Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

PROTECTING YOUR DATA, REDUCING COSTS WITH NETWORKED STORAGE

Industry analysts predict that the market for affordable networked storage will grow to exceed $5 billion over the next four years -- as companies of all sizes need to manage, access and store data associated with their products and/or services.

Fortunately, this increase in demand is occurring at a time when changes in the industry are enabling a new class of storage solution. The advent of Ethernet-based storage area networks (SANs) and the Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) standard make it possible to combine the simplicity of Ethernet networks with the advanced storage features mandated by mission critical applications -- with ease of use that is appropriate for businesses of any size. By helping to pioneer the iSCSI standard, companies such as EqualLogic are delivering storage technology capable of supporting any business need -- at a fraction of the cost of traditional storage solutions.

Why Networked Storage?

Consolidated, networked storage provides a large, shared pool of storage that can serve a variety of heterogeneous servers and applications on a distributed network. SANs allow storage devices to be acquired, managed and upgraded independently, providing high availability, scalability, and efficient storage utilization -- in addition to new methods for simplified backup and disaster recovery capabilities.

In the past, the cost and complexity of assembling and operating individual hardware, software and networking components has hindered the widespread adoption of SANs. Additionally, the lack of interoperability has made supporting and upgrading disparate elements potentially intimidating to smaller- or medium-sized organizations, with limited IT staffs and budgets. As a result, these challenges have made it difficult for SAN technology to extend beyond the domain of specialized IT professionals in Fortune 500 data-centers -- until now.

What Capabilities Should Companies Look For, And What Goals Should Shape An Organization'S Search For A Storage Solution?

Protecting data, minimizing the burden on IT staffs, reducing downtime and ultimately lowering the overall investment required to meet a company's storage needs should shape a company's criteria when considering a networked storage solution.

Protecting Data

For total dependability with no single point of failure, a storage solution should provide fully redundant hot-swappable hardware, and RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) support, which combines multiple disk drives into an array that yields performance and reliability that exceeds an individual drive.

Other backup and recovery capabilities should include:

• Snapshots -- provide a "point-in-time" copy of a volume, which is useful for backups, testing and upgrades.
• Remote Data Mirroring technology -- enables administrators to copy volumes to separate arrays deployed in different locations -- providing disaster tolerance by keeping mirrored data safe if a primary repository should fail.

In addition to protecting their data, companies should look for a solution that is easy to implement and manage.

Reducing The Burden On IT Staff

The tasks of installing storage arrays, creating and mapping volumes, configuring security, networking and event notification, and balancing arrays on a network can be time-consuming tasks that may require additional training and expertise. Part of reducing the total cost of a storage solution lies in simplifying the management demands.

By automating manual tasks, and removing configuration tasks, companies can make it easy for their IT administrators to manage storage assets without requiring specialized skills, worrying about incompatibility or investing in incremental IT resources.

Virtualization capabilities also play a critical role in simplifying a networked storage solution by having the administrator focus on what storage is needed, rather than the details of how individual storage devices, controllers, and network links work together. By dynamically adjusting storage layout as needed, IT administrators can dramatically reduce the time, effort and knowledge required to manage storage and provide better performance across the storage resources.

Reducing Downtime And Maintaining Optimal Performance

On-demand expansion and automated load balancing capabilities provide servers and applications with continuous service and prevent downtime caused by storage reconfiguration. When arrays are added, removed or repaired, application data should be automatically redistributed across available hardware resources, to not only achieve maximum performance and capacity efficiency -- but also to minimize user disruption. The software running in a storage solution should be able to track Input/Output access patterns to individual portions of data volumes, and use this information to move hot and cold data between arrays and within disks to minimize performance bottlenecks and disk seek-times.

Lowering The Costs Of Meeting Storage Needs

By leveraging industry-standard protocols, hardware, and operating system technologies, iSCSI-based storage solutions provide low connection costs and high performance access to data. Ethernet adaptors and switches are a fraction of the cost of equivalent fibre channel networking cards, switches, and bridges. On average, it can cost $1,500 to $4,000 per server connection to build a fibre channel SAN. But the cost of connecting a server using standard Ethernet technology ranges between $80 to $800 per connection.

Beyond hardware and networking costs, smaller and medium sized companies need to guard against over or under purchasing storage arrays when implementing a networked storage solution. Selecting a storage solution with a modular architecture and automated load balancing reduces upfront costs by enabling companies to buy only the storage capacity needed to address current requirements -- but facilitates quick and easy expansion as more arrays as needed.

The benefits of this architecture are best exploited if combined with real-time online expansion capabilities. These capabilities automatically identify configuration data, RAID information, security information and volume information -- and shared this data with newly added arrays -- dramatically reducing the management costs required to maintain and expand storage systems.

How Can Companies Obtain Such A Storage Solution?

In order to simplify consolidated, networked storage and bring it to the masses, it must be easy for companies to obtain and integrate all of the elements required -- including hardware, control modules, and network interfaces -- from a single vendor or source. These elements must be easy to install, configure, and operate, and must work together seamlessly to scale in a simple manner and as a company's storage needs grow.

Each of the requirements and capabilities are addressed by EqualLogic, and the company's iSCSI-based PeerStorage solution.

Featuring hot-swappable disks, power supplies, controllers, and cooling fans; integrated administration tools; and network interfaces, the PeerStorage array is a complete storage solution. Setting up arrays is a simple "point and click" process. Establishing security features, and configuring volumes via a browser-based GUI takes less than 20 minutes to complete.

Storage can be added on demand when needed, avoiding un-needed expense. Automatic load balancing capabilities make managing data, and expanding SAN storage a simple and straightforward process. Securing data is accomplished through a rich set of security features. PeerStorage arrays support virtualization, snapshot, mirroring capabilities, and RAID 10 and RAID 50 support.

EqualLogic's PeerStorage array delivers a self-managing storage solution that provides enterprise-class features, using industry standard iSCSI technology, at a price appropriate to companies of any size.

For more information on EqualLogic's PeerStorage solution, visit www.equallogic.com/.