand that storage being the key to computing and with the rate of growth

of storage requirements, outsourcing might be an option.

Who is implementing?

Among the verticals, telecom and financial sectors are the

primary industries that stand to benefit the most by network storage

architecture. "Online banking uses transactions that need a robust

architecture like SAN. Most of the progressive Indian banks that want to

automate their operations will have to go for it," says Avijit Basu,

marketing manger, network storage, H-P. ICICI, IDBI, HDFC and UTI have already

begun large-scale SAN implementations.

Among the solution providers, EMC, IBM and Hitachi are

focussed mainly in the high-end segment, others such as H-P, Compaq and Network

Appliance cater to all kind of enterprises. SAN management software companies

such as Tivoli and Legato offer solid products and have established partnerships

with other vendors. The solutions would be as expensive or complex as the needs

of the organization. Although a SAN would mean at least a crore of investment, a

simple NAS solution might cost just Rs 2 lakh or so.

In transition

Although SAN and NAS have emerged as the hottest technologies

in the storage market, there are substantial hurdles to be overcome. The

exploding demand for storage space could be a burden on the company’s IT

budgets. Efficiencies will have to be found to contain the costs of storage

expansion and to improve network performance. Multiplicity of vendors and

solutions has created issues such as interoperability and returns on investment.

From a business standpoint, it might make sense to use a single vendor for the

entire solution. You’ll have fewer contracts to sign, a simpler support system

and a better chance that one set of applications will be able to talk to

another. But you’ll probably pay more for this solution than for something

similar you would integrate on your own.

Face-to-face

SAN

NAS

Architecture that removes storage devices from servers and places them on a

separate network that all servers can access

Self-contained storage device, complete with OS and management

software, can be attached to the existing network 

Placed behind servers (central office) 

In front of servers (close to users) or in central office

Enterprise-level storage (industrial strength) 

Single NAS: departmental storage; clusters can be scaled to enterprise

level

New network behind servers (fiber channel) 

Attaches to existing LAN or clustered on a new Ethernet network

behind servers

LAN performance improves–traffic is moved to SAN 

LAN performance may degrade–if NAS is backed up over LAN

May be difficult to incorporate legacy devices 

Easy to integrate with existing devices

Sees data as I/O blocks 

Sees data as files

Installation can be complex 

Easy to install

May be expensive 

Relatively inexpensive

As with any new technology, the market is in a state of

transition. Organizations are willing to move out of their traditional closets

into the new age methods of data management and storage. Analysts feel that the

factors driving SAN and NAS growth will continue to push the market ahead in

spite of an overall slowdown in capital spending due to economic conditions.

SHWETA VERMA with inputs from Amit Sarkar

in New Delhi

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