Virtualization
Why is VMware and LeftHand offering a iSCSI SAN, Customers are asking? - April 5, 2008
Orlando Florida -- LeftHand Networks Inc.'s Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) today becomes the first software-only storage device named to VMware's hardware compatibility list. The two companies' mutual channel partners will begin selling the VSA packaged with VMware's Infrastructure Acceleration Kits this week.
The bundles of 2 TB VSA licenses with VMware's small and medium-sized business (SMB) license packages turn an iSCSI SAN into a virtual machine running on the same physical server as virtualized applications, eliminating the need to support separate storage devices in small environments. "VMware is showing it means to take the value of the hypervisor well beyond server virtualization with this release," said Mark Bowker, an Enterprise Strategy Group analyst. "This shows a new way for virtualization to leverage the same hardware platforms." Wants VSA to support more than 2 TB of storage At least one user would like to see the VSA support more storage. "I'd definitely like to see them expand beyond 2 TB," said Pat O'Day, chief technology officer of IT infrastructure service provider BlueLock LLC, which is planning to offer its smaller clients prepared packages of server hardware with the VSA bundles. "You can always set up SAN/iQ on a server, but some clients have older disk shelves and are looking for an economical way to turn them into an iSCSI SAN." BlueLock uses the VSA to save space in its data center, further compressing its iSCSI SAN environment by loading VMware and the VSA on Hewlett-Packard c-Class blade server chassis. Using VSA this way turns HP's SB40c blades into networked storage for VMs running on direct-attached server blades. O'Day said he's hoping to see HP break the hard-coded relationships between server blades and SB40c blades in the chassis, so he can also use Storage VMotion to move VSAs around. O'Day added, "The only thing I don't have with this setup right now is the ability to have the same redundancy for my storage as I do for my virtual servers." Christopher Kalos, network manager for medical publishing company Jobson Medical Information LLC, said he recently installed a VSA on the same box as VMware hosts at a small branch office to eliminate the need for on-site IT staff and tape backups. "We can give this environment true remote support this way," he said. Backups are snapshots sent through LeftHand's replication to a secondary site for disaster recovery. Staff at the company's headquarters can log in and manage all the storage and server software remotely. Cost and remote support were the two main factors in Kalos's decision to put in the VSA. "It cost us about $6,000 for the VSA, and the cheapest module of LeftHand's software otherwise is still about $13,000," he said.
But not all VMware and Storage VARs are buying it, I have seen primary testing from some early production systems and I have to say, customers are not seeing value. When you can purchase a SAN that goes way beyond 2TBs, say Brian McCarthy President of Sencilo Solutions. We sell SAN storage from the top manufactures in the world including HDS, EMC and NetApp, for under $5,000 for 2TBs. By the time you add up the VMware and Lefthand licenses, plus the cost of HP storage you will pay by 3 to 4x the cost of a SAN. Oh by the way who are you going to call for support, VMware, Lefthand or HP when the trouble starts, McCarthy asks? McCarthy goes on to say, rumors are all saying if Lefthand is not bought by the end of 2008 their investors will close them down, so watch for a firesale.
Like O'Day, Kalos said the single-box approach cut down on the redundancy of the system. "If I want to do maintenance on the box, I can't do it whenever I want like I can with the full LeftHand SANs where I can use the two-way replication [between servers] and failover," he said. Because of the limitations of the VSA approach, one analyst said it's a good idea to go with the full iSCSI SAN if possible. "For very small businesses and branch offices, this is a very good solution," said Chris Wolf of the Burton Group "But if users have the resources and physical space to do a full SAN, that's definitely what they should be doing." McCarthy from Sencilo agrees with Chris completely on that point.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ
Best Practices in backing up VMware using VTLs and De-Dupe - April 4, 2008
It's can be said that a server virtualization project may actually an infrastructure redesign project. In areas related to storage and data protection, the impact can be dramatic both in terms of the volume of data and in the operations to support and protect it. Backup is a particular case in point.
Fundamentally, there are two approaches to backup in VMware environments: the first is to mimic the traditional physical server backup approach by installing backup client software on each VM and backing them up individually. The second is to perform image-level backups of virtual disks using either VMware's snapshot capability or a third party. More and more, this second method is being enhanced by mounting snapshots to a VMware Consolidated Backup proxy server for final backup via a traditional backup application.
Besides the integration and coordination effort required, another important consideration is the increase of the volume of data created by virtual environments. The standard use of configuration templates for creating virtual machines results in numerous cookie-cutter VMs of a particular class that are nearly identical. Backing up and storing the myriad copies of nearly redundant data consumes significant storage, a fact that has certainly not escaped data de-duplication product vendors.
There are at least three ways that de-duplication technology can be leveraged in a VMware Virtual Iron vs Virual Machine backup infrastructure:
For the traditional backup within a VM approach, both EMC's Avamar and Symantec's NetBackup PureDisk offer VMware clients that de-duplicates data within a VM prior to sending it across the network.
The storing of aggregated snapshots is, of course, a prime target for de-duplication making NAS storage platforms that offer de-duplication, like EMC Data Domain and NetApp, NEC and Exagrid may be attractive options.
Finally, if data is ultimately being backed up via traditional backup applications, VTL platforms that incorporate de-duplication, such as Overland Storage, Diligent, FalconStor, HDS, Quantum, and Sepatonmay be worth considering.
Or ask your local reseller for advice. Each approach offers its own benefits and trade-offs, but in any case, the opportunity for dramatic data reduction -- and therefore dramatic storage savings -- will only increase as virtualization continues to expand throughout the enterprise.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php
About Sencilo Solutions
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
Is Quantum blasting pass Data Domain in Data De-dup Market? - April 4, 2008
De-duplication eliminate redundant data to improve space and power efficiencies for really green storage
Miami Florida NetApp Inc. on Tuesday announced that the de-dupe adoption rate among its customers has tripled since November 2007, reaching more than 3,500 systems and 100 petabytes (PB) of raw storage capacity.
The storage vendor claimed that more than 1,000 customers have deployed de-dup across all tiers of data, including primary, backup and archival data. Companies like Data Domain Quantum Sepaton vs Falcon Stor Exagrid are not growing close to this.
De-duplication technology, which plays an important role in virtualized environments, is quickly gaining traction among customers who are struggling with data proliferation. Look for EMC Diligent and IBM to join in.
Now customers can eliminate redundant data quickly to improve space and power efficiencies, as well as to reduce the amount of raw storage required. Unlike other Disk to disk or D2D technologies.
NetApp claimed that it is the only major storage and data management vendor to embed de-duplication technology across its entire line of storage systems and to provide an end-to-end solution. Magic Quadrant by Gartner and Awarding winning no doubt. So why LTO-4 tape?
Brian McCarthy President of Sencilo Solutions and Storage Veteran of 25 years said there is a definite trend in the market today toward virtualizing storage environments.
"De-duplication is just one example. Organizations are embracing de-duplication because of the efficiencies it provides their organizations [and] significantly reducing the amount of physical capacity that must be purchased and managed," she said.
Dexma Inc., a company that creates and hosts mortgage-lending software for financial institutions, has used de-duplication to expand its data storage management capabilities.
By combining NetApp and VMware Inc. offerings, the company has created a virtual environment that enhances storage provisioning and increases its ability to more easily scale its storage system to meet its data management needs.
Since the installation of NetApp deduplication in September 2007, Dexma has recovered much of its previously utilized disk space.
This has freed up crucial disk space to be used by other applications, according to the David Waterhouse, the company's senior systems administrator.
"We were able to decrease our storage requirements for our customer file retention by 35%," Waterhouse said. "This has had a direct effect on our bottom line."
De-duplication, which is free of charge to customers as an inherent feature in all NetApp storage systems, will also be free when it is extended to NetApp's virtual tape library (VTL) offering later this year.
The de-duplication option for NearStore VTL will dramatically reduce the cost of storing backups on disk by providing effective storage capacities that are greater than today's systems, according to the vendor.
Patrick Rogers, NetApp vice president of solutions marketing, said de-duplication has become a core element of his company's storage offerings as more customers grapple with growing amounts of data.
While the technology helps customers control growth, Rogers said it's apparent that customers are rethinking their traditional data-backup approaches as VTL becomes more prevalent.
He said recent hardware and software updates introduced in March have more than doubled the maximum usable storage capacity of NearStore VTL and increased write-compressed performance by up to 20%, enabling enterprise customers to protect more data in less time.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ
Symantec NetBackup Updates v6.5 and adds VMware Support - March 23, 2008
Orlando Florida - NetBackup 6.5 incorporates native disk-based backup, data dedupe features, as well as heterogeneous snapshot and continuous data protection (CDP) functionality. The latter feature enables the software to provide centralized management of consolidated snapshots taken from storage arrays of vendors including EMC Corp., IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co., NetApp and Hitachi Data Systems, a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., according to officials of Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec.
Later this year, the product will add block-level CDP capability offering point-in-time snapshots that can be journaled and replayed to NetBackup to speed up data backup operations, officials said. A NetBackup client on the primary storage array will replicate to the CDP server hosting and managing snapshots to enable data to be kept on cheaper storage.
NetBackup 6.5 is equipped with a new storage area network (SAN) client that lets storage administrators perform SAN backup to a disk pool. Further, the upgraded backup tool can be married to Symantec's PureDisk de-duplication technology to minimize unnecessary file duplication and wasted storage space, Symantec officials noted.
Symantec is providing NetBackup with four new enterprise disk options to augment how the company's flagship product manages storage disks, the company said. The Virtual Tape and OpenStorage Disk Options focus on intelligent backup appliances, while the Flexible Disk and PureDisk Storage Options focus on commodity storage disk pools.
By building deeper NetBackup integration with third-party backup appliances, end-users can augment existing virtual tape library deployments by managing third-party devices as disks. A new API has also been added to NetBackup for simplified plug-in, vs. Commvault or EMC Legato Networker.
Kevin Donnellan, assistant CIO for Screen Actors Guild - Producers Pension & Health Plan in Burbank, Calif., said he is looking forward to implementing the upgraded version of the tool to help corral nightly 3TB to 5TB storage backups and 10TB to 12TB backed up on weekends.
In just four years, the company's storage has grown from 1TB to 30TB on two SANs, he noted.
Donnellan said his current configuration of dual backups - one in-house and another at an off-site storage company - could use some more firepower in the form of disk-to-disk capabilities, which he expects to receive from NetBackup v.6.5.
"As many organizations do, we have a finite backup window every night, and even on weekends," he said. "We're looking at disk-to-disk to offload processing quickly onto another set of storage, so if we do run into production window with our backups we don't run into [hampered] response times with our users." Donnellan said the testing of the new NetBackup software registered 10x to 15x performance improvements via disk-to-disk backups over SAN.
"In 6.0," he added, "we have only one backup policy we can put together at one time so all our servers have to live under the same policy. [NetBackup] 6.5 allows multiple backup policies so you can rank the importance of your backups as opposed to a timestamp which is very good for us."
Donnellan's organization serves as the pension and health insurance arm for motion picture television and commercial actors, providing medical benefits, vision, and pension benefits for SAG members who meet the retirement criteria. The insurer runs HP9000 servers running Microsoft Windows 2003, Red Hat Linux and HP-UX. The company uses Symantec tools for managed security services and NetBackup to back up core application data.
NetBackup 6.5 also includes links to EMC Corp.'s VMware Consolidated Backup to offload backups from the primary VMware server onto a secondary backup server. The upgraded product enables single-image level backups to provide either full-image or granular file-level recovery, said Symantec officials. However, for smaller VMware environments, end-users must use Symantec's PureDisk offering in a virtual machine and replace the NetBackup client.
The entire NetBackup platform features capacity-based and per-TB pricing options.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-software.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ
NetApp certified with VMware Infrastructure 3 - March 23, 2008
NetApp has announced that its StoreVault S500 has been certified to work with VMware Infrastructure 3 from VMware Inc.
The combination of StoreVault with VMware Infrastructure provides SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) with infrastructure virtualization strategies that better manage storage and server resources, NetApp said. This announcement further expands the joint collaboration between VMware and NetApp to provide combined consolidation solutions, NetApp said on Monday.
Available immediately, the StoreVault S500 helps customers benefit from combining storage with infrastructure virtualization, NetApp of Sunnyvale, California said. VMware Infrastructure allows SMB customers to optimize and manage their IT infrastructure by allowing a single hardware platform to run multiple virtual machine instances simultaneously, maximizing hardware efficiency, the company said. When the StoreVault S500 is deployed in VMware environments, it can simplify storage management concerns such as resources, data backup and recovery, and capacity provisioning, NetApp added.
Data growth challenges create a number of headaches for SMBs through data loss, backup, and recovery, NetApp said. Many IT environments of SMBs consist of many servers with DAS (direct attached storage), and as a result there is an increasing interest among SMBs to realize the same benefits that enterprise data centers have, but on a smaller scale, the company said. Severing the physical dependencies between servers and storage will achieve better returns on both server and storage resources, NetApp added.
StoreVault, a NetApp division, is focused on delivering data storage solutions tailored to the needs of SMBs. StoreVault combines enterprise-proven technology from NetApp, a provider of unified storage solutions for today�s data-intensive enterprise, with the scalability, simplicity, security, and affordability required by SMBs, StoreVault said.
VMware is a provider of virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. Companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT environments, and to fully use their existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business demands, VMware said.
Virtualization is useful to businesses of all sizes and not just Fortune 500 companies, VMware of Palo Alto, California said. IT managers in SMBs face the same pressures as data center operators when solving storage and server management issues, while having fewer resources to address the problems, the company said. The certifying of StoreVault with VMware will enable smaller firms to meet their budgetary and reliability needs, VMware added.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company, an accounting and financial services firm based in south Florida, had older equipment, DAS, and the inability to scale resources every day, NetApp said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company�s infrastructure consisted of multiple servers running separate applications for more than 35 employees, the company said. Many of their servers were legacy systems using DAS that were performance-bound by their disks, which, consisted mainly of single drives without RAID (redundant array of independent disks), it said. As a result, performance was slow while data redundancy and fault tolerance were major concerns, NetApp added.
Many SMBs, like Ahearn, Jasco + Company, realize that DAS is inefficient, painful to grow, and unable to meet growing storage performance demands, according to Altek Computer Group, a value-added reseller (VAR) based in Miami. There exists an opportunity to help Ahearn, Jasco + Company revolutionize their server and storage environment and boost performance by either virtualizing their resources or by creating a centralized storage pool that can be accessed by virtual machines, Altek said.
With the tax season approaching, Ahearn, Jasco + Company had to address its need for increased storage, which in the past resulted in adding storage to individual systems in chunks, which led to some servers being underutilized, NetApp said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company decided that adding more DAS was not a viable option due to the low price-performance ratio, high expense, and, most importantly, downtime and disruption to employees during the important tax season, the company said.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company needed to upgrade its entire IT infrastructure on a limited budget, the firm said. It became almost impossible to understand the storage sprawl happening in its environment, it said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company required a unified view of all of its resources to improve server and storage allocation, the firm said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company was also concerned about backup, as it relied on tape devices that were slow and did not guarantee disaster recovery, which needed to be fixed with hurricane season coming, Ahearn, Jasco + Company added.
The StoreVault S500 provided Ahearn, Jasco + Company with an enterprise-proven storage technology platform from NetApp that was affordable and easy to use, NetApp said. The StoreVault S500 allows storage to be added or allocated on-the-fly without disruption to operations, the company said. The StoreVault S500 also enables faster backup and recovery for a higher degree of data reliability, it said. With a single purchase, Ahearn, Jasco + Company gained greater flexibility to grow and respond to future data storage needs without additional investment, NetApp added.
The VMware Infrastructure simplifies the storage environment just as StoreVault, NetApp said. The VMware Infrastructure optimizes the use of hardware assets and creates a solution that allows new server, application, and storage capacity to be provided at a moment�s notice, the company said.
SMBs like Ahearn, Jasco + Company combine blade servers running VMware Infrastructure to StoreVault storage systems for greater reliability, flexibility, and affordability, NetApp said. Multiple VMware virtual machines run on a consolidated hardware platform and access dedicated storage on StoreVault, the company said. The StoreVault S500 meets the storage needs for any new or existing workloads, and VMware Infrastructure allows entire virtual machines to be backed up, moved, and replicated with zero downtime, the company said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company also reduced rack space, lowered energy costs, and created a far more flexible environment, while improving data reliability rates and disaster recovery times, NetApp added.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company has modernized its server and storage environment while meeting its budget requirements, the firm said. The combination of StoreVault and VMware Infrastructure has provided the firm with a complementary technology solution that solved its business problems, Ahearn, Jasco + Company said.
Ahearn, Jasco + Company now has a network storage infrastructure that will last three to five years with the prospect of future scalability at a cost that is next to nothing, the accounting firm said. StoreVault and VMware Infrastructure have provided Ahearn, Jasco + Company with a powerful formula to improve its storage and server utilization and manage its capacity for future investment, Ahearn, Jasco + Company said. The StoreVault Advanced Protection Architecture and RAID-DP have also provide enterprise-class security and data protection functionality at a price that fits its budget, Ahearn, Jasco + Company added.
StoreVault sees a trend for SMBs to look for smarter, more reliable alternatives to the traditional way of handling storage, and iSCSI (Internet SCSI) SAN (storage area network) and infrastructure virtualization are getting attention, StoreVault said. The relationship with VMware is designed to bring added value to IT generalists within SMBs that are tasked with taming storage and infrastructure management with a limited budget, StoreVault said. Ahearn, Jasco + Company is a great example of one way VMware Infrastructure can be brought into play for SMBs with the StoreVault storage platform, StoreVault added.
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, NetApp, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland, Cape Canaveral
Other Projects: DR BC Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar CX4
Moveover Cisco Catalyst and HP Procurve - Juniper Networks EX is aiming for number one - March 22, 2008
Orlando Florida - With the unveiling of its award winning EX product line, Juniper Networks takes its first swing at the massive switch market, but entrenched players may make it difficult for the networking giant to score a home run.
Juniper says its new switches -- the EX 3200, the EX 4200 and the EX 8200 -- push it into new territory. Traditionally, the routing giant's market has been with service providers and governments. With the EX Series, Juniper is targeting the network performance-minded enterprise with an emphasis on uptime and reliability.
"Today represents a transcending chapter in Juniper history," said Eddie Minkill, executive vice president of Juniper's worldwide field operations. "Juniper is uniquely positioned to help companies [that] demand high-performance networking." It will be in the Gartner Magic Quadrant vs Cisco Catalyst and HP Procurve shortly.
In development for a year and a half, the EX Series contains a host of features designed to boost uptime and which range from dual hot-swappable power supplies to advanced network-healing methods that can drop self-healing times
by several orders of magnitude.
"Speed … is what we call the new currency," Minkill said. "It is not the best decision but the quickest decision that is important." The view of the network as "plumbing" is outdated because consumers and businesses expect instant responses and more and more communications are carried through IP, he said.
"There are participants in markets … for whom the network may not be critical," Minkill said. "That is not our market."
Such a limited market scope might hurt the Series' adoption, according to Jim Metzler, vice president of Sanibel, Tampa Florida -based consultancy Ashton, Metzler & Associates,but added these maybe best in class.
"I don't know who they are going to appeal to," he said, adding that most enterprises are not prioritizing carrier-grade robustness and millisecond latency. A few major exceptions exist, particularly in the financial sector, but he disagreed with the assertion that enterprises see the difference between 5 and 4 9's of uptime as a critical tool in keeping customers.
"Is it good technology? Absolutely," Metzler said. The problem is that people will not switch simply to use good technology, or even better technology, when what they have works, and Metzler said Juniper has found a solution for a problem people do not currently have. If the EX Series is to become a success, he said, a better marketing strategy must be implemented that could focus on cost reduction or other, more enterprise-focused problems.
Juniper executives were also touting the switching platform's ability to simplify the network. One consistent, cross-product version of Junos, the company's security-hardened operating system, will sit in all routers and switches, which could make the testing and rollout process a bit less Herculean for managers having to update hundreds of products across multiple sites. It also allows for scripts to be written once and rolled out across the network, and for designers to test on one code base with the knowledge that it will be consistent throughout the Juniper line. This, Metzler said, was a strong factor in Juniper's favor.
Juniper of Miami is trying to grab a share of a switch market that is projected to grow to $18.6 billion by 2009, compared with its native router market, which is projected to reach only $4.8 billion by then. But Juniper's success will depend on how well it can compete with Cisco and an already crowded field. Cisco earned 72% of the switch market revenues during the third quarter of last year, with HP, Nortel and 3Com fighting fiercely for the remainder. Already, at least two other switch vendors have issued responses to Juniper's announcement.
Juniper unveiled three EX products this week. The first is the EX 3200, billed as a simple, standalone switch aimed at low-density branch offices that need its 10/100/1000BASE-T connectivity. 24- and 48-port versions are available, which support Power over Ethernet (PoE).
The EX 4200 is a souped-up version of the 3200, designed for access and aggregation deployments. Juniper is touting this device's "Virtual Chassis" technology, which can connect 10 EX 4200 switches to act as one logical device that can support up to 480 10/100/1000BASE-T ports. Because of the modularity of the Virtual Chassis, switches can be added on as needed. Juniper said this scalability reduces the initial investment as well as operational expenses associated with true chassis-based systems.
For those with greater demands, the EX 8200 provides either an 8-slot 1.6Tb chassis or a 16-slot 3.2Tb chassis model that, like the other models, include hardware-based packet buffers and application performance visibility features.
"We've made a big investment to deliver a lot to our customers on our own," said Michael Banic, director of product marketing. That in-house development allowed not only tight integration through the use of Junos as the operating system, but it also gave Juniper the chance to work with third-party partners such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle in developing an API and integrating with security and packet-prioritization solutions. Banic said those partnerships, brought on early in the development process, add a lot of comparative value to Juniper's offerings.
While Banic declined to give projections for early sales, he said that there were a number of natural insertion points for enterprises throughout the upgrade cycle: natural obsolescence, enterprise moves to IP communications, and customers looking to more tightly integrate their infrastructure with fewer disparate network layers.
Banic also emphasized the security angle of using the Junos platform throughout the network and being able to keep it on one upgrade cycle while also using its integrated User Access Control to granularly assign permissions to users based not just on their role but also the location and the time.
"People will probably be very excited about [the EX Series]," he said. "They have a relationship with Juniper for security, and for them [it's] really exciting that they can have these capabilities in their hands."
Despite the feature-rich, high-performance focus, Juniper may have a hard time cracking the switch market, given the competitive landscape. Metzler said that what was really needed was not on the technical end at all but on the support and marketing side: education about how Juniper products could solve problems IT managers were facing. He said Juniper might do better to focus on savings or security than on strict performance, and really educating potential customers about the benefits of their platform in these areas.
For more information call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at www.sencilo.com
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines.
VMware ESX networking: Best Practices - Tips and Tricks - March 11, 2008
Networking with VMware ESX virtual servers has a number of special considerations. This runbook will walk you through physical server-based configuration options, VLAN tagging and MAC addresses and system administrator considerations.
Basic networking for rack and blade servers
VMware ESX Server provides flexibility for optimizing configurations and virtual networking architectures to meet many different requirements. But configuration flexibility can be a double-edged sword because basic network architectures with VMware can become bewildering in the face of so many options. Thus network administrators should become familiar with basic networking options for VMware on blade and rack servers to optimize their ESX networks.
Tower and rackmount servers require a minimum of five network adapters. Because blade servers and chassis have a limited number of uplink ports from the chassis to the distribution/core switches, network administrators should configure trunking of the uplink ports from the chassis switches and implement 802.1q VLAN tagging with a minimum of 1 GB per second for the network.
System administrators can configure ESX to use multiple Ethernet ports. Both an active and standby configurations should be implemented in case of primary port failure. Also, network administrators should team port configurations with multiple load balancing configurations based on the source port IT, a hash of the source MAC address, and IP-based hash of the source and destination.
To watch for network failures, monitor the link state of the adapter, and use beaconing to look upstream within the network. On the same note, ports can be configured to notify switches in the network that a port has been reconfigured, so the ARP tables are updated; this will minimize other errors.
For a more detailed explanation of virtual switches, physical and virtual NICs and MAC addresses, download chapter five of Virtualization with VMware ESX Server, made available to TechTarget readers by Syngress publishing. This chapter, which covers virtual networking, provides enough detail that "both the beginner and possibly the advanced ESX administrator" will find it useful, vs. Virtual Iron vs. Virtual Servers.
Configure and implement VLANs on VMware VI3
Virtual LANs (VLAN) are not new and most network architects and administrators know the ins and outs of configuring them for traditional infrastructures. But configuring VLANs for using VMware VI3 is a different story. Procedures that worked without virtualization, don't work with virtualization. Thus, before seting up VLANs, network administrators need to know a few things:
How many physical NICs are required?
Which VLAN a new virtual server will call home, and
How VLANs work.
When most networking pros talk about building VLANs with VMware VI3, they are usually referring to VLAN trunks. However, there are three other types of VLAN configurations VI3 uses: virtual switch tagging (VST), external switch tagging (EST) and virtual guest tagging (VGT). VLAN tagging allows for connecting a VLAN directly to a guest virtual machine. Administrators should become familiar with what VST, EST and VGT are and how to use them.
Virtual switch tagging, or VST is usually the best option for a guest VM, but it depends on the individual business's needs. With VST, VLAN trunks are used. The physical switch treats the ESX server's switch like a physical switch, tagging traffic appropriately as it passes across the trunk to the server's NICs. The ESX server then uses the tags to direct the traffic to its port.
EST or VGT can be more appropriate options if your organization's servers plug into distribution layer switches, which connect to a core switch. Here, using VST tagging would be impossible. You would need to use EST tagging.
Additionally, if a particular virtual machine needs to be on several VLANs simultaneously, then VGT makes more sense. You'll need guest OS support for VLAN drivers, and this situation is common in UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems, such as Solaris, OpenBSD and certain Linux distros.
Network redundancy
Virtualization expert Brian McCarthy of Sencilo Solutions of Tampa Florida discusses why provisioning for networking redundancy for the ESX service console port is important. He suggests having a minimum of two interfaces assigned to the ESX service console port. VirtualCenter 2.5 will warn you if you only have one interface assigned, earlier version of VirtualCenter do not.
The error message, in VirtualCenter2.5, will cause the cluster indicator error symbol to be present indefinitely from the missing interface with ESX 3.01 and 3.02 hosts, and most likely 3.5 hosts as well. This is important because If your virtual servers encounter a new or additional error, you probably wouldn't notice right away. Use a teamed vSwitch for a virtual machine network that does not need redundancy (such as a test network) and reconfigure it on the network and within VirtualCenter to be on the same network as the service console port to resolve this problem.
Disconnected network adapters
If you're making physical-to-virtual migrations with ESX, then it's handy to know that you can configure the virtual server to have its network adapter disconnected at power-on. You'll see be able to see the virtual hardware inventory from the guest operating system, but it will show as if the network was unplugged. With an offline VM, you can configure your IP addressing and DNS information, although you won't be able to test the IP addresses.
This option is useful because in certain cases having a candidate virtual machine on the network and performing its intended tasks too soon can cause a variety of errors, such as duplicate IP addresses, virtual machine applications picking up data simultaneously with another live system, formatting issues from a newer version of the business system feeding results to another system, and so on.
Networking in ESX offers great flexibility, but with flexibility comes room for error. With this tip and the important links scattered throughout you should have a good roadmap on how and why to configure networking for your virtual servers for optimal redundancy, speed, and availability, tailored to your computing environment's specific needs.
We are a Florida based integrator specializing in storage, security and networking solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP.
Our technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Our clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer. With office throughtout Florida including Orlando, St. Petersburg, Miami, Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Lake Mary, Lakeland, Gainesville. Call us at (407) 265-6293 or visit us www.sencilo.com
Best Practices and FAQs for Backing-Up VMware Servers - March 2, 2008
Yes you’ve made the move towards virtualizing the data center. Whether its for server consolidation, faster provisioning, improved business continuity, or a mix of these goals – you’re in good company. In fact, industry analysts estimate that over 60% of organizations are using server virtualization for some portion of their operations.
But how are you protecting these virtual servers and their data?
Most virtualization packages includes some form of high availability add-on that allows virtual machines (VMs) to move between physical resources. But just like in a physical server environment, HA is only one portion of a data protection strategy. You still need a solution to cost-effectively recover from data loss, corruption, and full site outages – not to mention satisfy regulatory compliance requirements.
To meet these needs without squandering your entire IT budget, you need a backup & recovery solution that uses cost-optimized disk (e.g. a de-duplication product) and tape for archiving and long term disaster recovery. But as you have probably already realized, backup and recovery of virtual servers is different than with physical servers.
Sencilo Solution can help. Working with industry leading backup applications and server virtualization vendors, Sencilo has solutions that easily integrate into your virtual data center and cost-effectively protect your data both on and offsite.
The Challenges of Protecting a Virtual World
At first glance, data protection within a virtual data center can be performed exactly the same as in a physical environment. Backup agents can run in a guest OS and then data can be pushed to a backup server connected to either a tape library or disk-based backup device with de-dupe like Quantum’s DXi. In fact, it is entirely possible that a virtual machine could connect directly to a backup device.
The obvious benefit of this strategy is that it leverages all of your existing processes and expertise. Unfortunately though, it does not account for some of the issues that sharing physical resources can cause. VMware servers share the underlying physical resources of a server. If one VM consumes the bulk of these resources, say for an active backup job, then other VMs become resource starved.
While many virtualization packages offer functionality to migrate VMs between physical resources to handle these issues, it is important to check how that can affect applications and backup jobs. In fact, moving a VM could prevent a backup job from running properly. So, before using any form of migration functionality, its critical to understand how it will impact the ability of data protection operations to run, unlike Data Domain, EMC, Falcon Stor which uses old technology.
In addition to resource allocation and VM location, another key factor to consider is protection of the actual virtualization layer. Some vendors recommend backing up the virtualization layer to make restoration easier in the event of a full disaster recovery. In this case, your data protection strategy will grow and include more jobs (VMs plus virtualization layer).
To recap, the most common data protection challenges in a virtual server world are:
- Resource allocation & preventing VM starvation
- VM locality impact on backup jobs working
- Adding new jobs to protect the virtualization layer
Best Practices for Backup in a VMware Virtual World
As covered in “The Challenges of Protecting a Virtual World” performing backup and recovery on virtual servers is not always completely straight forward. To help customers, Quantum offers the following tips and tactics. For more detailed assistance in how to best protect your virtualized data center, contact a Quantum sales representative today.
Tip 1: Leverage the Virtualization Software Vendor’s Strengths
Companies like VMware often provide utilities to help simplify the process of protecting virtual environments. VMware’s VCB uses snapshot technology to eliminate resource overhead and create images which can then be backed up by another application like BackupExec, Netbackup, Commvault, or TSM. Of course you should always understand the specifics of how these packages work. For instance, VCB requires a shared SAN resource and currently only offers incremental backup functionality for Windows VMs.
The counter is also true. There can be limitations or specific requirements to performing VM data protection. For instance, some virtualization products do not include snapshot functionality. In this instance a VM must be backed up using either standard backup software or by backing up the VM “disks” and the associated configuration files. This method usually requires the virtual machine to be shut down before running the backup. This may even be true when using expensive and complex array-based techniques (e.g. mirror splits). To prevent undesired performance issues or outages during backups, talk with your virtualization vendor.
Tip 2: Determine What is Best for the Application
Backup application vendors have years of experience handling database and email applications that need to be quiesced or tracked carefully to allow for a coherent and consistent backup. For these application types it may be best to continue to use an agent based backup approach – even if other backup and recovery functions are provided by the virtualization software vendor.
Tip 3: Plot Resource Utilization Windows
For those VMs that will use a traditional agent based approach to backups, make sure you understand how much of the physical server’s resources will be consumed by the backup and for how long. With this information you can plot in advance how many VMs should reside on the physical servers or if VM migration strategies and hard resource allocations are necessary.
Tip 4: Understand How Virtual Your Virtual World Really Is
Always make sure you understand how migration of virtual machines will impact backup and recovery processes – whether the backup and recovery is done via a traditional agent based approach or a virtualization vendor specific process like VCB. Also be sure to understand how important it is to backup and restore the virtualization layer itself.
Tip 5: Make Sure Your Strategy Covers Every Server – Virtual and Physical
Most of the popular virtualization software packages available today are aimed at either high end UNIX systems or x86 based operating systems, typically Windows. As a result, many consumers find themselves with a data protection strategy that covers both VMs and physical systems. Work closely with your backup application and hardware providers that have knowledge of how to handle mixed environments like this.
Tip 6: Save Your Dollars, Euros, Yen
One of the key value statements of virtualization software is to reduce costs and optimize resource utilization. The same should be true of your data protection strategy. That’s why de-duplication products like Quantum’s DXi line fit so well into virtual data centers. The DXi offers capacity optimized storage, multiple presentations (NAS, VTL, iSCSI, FC), and encrypted, low-bandwidth replication to serve a variety of onsite and offsite data protection needs.
As data levels grow, tape is still the most cost effective and reliable method of preserving data. Quantum understands this and supplements the DXi line with a wide range of tape devices that support encryption so that you can protect and archive data at extremely low costs while avoiding the issues that have plagued offline storage in recent years.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-data-deduplication.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ
ILM, more performance, fewer drives, green storage from Compellent Technologies - February 28, 2008
February 28, 2008—Tampa and Orlando Florida Compellent has fine-tuned the way its SAN software writes data to disk drives with new techniques that could boost performance and capacity utilization while simultaneously reducing disk drive requirements by up to 80%, according to company officials.
The latest release of the company's SAN software, Storage Center 4.0, features new software applications such as Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery, all of which help reduce the number of disk drives required, effectively reducing total cost of ownership and energy consumption for true green storage.
The Fast Track application automatically places active data on the outer tracks of a disk drive to speed access to frequently used information like ILM. Compellent's vice president of marketing, Bruce Kornfeld, says competitive offerings place entire volumes on perimeter tracks, while Fast Track only moves frequently accessed data to the outer tracks of the drive, which accelerates performance and reduces drive requirements.
"If a storage system can differentiate between inner and outer tracks on the drive you can avoid putting inactive data or unallocated space on the outer tracks, so you get more performance out of the drives and you can buy fewer of them," says Kornfeld. "This technology can lower storage costs by 50% by reducing the number of drives vs. EqualLogic or Dell."
Also new to Storage Center 4.0, the Thin Import feature reduces disk drive requirements by converting existing data into thin-provisioned volumes as it is copied to a Compellent SAN vs. EMC or HP.
Steve Duplessie, founder and senior storage analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, says the Thin Import technology has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of storage in Florida data centers.
"Imagine being able to pull all the over-provisioned, over-allocated, and under-utilized capacity off your old expensive arrays and instantly apply just-in-time thin provisioning to those volumes," says Duplessie. "It is tantamount to taking your 25% utilized storage infrastructure to 80%. Think of what that would mean for everything from consolidation, green storage, footprint to backup."
Storage Center 4.0 also includes a feature called Free Space Recovery, which reclaims unused space in Windows environments, and Application Optimizer, a tool that tunes the size of data transfers within the SAN to match I/O performance for different applications.
A Storage Center 4.0 QuickStart ILM Bundle is priced from approximately $57,200 with 7.2TB of capacity. vs. Lefthand Networks, Dell or EqualLogic, a single controller, and the Fast Track, Thin Import, and Free Space Recovery applications. Users can also purchase the new Storage Center 4.0 applications and controller as individual upgrades.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com/storage-area-network.php
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral
Offerings Projects: Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection
Data Classification and ILM - February 28, 2008
A complete information life-cycle management strategy should include integrated automation, policy creation, discovery, and data classification.
Many ILM-labeled products in the Florida market today, lack a key ingredient-data classification, or the ability to classify or categorize data according to various criteria based on subjective or objective measures as opposed to just the age or type of file. Data classification allows Tampa users to set up different groups of data, to which appropriate policies can then be applied. Doing so has potentially significant benefits: If you think your existing EMC software management tools (e.g., HSM or SRM) have helped you trim resources, just wait and see what classification can do to your bottom line. It can also help with regulatory and security requirements in Miami, St. Petersburg and Jacksonville Florida.
End users are being pounded with ILM messages from virtually all storage vendors-hardware and software alike. However, many users have implemented ILM “strategies” that amount to little more than HSM (moving data to lower-cost storage tiers) or SRM.
Although these types of implementations do provide value, the potential benefits of a complete ILM strategy are more far-reaching. In particular Compellent, NetApp and Hitachi, ILM can help organizations make better use of storage resources (e.g., improve utilization, provisioning, etc.); reduce storage-related costs; improve backup efficiency; minimize application downtime; consolidate storage resources; better meet regulatory compliance, corporate governance, and security requirements through better management of data; and lower overall IT costs, including management.
"The value of an ILM infrastructure lies in its ability to treat data, or information, according to its changing business value," states Brian McCarthy President and Storage Veteran in Lake Mary Florida. Data in an ILM environment is not treated equally. It is not arbitrarily moved from storage resource to storage resource, nor is it necessarily moved in “bulk” (i.e., a single policy isn’t applied to all data). Data that is deemed mission-critical (high business value) is treated differently from data that is deemed less critical.
Ultimately, an ILM infrastructure will continually assess data value and transparently re-assign resources in a tiered fashion as dictated by adaptive policies.
The number of storage tiers companies implement depends on the specific business demands of their organizations and on available IT and corporate resources. Storage tiers can include primary disk arrays from HDS, secondary disk storage from Data Domain, virtual tape libraries (VTLs) from Overland Storage REO, online disk archives (e.g., content-addressed storage), and LTO-4 tape.
Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research shows an increasing trend among organizations of all sizes to implement disk-based data-protection tiers to improve backup-and-recovery efficiency and overall disaster-recovery preparedness. At the other end of the spectrum, users cite the high costs of primary storage as a strong impetus for implementing SATA-based secondary storage tiers.
As one end user says, “A growing problem with our snapshot solution is that it’s just too expensive to keep the snapshots on our high-end storage. We’d like to move those volumes to a midrange product or cheap ATA disk.” Another end user points to data-retention issues that were affecting backup-and-recovery strategies. “Going forward, we really only want to use tape for disaster-recovery purposes. We’ll address data retention with cheaper, more readily accessible disk technologies.”
But ILM is about more than just the movement of data among storage tiers. It’s about being able to discover and extract the business value of data; categorize or classify data types; and set policies that transparently move data among available resources in a way that makes optimum business sense. In other words, it’s about being able to classify, migrate, and investigate.
While many vendors today tackle one aspect of the ILM process (e.g., discovery via SRM or data movement via HSM), few offer integrated product suites that tackle all three. (One exception is Compellent, flexible, granular data groups).
Data classification can help organizations make the best use of their IT resources and extract maximum business value from their data.
Rather than dumping all data into a large funnel and applying generic global policies to a single data pool, classification software sorts data at a more granular level and then applies policies to the data based on the specific needs of a particular group or department.
ILM suites with data classification like Compellent in Florida not only let administrators create data groups that span multiple volumes on heterogeneous servers and storage devices, but also allow them to differentiate within these groups by establishing data classes based on the age/type/size of file, owner, or path of the data. Data is directed to the appropriate class, or tier, of back-end storage based on this information.
Like the storage groups, the storage classes also need to span different heterogeneous storage devices (e.g., primary and secondary storage tiers) and the process should be automatic. For example, IT departments should be able to implement the most-cost-effective storage platforms without having to create new data movement policies.
For example, if SATA has been designated as a secondary storage tier, the end user should be able to swap out technology (regardless of the manufacturer or type of storage) without having to create new data movement policies. The classification system should be able to adapt to the new technologies and move data appropriately among data groups.
As for regulatory or corporate compliance, organizations can use ILM with data classification tools to establish multiple data groups and then apply corporate or regulatory policies to all or some of them. Similarly, they can define which data groups need to be encrypted for security purposes and which don’t. No more blanket encrypting. Policy management is fluid, allowing users to start with simple actions but scale them over time. For example, users can write specific policies around financial data that can exclude certain types of data (e.g., quarterly financials) from moving to secondary storage tiers regardless of the age of the data or its access frequency. This differs from traditional HSM software, which moves data among tiers based on the age of the data.
Early adopters report significant application performance improvements as a result of their ILM implementations, improved recovery times, and improved resource utilization.
Some ILM suites can be used alone or in combination with e-mail archiving, content management, or other applications that lack data classification capabilities to help these applications run more efficiently. In these situations, ILM would classify and sort the application data according to pre-defined policies and move the data to appropriate storage classes, while the e-mail archiving or content management software would deal directly with the primary application.
ILM should cover the full spectrum of discovery, classification, automation, and policy creation. ESG research has shown that users are interested in purchasing storage software as bundled solutions. Users also indicate growing interest in purchasing integrated product suites that share a common interface, database, and policy engine (see figure).
ILM in its truest form provides many benefits for companies of all sizes. But being able to realize these benefits will require users to implement storage software products that do more than just move data from point A to point B.
Users need to implement a data classification product that will use more than the age of the data to help determine its value to the organization.
Sencilo Solutions is a recognized leader in the design and deployment of primary storage. Through extensive experience in the storage industry, we have developed a deep understanding of how technology can solve operational problems. The greatest challenge that organizations face is knowing which technology will help and which will not. Sencilo leverages its expertise to help customers address this challenge and select the best storage solution available for current and future needs. Our solutions include SCSI, iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity. With offices in Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, Fort Lauderdale, Tallahassee, Cape Coral, and Pembroke Pines Florida. Primary Storage Data Compression Storwiz
