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Creating intelligent storage solutions

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DQI Bureau
New Update

With, data access and usage going up, and applications like e-mail and ERP

becoming an important tool within an organization, storage has become an

integral part of the IT infrastructure planning. Till now the approach has been

to invest in servers on which the applications run and these servers are, in

turn, attached to storage devices. This approach has created islands of data

storage. And managing a scattered DAS is a nightmare for any CIO.

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"Multiple servers and scattered data created a complex storage

environment. How to get maximum value from this network has led organizations to

rethink their network strategy," says Manoj Chug, president, EMC India

& SAARC. The mindset has changed toward consolidating applications and

servers on a single, intelligent infrastructure.

When, where, and how



Instead of spreading horizontally, efforts have been toward developing

multiple layers of data storage based on the behavior and importance of data.

"There are four broad areas: manageability, availability, performance and

scalability, according to which the CIO plans his storage," says Shankar

Subramaniam, sales engineer-manager, South-East Asia-Pacific and Korea Brocade

communication. He also adds: "There is no single storage design that can

fit every organization. Designs and solutions vary according to the

requirements".

The first step towards a storage network is to quantify data and its growth

rate. Once the amount of data on the network has been assessed, the CIO has to

identify how much information needs to be shared and by whom. The information is

then broken down into various categories according to its importance. This gives

him an idea of the online data at any point of time. Based on the data growth

and usage, the number of ports, port connects, device attachments and

connectivity designs are planned.

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Data classification is critical to choosing the type of storage architecture

one requires. Tiered storage gives you the flexibility to manage your data

better, and scalability issues are also taken care of. Tiered storage normally

has a combination of fiber channel and ATA drives. Then there are specific

devices for archival purposes. Normally, tapes are being used as the final

resting place for information. As more emphasis is being laid on the management

part, vendors are also incorporating intelligent software to move data across

the storage tiers.

Advantage SAN



Storage is increasingly moving from DAS to network area storage (NAS). And,

within NAS, storage area networks (SAN) are getting the large chunk of the

market share.

"There is a common belief that SANs are complex and expensive. Contrary

to this, SANs enable better management of data and better resource

utilization," said Leong Kam Hong, product marketing manager, Dell/EMC

storage. SANs work on shared storage space and, hence, give access to multiple

users at the same time. As the number of servers goes down, the manpower used to

maintain them is also reduced. And, the intelligent software, which sits on top

of the SAN, appropriates storage space management.

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"Though implementing the first SAN is always difficult, the return on

investment is better than other technologies. Once a SAN is deployed, scaling it

is not difficult, and that advantages makes it inexpensive," Subramaniam

said.

Forecast

for Disc Storage Systems in India

2003-08 (figures

in $ mn)

  2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2003-08



(CAGR (%)
SAN 39.3 51.4 62 76.1 92.3 105.9 22
NAS 16.8 16.5 19.2 22.6 26.1 28.8 11.4
External

DAS
31.1 28 28.2 29.2 29.7 29.8 -0.9
Internal

DAS
42.8 46.5 47.1 46.5 44.8 40.7 -1
Total 129.9 142.3 156.5 174.5 192.9 205.2 9.6
%

change
25.2 9.5 10 11.5 10.5 6.4 -

source:IDC, 2004

In all this maze of technology, IP-SANs are also gathering momentum. As IDC

predicts, 23% of the over all storage market will be on IP-SAN.

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Whether fiber channel, or iSCSI, or IP is used in SAN depends on the company's

policy. Storage experts say that fiber channel being a mature and robust

technology, should be used for mission critical applications. However, iSCSI

gives the flexibility of using the Internet for access and, hence, comes out as

the cheaper solution.

The options



Whether to outsource data storage to a third party data center or to have a

network within the campus, is a business decision an organization has to make.

"If a company is looking for short term data storage, a data center serves

the purpose. But if long-term storage is being planned one should give serious

thought to own the network," says Leong.

When the frequency of data access is higher and every thing needs to be

online, a personal storage network is desirable. The trend today is to have a

hybrid model. "Most companies have their data disaster recovery network

with a third party and, for the current flowing data, they have their own

environment," added Chug.

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Security



When the storage network is within the organization, it is less prone to

security threats. But when the data is with a data center over a public network,

it is imperative to have some type of check. "There has been no report of a

fiber channel network being hacked, however, security is at the top of his

agenda when a CIO is planning his storage network," says Subramaniam.

In the western, and many south Asian countries, there are regulations and

mandates to put in place security mechanisms in data centers and disaster

recovery sites. Though there is no such legal binding in India, the storage

vendors have also woken up to the threat and are putting in multi-layer security

protocols in their products.

Anurag Prasad in New

Delhi

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Intelligent storage

An estimate shows that almost 80% of the data is not mission critical, and

the remaining 20% gets accessed often. However, a simple storage box cannot

differentiate between mission critical and non-critical data. Increasingly, a

concept, giving the box a mind to differentiate between various types of data,

is being implemented. EMC has been promoting it as 'information life cycle

management' and others may simply call it-putting in a tiered architecture

to push the non-critical data to the background.

The intelligence comes from the software that resides over the storage

network and, depending on the priority being set by the user, it assigns a place

to the data on the system.

A tiered architecture would involve various mix and match of technologies to

store data. Fiber channel storage, though costly, is reliable and robust and

forms the first tier where the mission critical data is stored. As more and more

IP-based networks get implemented, fiber can be replaced by IP. For normal data,

which is accessed less frequently, NAS is also an option.

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