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Proposed Storage Area Network Facilities

Proposed Storage Area Network Facilities. For Discussion. Motivation. University investing SRIF funds in SAN technology to help support future e-science projects Other University’s doing the same e.g Edinburgh Opportunity to review University’s overall storage requirements.

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Proposed Storage Area Network Facilities

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  1. Proposed Storage Area Network Facilities For Discussion

  2. Motivation • University investing SRIF funds in SAN technology to help support future e-science projects • Other University’s doing the same e.g Edinburgh • Opportunity to review University’s overall storage requirements

  3. On Campus most disk storage is provided via Direct Attack Storage (DAS)

  4. Problems with DAS • File store growth exponential leading to: • Proliferation of hardware • Sub-optimal provision • Inefficient delivery • Close coupling leads to single points of failure • Backup regimes become stressed, costly and labour intensive • Disaster recovery procedures become expensive or impractical

  5. Discussion • It is proposed that a storage consolidation strategy based on Storage Area Network (SAN) technology would provide a flexible, manageable and cost effective solution for the majority of the University’s file store requirements

  6. Storage Consolidation • Storage consolidation is about centralising and sharing storage resources amongst a variety of file and application servers • The management of storage resources is separated from the management of servers by establishing a network that removes the physical mapping of storage devices to physical servers • This network allows isolated islands of storage to be pooled together and allocated to servers in a more flexible fashion

  7. Storage Consolidation Benefits • Heterogeneous environment • Protects against SPF • Storage aggregation into virtual pools • Less complex management • Lower admin costs • More suited to DR • Potential for server consolidation • Significantly improves backup restore capabilities • Improves data security, accessibility and availability

  8. Storage Consolidation Architectures • Enterprise RAID operates at Block level • Storage Area Network (SAN) operates at Block level • Network Attached Storage (NAS)operates at File level

  9. Enterprise RAID

  10. Storage Area Network (SAN)

  11. Network Attached Storage (NAS)

  12. Future Trends • Integrate the benefits of different architectures into a common model by enhancing the SAN architecture with NAS head functionality and Fabric extension capabilities • NAS heads provide: • SAN attached dedicated servers • Resilience through Clustering • High performance interfaces • Fabric extension via iSCSI, FC/IP and iFCIP provide • Integration of SAN islands • Lower cost server to SAN connections • Ability to extend SAN connectivity

  13. Bringing it together

  14. Potential SAN Benefits for the University • More efficient use of storage resources • Less systems administration effort • Resilience via fault tolerance • Disaster recovery plans • Backup and restore operations • Server consolidation and resilience • Core service provision – Directories, E-Mail, CSCE, SSD, Samba etc • Research projects • Faculty/Department Block and File level requirements

  15. Proposed SAN Model • A core fabric spanning 2 sites • A number of FC edge switches linked to the FC core • A number of disk arrays providing the storage requirements for: • Research projects • Mirroring • Core services • Other applications • A number of servers connected via FC Host Bus Adaptors (HBAs) • An enterprise class backup facility • NAS heads for file sharing functionality • iSCSI support for fabric extension to non FC attached clients • FC/IP support for native fabric extension

  16. Proposed SAN Model

  17. Fabric costs Fabric Design Switch costs HBA costs Fibre provision Manufacturers limits Vendor and OS support Fabric extension NAS heads iSCSI and FC/IP SAN management Disk grouping Security Performance monitoring What factors need to be addressed when considering a SAN solution?

  18. Disk virtualisation requirements Virtualising file systems Backup Regimes Type – Snapshot, Full and Incremental Extent – wont be able to backup all SAN storage Media – Tape, staging disk then tape Costs – hardware and media Fabric Connection Guidelines Not an open SAN Restrict to manageable set of proven hardware compatible systems Funding Initial SRIF Requires significant investment over time Who pays? What factors need to be addressed when considering a SAN solution?

  19. Alternative Solutions • Lower cost IP/SAN solutions emerging based on • Standard hardware • Open source OS’s • iSCSI over existing campus networks • Examples • Open source NAS with future SAN support http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=displaynews&NewsID=615 • Open source NAS appliance http://www.nwfusion.com/reviews/2003/0428nasrev2.html • SANmelody - http://www.datacore.com/products/prod_SANmelody.asp

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