Networked Storage “Need-to-Knows”
Thinking about upgrading your storage array soon?
Before you make any decisions, explore this guide to catch up on all of the latest trends, techniques and technologies in the networked storage market today. Networked Storage Need-to-Knows
Contents Whether it’s the need for more capacity, to improve performance or for the ability to support new applications, NAS Need-to-Knows there are more reasons than ever to upgrade your storage . File storage focuses on array. Fortunately for you, these technologies have likely scalable NAS become a lot more sophisticated since your last purchase. . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS So what do you need to know now before making an . NAS options: Pros and upgrade? Find out in this exclusive guide. cons of scale-out and scale-up Catch up on what’s new in the networked storage market – . Improve NAS from the latest trends to the newest technologies – and help management with private ensure your latest storage array can adhere to your current storage clouds and future storage requirements. SAN Need-to-Knows Contents . FC dominates enterprise NAS Need-to-Knows storage networking File storage focuses on scalable NAS..….……………….…….…………Page 2 . Storage networking Scale-up vs. scale-out network-attached storage..…..……………..…...Page 8 infrastructure trends NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and scale-up.………….…...Page 10 . iSCSI performance Q&A Improve NAS management with private storage clouds……………....Page 13 . Primer: Getting started
with iSCSI SAN Need-to-Knows Unified Storage Need-to- FC technology still dominates enterprise storage networking………..Page 15 Knows Storage networking infrastructure trends must figure in upgrade plans . Understanding unified …….…………………………………………………………………………Page 18 storage architecture iSCSI performance: An expert discussion with Dennis Martin..………Page 22 . Unified storage growing Getting started with an iSCSI storage system: An iSCSI primer..……Page 25 in popularity . Unified storage Unified Storage Need-to-Knows advantages Understanding unified storage architecture...……..……………………Page 27 File-based growth increases popularity of unified storage systems.…Page 28 Unified storage systems offer cost savings and management advantages ……………………………………………....…………………………….…Page 29
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Contents File storage focuses on scalable NAS Network-attached storage (NAS) systems are at the heart of burgeoning file NAS Need-to-Knows data stores. But scalable NAS systems will have to evolve to meet new capacity, accessibility and management needs. . File storage focuses on scalable NAS The evolving features and capabilities of network-attached storage (NAS) . Scale-up vs. scale-out systems are being driven by a rapidly changing computing landscape and a set of trends and technologies that are morphing NAS into devices that bear NAS little resemblance to traditional corporate file stores. . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and To start, next-generation NAS is no longer confined to corporate data centers but is increasingly used to power cloud services with their need for unbridled scale-up scalability. But even in enterprises, the rising interest in big data and the . Improve NAS accelerating growth of unstructured data are pushing scalable NAS to the top management with private of the next-gen NAS feature list. A 2011 study by Framingham, Mass.-based IDC found that the world's data is doubling every two years, and predicted storage clouds enterprises will have to deal with 50 times more data and 75 times more files SAN Need-to-Knows in the next decade.
. FC dominates enterprise The consumerization of IT and the fading of boundaries between personal computing and the workplace require NAS systems to be securely and easily storage networking accessible from a wide range of devices. In addition, the continuous need for . Storage networking more efficient IT and the unstoppable journey to a virtualized IT infrastructure infrastructure trends are pushing for the incorporation of new features into next-generation NAS . iSCSI performance Q&A systems. Scalability, accessibility and manageability are the key areas in which next-gen NAS systems will be measured to determine if they're up to . Primer: Getting started the task in a world of clouds and proliferating consumer devices. with iSCSI NAS scalability Unified Storage Need-to- Scale-out architecture. Until recently, storage systems in which two storage Knows controllers share the workload and provide failover for each other dominated the enterprise space. Capacity scaled by adding disks and shelves, and . Understanding unified performance by adding additional processors, memory, spindles and storage architecture upgrading storage controllers to the next level. Eventually, and often rather quickly, a scalability limit was reached, and the only available options were to . Unified storage growing either add another storage system or do a fork-lift upgrade and replace the in popularity existing NAS. The results were sprawling NAS silos and bloated storage . Unified storage budgets. While dual-controller storage systems worked in the 20th century, advantages they've failed to efficiently support the unchecked growth of unstructured data in the 21st century.
With established NAS vendors sticking with traditional architectures, in the early 2000s, startups like Isilon and Ibrix ventured into multinode NAS systems that scale proportionally as nodes are added. Their systems were first adopted in vertical markets like health care and the gas and oil industry where large unstructured files prevail; since then, the systems have increasingly found their way into the enterprise. It took established storage
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Contents vendors almost a decade to yield to the pressure and success of scale-out architecture NAS; lacking scale-out experience, they sought to acquire scale- NAS Need-to-Knows out pioneers. The acquired technologies have either been incorporated into existing systems, as NetApp Inc. did with Spinnaker, or simply repackaged, . File storage focuses on as EMC Corp. is doing with Isilon (EMC Isilon), Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co. with Ibrix (HP Ibrix X9000) and Dell Inc. with Exanet (PowerVault NX3500). scalable NAS With the majority of large storage vendors now on board, scale-out has . Scale-up vs. scale-out become the architecture of choice for NAS. NAS . NAS options: Pros and The benefits of scale-out NAS are compelling:
cons of scale-out and Scalable performance in I/O and throughput scale-up Scalable capacity . Improve NAS Lower cost management with private Improved high availability (HA) Simplified management by being able to manage a single large NAS storage clouds rather than NAS silos
SAN Need-to-Knows At this point, the ability to scale horizontally and manage a multinode NAS . FC dominates enterprise system as a single storage system with a global namespace are must-haves and should top anyone's NAS wish list. By the same token, it's important to storage networking realize that not all scale-out NAS systems are equal; while each vendor . Storage networking claims to lead, there are significant differences in how they scale, how they infrastructure trends support a global namespace, the number of file systems and files per file system they support, the makeup of their storage pool and how they manage . iSCSI performance Q&A metadata. . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI Tiering solid-state drives (SSDs), disk and cloud. Storage tiering and the ability to efficiently support solid-state storage are instrumental to scale costs Unified Storage Need-to- efficiently. Next-generation NAS systems need to support SSDs, disk and Knows cloud tiers. Almost all NAS systems have some level of SSD support, but there are substantial differences in how SSD is leveraged and the tiering . Understanding unified methods used to ensure that active data remains on fast flash tier and stale storage architecture data on slower disk or cloud tiers. In its most basic and common implementation, SSDs are added to a NAS system to supplement . Unified storage growing mechanical drives, with files and applications allocated to appropriate tiers in popularity manually. Despite a consensus that data movement between tiers needs to . Unified storage be automatic, the support for automated data tiering varies significantly in contemporary NAS offerings. advantages
"Isilon supports SAS, SSD and SATA as part of a storage pool, but today we don't move data between tiers automatically," said Sam Grocott, vice president of marketing at EMC Isilon.
Flash as cache is another way to supplement a NAS with solid-state storage. While more complex to implement and requiring a change in the underlying storage architecture, flash cache has several advantages over simply
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Contents substituting disks with SSDs (at least as long as the cost of SSD remains an order of magnitude higher than that of mechanical disk drives): NAS Need-to-Knows A cache will always keep the most active data in SSD without the . File storage focuses on need for tiering policies scalable NAS It benefits all files on the storage system A cache moves data at a sub-file level between tiers . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS NetApp and Oracle Corp. (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series appliance) . NAS options: Pros and have been early advocates of using flash as cache. The combination of a flash cache and low-cost, high-capacity SATA drives can challenge the cons of scale-out and performance of high-end disk arrays but cost less. "Next-gen NAS should scale-up support both tiering with cache, as well as by policies," EMC's Grocott said. . Improve NAS management with private While solid-state storage aids performance and may yield lower overall storage costs, storage clouds enable unprecedented levels of capacity storage clouds scalability. Today, the integration between traditional NAS systems and the cloud is usually accomplished using cloud gateways, but next-gen NAS SAN Need-to-Knows systems are expected to support native cloud integration to enable virtually infinite scalability. While cloud computing accounts for less than 2% of IT . FC dominates enterprise spending today, IDC estimates that by 2015 nearly 20% of information will be storage networking touched by cloud providers -- that is, somewhere in a byte's voyage from . Storage networking creation to disposal it will be stored or processed in the cloud. Cloud will infrastructure trends simply be another tier and the movement of data between the cloud and other tiers needs to be automatic. . iSCSI performance Q&A . Primer: Getting started "Next-gen NAS should have the ability to talk to a cloud natively; today, EMC with iSCSI can do it to Atmos leveraging Rainfinity," said Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at Stillwater, Minn.-based StorageIO. Unified Storage Need-to- Knows NAS accessibility
. Understanding unified NAS systems have been confined to data centers and accessibility via NFS and CIFS file-system protocols. With the rise of cloud computing and the storage architecture proliferation of mobile devices, limited connectivity to files on NAS arrays has . Unified storage growing become an obstacle. To have data concurrently available on smartphones, in popularity tablets and traditional computing devices, savvy users have taken advantage . Unified storage of services like Dropbox. But that often means they've taken files out of secure corporate NAS stores, put them on their laptops and desktops, and advantages synchronized them to all their devices. To the consternation of corporate IT, which had been struggling to mitigate the security risk of USB memory sticks, new cloud services like Dropbox suddenly posed a new and bigger threat to confidential corporate data.
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Contents
NAS Need-to-Knows
. File storage focuses on scalable NAS . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and scale-up . Improve NAS management with private storage clouds
SAN Need-to-Knows . FC dominates enterprise storage networking . Storage networking infrastructure trends . iSCSI performance Q&A . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI
Unified Storage Need-to- Knows
. Understanding unified storage architecture Traditional storage systems will need time to respond to the new . Unified storage growing requirements to efficiently support simple and secure access for mobile in popularity clients. However, it's clear that with the explosive growth of mobile clients, . Unified storage new mobile connectivity options are a critical next-generation NAS feature. advantages "Next-gen NAS needs to offer the ability to share storage with all kinds of users and end-point devices, including consumer devices," said Terri McClure, a senior analyst at Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). New requirements are usually pioneered by startups and adopted by large storage vendors much later. Startups such as Maginatics Inc. have begun to offer products with rich end-point device support.
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Contents
NAS Need-to-Knows
. File storage focuses on scalable NAS . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and scale-up . Improve NAS management with private storage clouds
SAN Need-to-Knows . FC dominates enterprise storage networking . Storage networking infrastructure trends . iSCSI performance Q&A . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI
Unified Storage Need-to- Knows
. Understanding unified The other aspect of accessibility is the ability of NAS systems to integrate storage architecture with applications and other systems. With the boundaries between NAS and . Unified storage growing cloud storage blurring, and NAS systems actually powering many existing in popularity storage clouds, next-gen NAS systems need to open themselves up and transform from closed systems that essentially existed by themselves into . Unified storage open systems that converse with other systems and applications using advantages standard protocols while providing versatile application integration options. In other words, NAS systems need to become more like object stores. To start, next-gen NAS must support cloud protocols, most importantly a REST interface that enables HTTP-based integrations. We're now seeing NAS vendors starting to support REST interfaces. Furthermore, NAS systems need to support metadata beyond traditional file-system metadata to enable applications to tag files and objects with custom information, an ability that becomes increasingly relevant for cloud applications.
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Contents NAS manageability NAS Need-to-Knows With petabyte file stores becoming more common and NAS systems being used as cloud storage, manageability is a key aspect in next-gen NAS . File storage focuses on systems. To start, the increase in human NAS management overhead needs scalable NAS to grow at a much slower rate than NAS capacity growth. Despite the earlier cited growth in the number of files (75x) and amount of information (50x) in . Scale-up vs. scale-out the next decade, IDC predicts there will only be 1.5 times the number of IT NAS professionals available to manage it. For this prediction to become reality, . NAS options: Pros and next-generation NAS systems require management features that substitute cons of scale-out and for the modest addition of human resources to manage substantially larger NAS systems: scale-up
. Improve NAS A single scale-out system where all storage is managed through a management with private single management pane will be indispensable storage clouds Monitoring and actionable storage analytics that provide real-time status and metrics are a must SAN Need-to-Knows Automation that acts on monitoring events and analytical data based on rules will become increasingly important . FC dominates enterprise High availability that sustains multiple concurrent failures and self- storage networking healing features will grow in relevance . Storage networking As next-gen NAS systems become more open and find their way into storage infrastructure trends clouds, security will play a more significant role than it does today. Robust . iSCSI performance Q&A multi-tenancy that enables secure separation and isolation of information of . Primer: Getting started different tenants on the same NAS is turning from a nice-to-have into a must- with iSCSI have feature. While data is currently stored unencrypted on NAS file stores, encryption will inevitably be a requirement, especially as mobile clients get Unified Storage Need-to- direct access to information on the NAS and when a NAS system is used as Knows cloud storage. Security tools that allow identifying and categorizing information to be secured will be crucial to provide different levels of . Understanding unified protection, depending on the criticality and confidentiality of the information storage architecture residing on the NAS. Furthermore, existing threat protection devices and . Unified storage growing fraud management systems will have to access this information.
in popularity The evolution of NAS . Unified storage The accelerating growth of unstructured data, continuing virtualization of IT, advantages and extended file services to meet new requirements of mobile clients and cloud computing will drive next-generation NAS features. While the ability to cost-efficiently scale with minimal additional management overhead tops the next-gen NAS requirements list from an IT perspective, seamless integration with all their computing and communication devices and cloud services matters most to end users. To get there, NAS systems need to step up and excel in scalability, accessibility and manageability to address the needs of an increasingly virtualized, mobile and cloud-enabled computing landscape.
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Contents Scale-up vs. scale-out network-attached storage
NAS Need-to-Knows The never-ending flood of unstructured data -- from documents and spreadsheets to photos and videos -- is driving many IT shops to pay closer . File storage focuses on attention to their file-based storage infrastructure. And, increasingly, the scalable NAS decision will come down to traditional scale-up vs. scale-out network- . Scale-up vs. scale-out attached storage (NAS) boxes.
NAS Traditional NAS boxes have fixed capacity while scale-out NAS systems can . NAS options: Pros and expand to store and manage multiple petabytes of data. However, there are cons of scale-out and tradeoffs for that added scalability.
scale-up Traditional NAS comprises one or two controllers, or NAS heads, and a pre- . Improve NAS set amount of CPU, memory and drive slots. Once the NAS device reaches management with private its limits, the user needs to buy a new, separately managed system to boost storage clouds capacity and performance. Traditional NAS is sometimes known as scale-up NAS because it's upgraded by adding improved performance and capacity SAN Need-to-Knows (speeds and feeds) to an existing architecture.
. FC dominates enterprise In contrast, scale-out NAS grows by adding clustered nodes. These are often x86 servers with a special operating system and storage connected through storage networking an external network. Users administer the cluster as a single system and . Storage networking manage the data through a global namespace or distributed file system, so infrastructure trends they don‟t have to worry about the actual physical location of the data. . iSCSI performance Q&A “Both traditional and scale-out NAS are growing, though use cases are . Primer: Getting started evolving,” said Rick Villars, vice president of storage systems and executive with iSCSI strategies at IDC in Framingham, Mass., via email. “Traditional NAS is playing a greater role in virtualized server environments. Scale-out is the Unified Storage Need-to- foundation for many cloud and large archive environments, and will come to Knows dominate in terms of capacity shipped.”
. Understanding unified IDC predicts that more than 83% of the shipping capacity for enterprise storage architecture storage systems will accommodate file-based data within three years, and the growth rate for file storage will be 2.5 times greater than the rate for . Unified storage growing block-based storage capacity. in popularity . Unified storage Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Inc. in Milford, Mass., forecasts that by advantages 2015, scale-out storage will make up 80% of all net-new networked storage shipments from a revenue standpoint and 75% of all networked storage capacity. ESG doesn‟t distinguish between NAS and SAN because it assumes that all scale-out systems will ultimately support file and block storage.
Traditional NAS systems increasingly have become multiprotocol. For instance, earlier this year EMC Corp. unveiled its VNX unified storage family, which converges its Celerra NAS and Clariion SAN systems. NetApp Inc.‟s
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Contents FAS and V-Series products also support unified connectivity for file and block workloads. NAS Need-to-Knows In this tutorial, we'll focus on file-storage capabilities. Here are some of the . File storage focuses on differentiators to consider when evaluating traditional NAS vs. scale-out NAS.
scalable NAS NAS use cases . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS Traditional NAS: File-storage covers a broad range of workloads, from office . NAS options: Pros and productivity and collaboration applications to specialized systems in financial services, manufacturing and health care. cons of scale-out and scale-up Vendors generally optimize scale-up NAS devices for the random access of . Improve NAS small files, and these products work especially well with predictable performance and capacity requirements. Traditional NAS also can serve as management with private an alternative to tape-based backup and handle limited data archiving. storage clouds More recently, traditional NAS has seen an uptick in usage with virtual SAN Need-to-Knows servers, especially those based on technology from VMware Inc., and databases, including those from Oracle Corp. . FC dominates enterprise storage networking Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at Stillwater, Minn.-based StorageIO . Storage networking Group, said the trend will likely accelerate now that VMware vSphere 5.0 has added greater feature/function parity between NAS and SAN with its infrastructure trends vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) and vStorage APIs for Storage . iSCSI performance Q&A Awareness (VASA). Plus, NAS tends to be flexible and easy to use with . Primer: Getting started virtualization technology, he added.
with iSCSI Jason Blosil, a product marketing manager at NetApp, attributed the Unified Storage Need-to- increasing interest in NAS for databases to faster 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) networks, the lower cost of Ethernet in comparison to Fibre Channel Knows (FC), and the ease with which file protocols configure and scale. . Understanding unified Scale-out NAS: High-performance computing (HPC) was the original sweet storage architecture spot for scale-out NAS, as select industries craved the high throughput the . Unified storage growing systems offered for exceptionally large files and data sets. Early scale-out in popularity systems were especially popular in scientific and academic research, biotechnology, oil and gas, engineering, design and media production. . Unified storage
advantages HPC applications need multiple processors, memory modules and data paths. Parallel data services, which break up single files and deliver them in pieces in parallel, are an absolute must, said Terri McClure, a senior analyst at ESG. She likened the services to the checkout process at a grocery store. Systems based on parallel processing offer multiple checkout lines, rather than funneling requests through one or two cashiers.
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Contents More recently, use cases for scale-out NAS have expanded to cloud services, Big Data analytics, and traditional data center workloads such as NAS Need-to-Knows high-scale home directories and file consolidation.
. File storage focuses on Patrick Osborne, manager of worldwide NAS business development at scalable NAS Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co., noted his company has seen a significant trend in archiving and data retention for compliance/regulatory purposes, as well as . Scale-up vs. scale-out business analytics. In these instances, scale-out network-attached storage NAS can be especially helpful with massive amounts of unstructured data. . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and To accommodate the expansion in use cases, scale-out NAS vendors have to adapt their systems to handle both large files in need of high throughput scale-up and small files requiring high IOPS. . Improve NAS management with private On the low end, vendors such as Dell Inc. are trying to make a case that storage clouds scale-out NAS can be economically feasible for small-scale and remote office/branch office (ROBO) customers. SAN Need-to-Knows “Traditionally, we‟ve seen scale-out NAS mainly on high-end, vertically . FC dominates enterprise focused and high-performance workloads or where massive capacity and storage networking performance were needed,” wrote Mike Davis, Dell‟s director of NAS . Storage networking marketing, in an email. “We‟re focused on bringing scale-out NAS to the masses.” infrastructure trends
. iSCSI performance Q&A
. Primer: Getting started NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and scale-up with iSCSI
Unified Storage Need-to- Enterprise IT shops coping with the explosive growth of unstructured data Knows need to consider their NAS options and decide whether traditional fixed- capacity NAS devices or the emerging scale-out NAS systems will better . Understanding unified meet their file-storage needs. storage architecture To help make your decision, here‟s a summary of the pros and cons for the . Unified storage growing two types of NAS systems. in popularity . Unified storage TRADITIONAL NAS: PROS advantages One of the main attractions of traditional NAS is its simplicity. The systems are easy to install, configure, manage and operate, especially in environments of modest scale. Product upgrades in this “scale-up” category follow the traditional speeds and feeds pattern of replacing a box with faster processors and larger-capacity storage.
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Contents Scale-up products are generally mature and have plenty of features and add- on software for data protection, business continuance and storage efficiency. NAS Need-to-Knows Options include snapshots, one-to-many and many-to-one replication, remote replication and remote snapshots, thin provisioning, deduplication . File storage focuses on and compression. scalable NAS Traditional NAS systems can be cost-effective and reliable, particularly for . Scale-up vs. scale-out small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). They help to consolidate file NAS servers and centralize data protection. They may also be tightly integrated . NAS options: Pros and with common business applications and their native management consoles. cons of scale-out and TRADITIONAL NAS: CONS scale-up
. Improve NAS The main downside of traditional NAS is its inability to scale beyond the limits management with private of the system, forcing customers to purchase additional, separately managed storage clouds boxes when they need to add capacity. Capacity on these NAS boxes may be underutilized if users aren‟t able to add capacity because they‟ve run out SAN Need-to-Knows of performance or bandwidth.
. FC dominates enterprise As IT shops buy multiple products, NAS sprawl is a common problem, and storage networking the stove-piped systems have an adverse impact on floor space, power and . Storage networking cooling, and tend to complicate storage management.
infrastructure trends “It becomes a nightmare managing 25, 30, 50, 100, 200 of these individual . iSCSI performance Q&A NAS boxes,” said Arun Taneja, founder and consulting analyst at Taneja . Primer: Getting started Group in Hopkinton, Mass. “Ninety percent of the administrator‟s time in with iSCSI typical, traditional NAS environments is moving files from one NAS box to another in order to load balance these boxes.” Unified Storage Need-to- Knows SCALE-OUT NAS: PROS
. Understanding unified Scale-out NAS systems carry the advantage of scaling capacity and storage architecture performance on an as-needed basis, far beyond the limits of traditional scale- . Unified storage growing up NAS. They typically distribute data across many storage controllers, and in popularity the systems‟ clustered architectures ensure high availability.
. Unified storage Early scale-out NAS gained a reputation as being tough to set up and advantages manage, but the difficulty varies by product. To a large degree, several commercial products have eliminated that disadvantage. Users report that adding a node to an EMC Corp. Isilon system, for instance, can be as easy as pushing a button on the front panel.
Once the system is up and running, scale-out NAS brings the huge advantage of being able to manage and move petabytes of data under a single distributed file system and global namespace, and the systems
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Contents generally support large volumes. Users, in turn, can maintain floor space requirements, power and cooling costs, and management staff. NAS Need-to-Knows “Whether [the scale-out NAS systems] do that through namespace . File storage focuses on aggregation or having a true global namespace, as long as the customer scalable NAS doesn‟t have any management headaches, that‟s what counts,” said Terri McClure, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass. . Scale-up vs. scale-out
NAS Some scale-out NAS systems increase performance and capacity . NAS options: Pros and independently, while others require the scaling to take place simultaneously. cons of scale-out and In addition, some products allow their users to upgrade and service hardware without disrupting client access to data. scale-up
. Improve NAS SCALE-OUT NAS: CONS management with private storage clouds Some scale-out NAS systems carry fairly substantial licensing fees that are tacked onto the incremental costs associated with adding equipment. Plus, SAN Need-to-Knows scale-out systems tend to lack the feature/functionality of well-established scale-up NAS systems, at least at the moment. . FC dominates enterprise storage networking For instance, a scale-out NAS system might offer remote replication, but only . Storage networking the asynchronous variety -- not one-to-many or many-to-one functionality. The vendor also might have optimized the system to handle large files rather infrastructure trends than huge numbers of small files and might not offer unified block and file . iSCSI performance Q&A storage capability. . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI “They‟ve got good feature/function for the use cases that they‟ve grown up in, but if they‟re going to expand into enterprise IT, most systems need to get Unified Storage Need-to- better at small-file, random-access performance, and they have to expand Knows their feature/function use cases,” McClure said. “They‟re getting there.”
. Understanding unified Taneja agreed, adding, “It‟s only a question of time. It‟s happening very storage architecture quickly right now.”
. Unified storage growing However, Taneja said current claims by some scale-out NAS vendors that in popularity they can scale I/O and throughput linearly to seemingly infinite levels, . Unified storage through the addition of more than 100 or 200 nodes, is “total baloney.” advantages “You can put them together and they‟ll work. But you will have a declining performance curve,” Taneja said. “The curve will be pretty linear for a while, and then at some point in time, it‟ll start flattening and, further out, it‟s going to actually start going down.”
Ravi Chalaka, vice president of product, solutions and channel marketing in Hitachi Data Systems Corp.‟s BlueArc NAS Division, maintained that the
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Contents future of scale-out NAS is the adoption of standards-based parallel file systems based on NFS 4.1 to provide scalability beyond what current NAS Need-to-Knows systems can deliver.
. File storage focuses on
scalable NAS Improve NAS management with private storage clouds and . Scale-up vs. scale-out
NAS grid storage
. NAS options: Pros and Managing increasing file storage growth in network-attached storage (NAS) cons of scale-out and systems can place a serious burden on IT staffs. Learn why private storage scale-up clouds and grid storage systems can provide a cost-effective way to address NAS management. . Improve NAS management with private Managing multiple disparate NAS systems and the resulting file storage storage clouds growth can be a real headache for data storage pros. Fortunately, technology options such as private storage clouds and grid storage systems are making SAN Need-to-Knows NAS management easier.
. FC dominates enterprise Private storage clouds or grid storage systems are somewhat similar to storage networking clustered NAS systems, but grid storage provides peer-to-peer clustering that enables it to provide single-image files over geographically dispersed, long- . Storage networking distance and cross-domain operations. infrastructure trends . iSCSI performance Q&A Geographic location "awareness" adds another dimension to NAS . Primer: Getting started management by centralizing control, management and access for distributed environments. Based on access performance and/or data protection policies, with iSCSI files are replicated and moved to the geographic location that best meets the policy. Whether you have only a few remote or branch offices or hundreds, Unified Storage Need-to- grid storage systems or private storage clouds can make a lot of sense. Knows . Understanding unified Let's take a look at some of the common pain points resulting from NAS system proliferation and how private storage clouds or grid storage systems storage architecture can address them: . Unified storage growing in popularity Effectiveness of grid storage or . Unified storage NAS management challenge private storage clouds technology advantages Excellent for local and geographically Multi-NAS management dispersed sites; exceptionally scalable
Excellent: Policy based to meet user Client and application file access and app requirements regardless of management location
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Contents Good to excellent depending on Storage tiering NAS Need-to-Knows product, much simplified Excellent: Goes beyond simple load . File storage focuses on NAS load balancing balancing taking into account scalable NAS performance and locality . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS Data protection, replication, backup Excellent: Local and geographically . NAS options: Pros and and recovery dispersed; exceptionally scalable cons of scale-out and Very good with excellent payback Total cost of ownership scale-up timeframes . Improve NAS management with private There are currently two commercially available private storage cloud storage clouds systems: Bycast Inc.'s StorageGRID and EMC Corp.'s Atmos. The Bycast StorageGRID runs on x86 nodes that sit in front of standard direct-attached SAN Need-to-Knows storage (DAS) or storage-area network (SAN) storage, so it can use already installed block storage. EMC Atmos also runs on x86 nodes but can only use . FC dominates enterprise its own JBOD storage. Bycast's product is a bit more mature with hundreds storage networking of installations and OEM deals with Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co. and IBM. . Storage networking Let's examine some of the advantages and disadvantages of using private infrastructure trends storage clouds or grid storage systems for NAS management. . iSCSI performance Q&A . Primer: Getting started Advantages of private storage clouds or grid storage systems for NAS with iSCSI management
Unified Storage Need-to- Same pros as clustered NAS (simplified management, data Knows protection and file access) Same or lower cost than clustered NAS . Understanding unified Management of geographically dispersed locations storage architecture Distributed geographically aware access with centralized . Unified storage growing management, protection and replication of all files Geographically aware, policy-based file replication and movement in popularity DAS and SAN investment protection or use of very low-cost storage . Unified storage advantages Disadvantages of private storage clouds or grid storage systems for NAS management
Limited number of vendors with mature technology No automated storage tiering at this time Startup costs can be more than other technologies (but long-term costs will likely be less)
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Contents FC technology still dominates enterprise storage
NAS Need-to-Knows networking
. File storage focuses on Fibre Channel (FC) will likely remain the predominant storage networking scalable NAS technology in enterprise IT shops for at least the next two years, despite past predictions it would give way to 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) alternatives. . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS Market research firms and industry analysts disagree on the timeframe when . NAS options: Pros and 10 GbE-based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), block-based iSCSI or cons of scale-out and file-based network-attached storage (NAS) might knock FC technology from its primary position in enterprise data storage networks. But they agree that scale-up the long-established FC won‟t disappear any time soon. . Improve NAS management with private “Fibre Channel is safe. It‟s trusted. It‟s still a rock-solid solution. And storage clouds customers aren‟t looking to rip everything out and change their protocols. Changing protocols is something that usually takes many years to happen,” SAN Need-to-Knows said Stuart Miniman, principal research contributor at Wikibon, a community- focused research and analyst firm based in Marlborough, Mass. . FC dominates enterprise storage networking FC storage networking technology enjoyed a 13% surge in revenue and 12% . Storage networking increase in switch port shipments from the third quarter to fourth quarter of 2011, according to South San Francisco-based Crehan Research Inc., which infrastructure trends tracks the networking industry. . iSCSI performance Q&A . Primer: Getting started Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research, attributed the spike to with iSCSI normally strong storage sales in the fourth quarter and the release of upgraded FC director products from Brocade Communications Inc. and Cisco Unified Storage Need-to- Systems Inc. Knows Brocade, the first switching vendor to ship 16 Gbps FC gear, reported that . Understanding unified 16-gig accounted for 27% of its FC director sales in the fourth quarter. storage architecture Brocade executives said the transition from 8 Gbps to 16 Gbps has been faster than any previous bandwidth bump at the same stage. . Unified storage growing in popularity Even with the fourth-quarter spike, FC revenue was roughly flat in 2011 vs. . Unified storage 2010, and industry analysts don‟t expect the annual growth of FC technology advantages to track in the double-digit range again. Projections from market research firms indicate it will show only modest growth, remain static or decline during the next two to five years.
Redwood City, Calif.-based Dell‟Oro Group Inc. predicts a compound annual growth rate of 3% for FC revenue and 2% for switch port shipments over the next five years before it hits a plateau. Casey Quillin, a senior analyst at Dell‟Oro, said he sees FCoE as a potential alternative to FC technology but not necessarily a replacement.
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Contents “It‟s going to have a long tail, and it‟s going to continue to be the SAN [storage-area network] protocol of choice specifically when it comes to the NAS Need-to-Knows need for speed, security and efficiency,” Quillin said.
. File storage focuses on Crehan Research forecasts FC growth this year with the impending ramp-up scalable NAS of servers based on Intel Corp.‟s new Xeon E5-2600 product family, the arrival of 16 Gbps products and an improving economy. . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS Still, Crehan foresees Fibre Channel flattening and gradually declining over . NAS options: Pros and the next four years, as FCoE takes some share. cons of scale-out and scale-up Crehan predicts that FCoE switch port shipments will grow 127% in 2012, from 1.5 million to 3.4 million, and ultimately surpass Fibre Channel in switch . Improve NAS port shipments in 2014. management with private storage clouds “These technologies are on two totally different trajectories. One is a flattish, plateauing technology, and the other has an extremely fast growth rate,” SAN Need-to-Knows Crehan said. But, he added, “FCoE shipments have far exceeded what people expected, and FCoE usage has probably lagged what people . FC dominates enterprise expected.” storage networking . Storage networking Converged network adapters offer ‘FCoE ready’ capabilities infrastructure trends The shipment of FCoE switches and converged network adapters (CNAs) . iSCSI performance Q&A designed to run FCoE doesn‟t mean enterprise IT shops are implementing . Primer: Getting started FCoE yet, much less running it end to end from their servers to storage. IT with iSCSI shops can also use CNAs with iSCSI or NAS over enhanced 10 GbE, which now has lossless properties to prevent the dropping of data packets. Unified Storage Need-to- Knows “Some are buying CNAs as a strategic move,” said Marco Coulter, research director, storage practice at The InfoPro LLC, a New York City-based division . Understanding unified of 451 Research. “They're getting „FCoE ready‟ at the CNA end, though they storage architecture may only be using the Ethernet capability.” . Unified storage growing InfoPro‟s recent survey of more than 150 large and midsize enterprises in popularity showed that 15% had deployed CNAs, but only 8% were using FCoE. Early . Unified storage FCoE adopters tend to use it only in one segment of the storage network, advantages between the servers and top-of-rack switches, Coulter noted.
Joe Skorupa, a research vice president (VP) at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., said the latest generation of enterprise-class servers generally ship with CNAs. For IT shops that virtualize servers, the 10 GbE-capable CNAs can help to eliminate a significant number of the ports, adapters and cables they needed with Gigabit Ethernet.
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Contents “It just doesn‟t make sense anymore to put in 1 Gig adapters unless you know they're dedicated servers that are never going to host a virtualized NAS Need-to-Knows workload,” Skorupa said.
. File storage focuses on Signs point to 10 GbE gaining a larger presence in storage networks, scalable NAS whether with FCoE, NAS or iSCSI. Although InfoPro‟s survey showed that 10 GbE was the predominant storage network backbone in just 4% of large and . Scale-up vs. scale-out midsize enterprises, it also found that 31% were using 10 GbE. NAS . NAS options: Pros and Will Ethernet 'steamroll' FC technology? cons of scale-out and scale-up From 2010 to 2011, iSCSI-based block storage revenue grew approximately 40%, from $2 billion to $2.8 billion, while NAS revenue escalated 22%, from . Improve NAS $3.7 billion to $4.5 billion, according to Roger Cox, a VP in Gartner‟s global management with private storage research unit. Meanwhile, revenue for FC-connected block storage storage clouds increased just 2%, from $10 billion to $10.2 billion, although Fibre Channel clearly still represents the lion‟s share. SAN Need-to-Knows “Ethernet has been like a steamroller, and it‟s run over the top of anything it‟s . FC dominates enterprise ever had to go up against. The only one it hasn‟t run over so far is Fibre storage networking Channel, and over time, it will eventually engulf and devour Fibre Channel,” . Storage networking Gartner's Skorupa said. “But it will be more than five years [before] most data centers have the majority of their storage connections native on the array infrastructure trends with Ethernet. There are more than $50 billion of installed Fibre Channel . iSCSI performance Q&A assets.” . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI On some fronts, the protocol wars are starting to cool with the introduction of products that support multiple connectivity options. For instance, QLogic Unified Storage Need-to- Corp. last year announced adapters, switches and routers that can run 16 Knows Gbps FC or 10 GbE from the same hardware. Another example was Brocade‟s release of a fabric adapter that combines a CNA, FC host bus . Understanding unified adapter (HBA), and Ethernet network interface card (NIC) for simultaneous FC and Ethernet fabric connections. storage architecture . Unified storage growing “I would hope we‟re past a lot of the protocol passionistas debating over in popularity which one to use,” Wikibon's Miniman said. “The head-to-head technology . Unified storage vs. technology tends to be mattering less, whether you‟re running NAS, iSCSI, Fibre Channel or FCoE. The vendors are putting together solutions advantages that make that part invisible.”
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Contents Storage networking infrastructure trends must figure in
NAS Need-to-Knows upgrade plans
. File storage focuses on Enterprise IT shops looking to consolidate data centers and virtualize their scalable NAS servers will need to weigh the latest storage networking technology developments as they plot any infrastructure upgrade. . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS Here‟s a snapshot of the current state of data storage networking . NAS options: Pros and infrastructure for Fibre Channel (FC), Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet cons of scale-out and (FCoE) and InfiniBand in data centers. scale-up Fibre Channel . Improve NAS management with private Long-term roadmaps mention 64 Gbps FC, there are standards in the works storage clouds for 32 Gbps FC and 16 Gbps products started shipping last year. But analysts say IT organizations are likely to mostly stick with 8 Gbps FC for at SAN Need-to-Knows least two years when they purchase new switches and host bus adapters (HBAs). . FC dominates enterprise storage networking Redwood City, Calif.-based Dell‟Oro Group Inc. noted that 8 Gbps accounted . Storage networking for 89% of Fibre Channel switch port shipments in 2011. The research firm projects 8 Gbps will represent 77% of FC switch shipments this year. In infrastructure trends 2013, 8 Gbps and 16 Gbps will split the market at 50% apiece as the price . iSCSI performance Q&A premium for 16 Gbps technology starts to dissolve, according to Dell‟Oro. . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI But that doesn‟t mean IT shops are rushing to retire their old switches and adapters. All manner of FC technology -- from 1 Gbps to 16 Gbps -- is Unified Storage Need-to- currently in use, and 4 Gbps remains the most prevalent line speed, Knows according to recent TechTarget Storage Purchasing Intention surveys.
. Understanding unified Customers tend to buy the highest speed available when they buy new storage architecture infrastructure, as their aging equipment reaches end of life and the cost of the latest Fibre Channel iteration gets close to the price of the prior . Unified storage growing generation. Many skip an upgrade cycle, as, for example, Western University in popularity (previously University of Western Ontario) in London, Ontario, is doing with . Unified storage its move from 2 Gbps to 8 Gbps FC. advantages Although 16 Gbps FC is valuable with heavily virtualized environments, high- transaction databases, blade servers and solid-state storage, many IT organizations are hard-pressed to use the bandwidth they have today.
“It‟s not like you find data centers that have used up all their 8-gig bandwidth and are completely distressed because of that and need to go to 16 gig. That‟s usually not the case,” said Gene Ruth, a research director of storage
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Contents technology at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. “It‟s bandwidth looking for an application.” NAS Need-to-Knows Dean Flanders, head of informatics at the Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI) . File storage focuses on for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, said the company uses scalable NAS approximately 25% of its 8 Gbps FC, and needs tend to be “bursty.” FMI runs about 60 virtual machines (VMs) per server over 8 Gbps, and it has two 8 . Scale-up vs. scale-out Gbps links in an inter-switch link (ISL) trunk, giving it 16 Gbps for each fabric NAS between two data centers. . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and “The setup is overkill at the moment,” Flanders wrote via email. scale-up Kemper Porter, systems manager in the Data Services Division of . Improve NAS Mississippi‟s Department of IT services, said the group uses two 8 Gbps management with private Fibre Channel connections per server and a multipath driver, so it gets 16 storage clouds Gbps. But he‟s seen peaks only of 3 Gbps on a few servers. The department uses FC primarily with its virtual servers. SAN Need-to-Knows Scott Shimomura, group manager of product marketing for data center SANs . FC dominates enterprise at Brocade Communications Systems Inc., claimed the financial, health care storage networking and entertainment industries see a need for more bandwidth. Brocade began . Storage networking rolling out 16 Gbps products last May and reported that 27% of its FC director sales in the fourth quarter of 2011 were 16-gig. infrastructure trends . iSCSI performance Q&A Cisco Systems Inc. declined to specify when it plans to add support for 16 . Primer: Getting started Gbps. Emulex Corp. added support last year for 16 Gbps HBAs, and QLogic with iSCSI Corp. said OEM design qualifications are in progress.
Unified Storage Need-to- Ethernet Knows Cutting-edge 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 100 GbE products may be . Understanding unified trickling into the storage marketplace, but most IT organizations are working storage architecture on the major upgrade to 10 GbE, with new cables, adapters and switches, . Unified storage growing and potentially even a redesigned storage networking infrastructure. in popularity “The transition from 1 Gigabit to 10 Gigabit is happening,” said Arun Taneja, . Unified storage founder and consulting analyst at Taneja Group in Hopkinton, Mass. “But like advantages any of these migrations, it's happening at a slower pace than all the early voices you heard eight, nine years ago.”
Research from Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) shows the top reason for moving from Gigabit Ethernet to 10 GbE is server virtualization. The need for extra bandwidth could escalate as IT shops move to servers that use Intel‟s new Xeon process E5-2600 processors, which can
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Contents run more VMs per physical server, said Bob Laliberte, a senior analyst at ESG. NAS Need-to-Knows “A lot of organizations in the next few years are planning on having more . File storage focuses on than 25 VMs per physical server,” he said. “As that happens, higher scalable NAS throughput is going to be required to accommodate all the traffic from those virtual machines.” . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS Stuart Miniman, principal research contributor at Wikibon, a community- . NAS options: Pros and focused research and analyst firm based in Marlborough, Mass., expects cons of scale-out and adoption to increase with the embedding of 10 GbE technology in next- generation rack and tower servers. For the past couple of years, 10 GbE was scale-up mostly found in blade servers, he said. . Improve NAS management with private IT shops have several options for 10 GbE adapters, including network storage clouds interface cards (NICs), converged network adapters (CNAs, which can function as TCP offload engines), local-area network (LAN) on motherboard SAN Need-to-Knows (LOM), CNA on motherboard and CNAs embedded as mezzanine cards in blade servers. Cisco, the leading 10 GbE switch vendor, announced support . FC dominates enterprise for 40 GbE and 100 GbE in January. storage networking . Storage networking Fibre Channel over Ethernet infrastructure trends With standards work complete, the limitations of Fibre Channel over Ethernet . iSCSI performance Q&A have largely dissolved. IT shops can now deploy lossless 10 GbE and FCoE . Primer: Getting started technology end to end, from servers to storage, with multi-hop, switch-to- with iSCSI switch FCoE even in the network core.
Unified Storage Need-to- But, in practice, most early adopters still use FCoE only between their Knows servers and top-of-rack switches, according to industry analysts. The top-of- rack switches split the IP/LAN traffic and the FC/storage-area network (SAN) . Understanding unified traffic, with the storage traffic continuing via Fibre Channel to core switches storage architecture and storage arrays. . Unified storage growing Dell‟Oro predicts that FCoE switch port shipments will shoot up 139% this in popularity year, as revenue climbs 110%, from $437.3 million to $919.6 million. The . Unified storage market research firm also foresees 74% growth in revenue and 78% growth advantages in switch port shipments for 2013. In both years, fixed-configuration switches (including top-of-rack and embedded blade server) comprise the majority, as opposed to modular chassis-based, director-level switches.
“As 10-gig adoption ramps up, FCoE is going to draft on that wave,” Wikibon's Miniman said. “FCoE isn‟t going to crush everything out there, but it‟s gaining steady adoption.”
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Contents The main switch vendors have supported FCoE in fabric switches since 2009, but last year Cisco made available multi-hop, switch-to-switch NAS Need-to-Knows capabilities with the addition of FCoE support for its MDS 9500 Series Multilayer Directors (8-port module) and Nexus 7000 (32-port module). Last . File storage focuses on year, Brocade made available multi-hop FCoE with its fixed-port VDX switches, but it has yet to support multi-hop FCoE in modular director-class scalable NAS switches. . Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS CNAs ship in a variety of form factors, including adapter cards, mezzanine . NAS options: Pros and cards for blade servers and converged LAN on motherboard (cLOM). cons of scale-out and Gartner‟s Ruth said the market may continue to lag until more full-function scale-up FCoE storage targets emerge beyond systems from vendors such as EMC . Improve NAS Corp. and NetApp Inc. management with private storage clouds FMI's Flanders said FCoE looked interesting, but after extensive evaluation he saw no advantage of convergence given the company‟s existing FC SAN. SAN Need-to-Knows FMI has also used iSCSI for more than five years, but Flanders plans to phase it out because the performance and reliability can‟t match that of Fibre . FC dominates enterprise Channel. storage networking . Storage networking “It‟s not getting as much traction as people were hoping for,” Taneja Group's Taneja said of FCoE. “Maybe it‟s just the conservative nature of the storage infrastructure trends IT people. FCoE will probably take hold for brand-new projects, which are . iSCSI performance Q&A more tied to the unified fabric effort.” . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI ESG's Laliberte will be looking to see if VMware‟s certification of FCoE spurs greater adoption, a milestone he thought proved influential in the uptake of Unified Storage Need-to- network-attached storage (NAS) and iSCSI. VMware supported only FC Knows storage until 2010, he said.
. Understanding unified InfiniBand storage architecture . Unified storage growing Low-latency InfiniBand still finds its greatest use as a server-to-server interconnect, especially in high-performance computing (HPC) and financial in popularity trading applications. But the technology is starting to pick up momentum in . Unified storage back-end storage. advantages Brian Sparks, senior director of marketing at Mellanox Technologies Ltd., claimed that remote direct memory access (RDMA) -- which allows server-to- server data movement without CPU involvement -- is gaining acceptance in storage. According to Sparks, data storage vendors that use InfiniBand include DataDirect Networks Inc., EMC (with Isilon), IBM (with XIV), NetApp (with LSI/Engenio) and Oracle Corp. (with ZFS, Exadata, Exalogic and Exalytics).
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Contents Mellanox, the leading InfiniBand vendor, began supporting 14 data rate (FDR) 56 Gbps InfiniBand adapters, switches and cables last year, Sparks NAS Need-to-Knows said.
. File storage focuses on Former No. 2 InfiniBand switch vendor QLogic sold its TrueScale InfiniBand scalable NAS assets to Intel Corp. earlier this year. QLogic attributed the decision to its desire to focus on converged networking, enterprise Ethernet and SAN . Scale-up vs. scale-out products. Intel cited its commitment to the HPC community and its vision of NAS fabric architectures that can achieve a quintillion computer operations per . NAS options: Pros and second (ExaFLOP/s) by 2018.
cons of scale-out and scale-up iSCSI performance: An expert discussion with Dennis . Improve NAS Martin management with private
storage clouds Because of the success and widespread adoption of Fibre Channel, iSCSI technology is often overlooked. But with 10 Gigabit Ethernet and data center SAN Need-to-Knows bridging technology picking up steam, the gap between iSCSI and Fibre . FC dominates enterprise Channel is closing, making iSCSI a more viable alternative for handling Ethernet storage. storage networking . Storage networking In this SearchStorage.com interview, Demartek president Dennis Martin infrastructure trends discusses some of the latest technologies affecting iSCSI performance, . iSCSI performance Q&A including data center bridging, iSCSI multipathing, CHAP and IPsec security, iSCSI offload adapters and jumbo frames. . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI How can data center bridging improve iSCSI performance?
Unified Storage Need-to- Dennis Martin: Data center bridging is an extension, or a collection of Knows extensions, of Ethernet that basically gives it some lossless characteristics. ISCSI can run over this lossless form of Ethernet, and because Ethernet . Understanding unified provides a reliable connection, the performance of iSCSI is improved. storage architecture . Unified storage growing There's a lot of talk about having to choose between iSCSI and Fibre in popularity Channel. What advantages does iSCSI have over Fibre Channel?
. Unified storage Martin: There are iSCSI initiators and even iSCSI targets included in some of advantages the operating systems, so you can [choose iSCSI] in software relatively easily and you don't have to buy a lot of extra stuff. Certainly, if you're running 1-gig Ethernet, iSCSI can run over that; 1-gig Ethernet isn't very expensive, and a lot of people already have it, which is the advantage iSCSI has over Fibre Channel.
What about the disadvantages?
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Contents Martin: ISCSI tends to be a little bit higher in latency and very big shops already have Fibre Channel, so it's well established. The reliability and NAS Need-to-Knows performance of Fibre Channel also tends to be a little bit better than iSCSI. Fibre Channel has been running over a lossless connection for years, so . File storage focuses on when you want high reliability and low latency, typically, you'd choose Fibre scalable NAS Channel.
. Scale-up vs. scale-out What kinds of applications are better served with iSCSI than Fibre NAS Channel? . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and Martin: It turns out that applications don't know the difference between iSCSI and Fibre Channel. Since they can't tell the difference, the best thing to do is scale-up figure out what you need. If you need very little latency, and lots of scalability . Improve NAS and nodes in the network, you might go with Fibre Channel. If you don't need management with private the low latency and need something a little simpler, then you could go with storage clouds iSCSI. But again, the applications can't tell the difference.
SAN Need-to-Knows How difficult is it to manage iSCSI multipathing, and are there any tools out there that can make it easier? . FC dominates enterprise storage networking Martin: There are tools available. Most operating systems can handle . Storage networking multipath I/O (MPIO). Microsoft is MPIO, and there's MPxIO [the name of the MPIO function in Solaris], but in either case there's sort of generic infrastructure trends multipathing that uses a single iSCSI session and you can have multiple . iSCSI performance Q&A addresses on the initiator, the target or both. That comes with the OS and is . Primer: Getting started fairly straightforward. Some iSCSI targets support what's called multiple with iSCSI connections, so you can use a different sort of method to log in and then accomplish the multipathing using this multiple connection option. Typically, Unified Storage Need-to- multiple connections and things like MPIO are mutually exclusive -- you have Knows to pick one or the other. The fact that you can choose it is dependent on what the target supports. . Understanding unified storage architecture Moving onto security, are the Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) and Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) the only two . Unified storage growing iSCSI security measures to know about or are there others? in popularity . Unified storage Martin: CHAP and IPsec are the only iSCSI security measures I know of, advantages and they can certainly handle a lot of things within iSCSI itself. You can also do other forms of encryption with the Ethernet connection. And there are other things you can do with data at rest and the storage side. There are a lot of other places you can do encryption, but CHAP and IPsec are the only ones I know of that are iSCSI-specific.
You tested iSCSI offload adapters in your 2011 iSCSI deployment guide. What kind of applications benefit from using this technology?
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Contents Martin: The principle of the iSCSI offload is that all of the iSCSI protocol and NAS Need-to-Knows also the TCP/IP stack are offloaded to the card, into the adapter. It's for anything that needs a little bit tighter latency, but more importantly it drops . File storage focuses on the CPU utilization. Whenever you want to load up more things on your CPU, scalable NAS either more virtual machines, bigger applications or whatever, that would be the best benefit for using an iSCSI offload adapter. . Scale-up vs. scale-out
NAS What kind of advantages in iSCSI performance do you get from running . NAS options: Pros and jumbo frames? In what situations is it best to use them? cons of scale-out and Martin: Jumbo frames give you more payload per transmission. Typically, scale-up jumbo frames run about 9,000 bytes, give or take a little bit for the headers, . Improve NAS but 9,000 bytes is the most common. If you're running 10 GbE, a lot of the 10 management with private GbE equipment defaults to jumbo frames, so you sort of get that for free. storage clouds When you run it on 1 GbE, you do see a performance bump -- we've seen 10%, 20% and maybe more. If you want to get less congestion on the SAN Need-to-Knows network, you use the bigger packets.
. FC dominates enterprise What are some best practices for handling iSCSI traffic? storage networking . Storage networking Martin: Although iSCSI runs on Ethernet and pretty much everyone has Ethernet, the best practice is to run your iSCSI traffic on a separate network infrastructure trends or at least a separate virtual LAN. That's because iSCSI puts a different kind . iSCSI performance Q&A of a traffic load on there. It's just better to keep iSCSI traffic separate . Primer: Getting started because you don't want it to make more collisions on your regular network with iSCSI than you already have.
Unified Storage Need-to- At the 1 GbE level, you can use separate network interface cards [NICs]. If Knows you go to 10 GbE, you don't have to break it up quite as much because it‟s a much bigger pipe. Certainly, you should use server-class network adapters . Understanding unified for iSCSI. Don't try desktop NICs just because they're cheaper; they can't storage architecture handle all the extra features iSCSI would like to use, including Receive-Side Scaling (RSS), partial offload functions like TCP and UDP checksum offload, . Unified storage growing Large Send Offload (LSO) and Large Receive Offload. It's not quite the full in popularity iSCSI, but there are some TCP offload subfunctions you can get, so you . Unified storage want to have an adapter that can do all that. advantages If you're concerned about security on the network, you certainly want to use CHAP, either one-way or mutual. And you want to use nonblocking switches. There are always a few other things you can do, like use MPIO, which we talked about already. If you're in an enterprise environment, you want to go high availability, so you have redundant adapters and that sort of thing if you want to get to the higher end.
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Contents Getting started with an iSCSI storage system: An iSCSI NAS Need-to-Knows primer . File storage focuses on More small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are discovering iSCSI is scalable NAS a good fit for their organizations. In this iSCSI primer, learn about what you . Scale-up vs. scale-out need to get started with your first iSCSI storage system. NAS . NAS options: Pros and Some of iSCSI's popularity in SMBs has to do with server virtualization. And, cons of scale-out and right now, fault tolerance for virtualization hosts is a big factor that is pushing smaller shops into checking out iSCSI. In a virtual data center, it's imperative scale-up to prevent host servers from failing. If a host server were to fail, it would take . Improve NAS all of the virtual machines (VMs) residing on it down, too. Since a single host management with private server can contain a dozen or more VMs, a host server failure typically storage clouds results in a major outage.
SAN Need-to-Knows So what does this have to do with iSCSI storage systems? Well, to prevent the types of outages that I just described, many organizations cluster their . FC dominates enterprise virtualization hosts. That way, if a failure were to occur, the virtual machines storage networking can continue to run on an alternate host. Although there are a variety of host . Storage networking clustering technologies, host clustering typically requires the use of a shared storage pool that is accessible to all of the hosts within the cluster. The infrastructure trends shared storage pool isn't connected to the cluster nodes through a disk . iSCSI performance Q&A controller. Instead, the cluster nodes communicate with the storage pool over . Primer: Getting started the network through the use of the iSCSI protocol. with iSCSI Hardware requirements for iSCSI storage systems Unified Storage Need-to- Knows The only firm hardware requirement for using iSCSI is that there must be TCP/IP connectivity between the remote storage pool and the computer that . Understanding unified needs to connect to it. Beyond that, it is widely considered to be a best storage architecture practice to route iSCSI traffic over a dedicated, high-speed network connection so that iSCSI traffic won't be delayed by other network traffic, but . Unified storage growing this is not an absolute requirement. If you use a dedicated network in popularity connection (which I highly recommend), then you should use as high of a . Unified storage connection speed as possible. Using faster network connections between advantages your server and your storage pool means lower latency, which is important, especially for I/O intensive applications.
Software requirements for iSCSI storage systems
To establish iSCSI connectivity, you are going to need a special type of software. The iSCSI storage array is usually a collection of disk resources that is physically attached to a Windows or a Linux server. This server runs
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Contents iSCSI target software. Just as the shared storage pool requires specialized software, so does the server that connects to it. To establish a connection to NAS Need-to-Knows an iSCSI target, a server must run an iSCSI initiator.
. File storage focuses on Establishing iSCSI connectivity scalable NAS Once you have the iSCSI initiator and the iSCSI target software, the next . Scale-up vs. scale-out step is to establish iSCSI connectivity. The exact procedure varies depending NAS on the software that you are using. However, these are the five basic steps . NAS options: Pros and that are usually required: cons of scale-out and 1. Configure the iSCSI target to make disk resources available as iSCSI scale-up storage. On a Windows Storage Server, this means you must create a virtual . Improve NAS hard drive and associate it with a specific iSCSI target (you can create management with private multiple targets on a single storage server). When you run the iSCSI initiator, storage clouds the software will assign the server an iSCSI Qualified Name (IQN).
SAN Need-to-Knows 2. Document this name and configure the iSCSI target to allow connectivity from that IQN. . FC dominates enterprise storage networking 3. Configure any firewalls between the server and the shared storage pool to . Storage networking allow iSCSI traffic to pass. iSCSI traffic usually flows over port 3260.
infrastructure trends 4. Provide the iSCSI initiator with the IP address of the Fully Qualified . iSCSI performance Q&A Domain Name (FQDN) of the iSCSI target. . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI 5. Establish connectivity to the storage pool and map a drive letter.
Unified Storage Need-to- Setting up an iSCSI storage system is nowhere near as complex a task as Knows some people make it out to be. If you would like to learn more, Microsoft has an excellent article at Jose Barret's Blog. . Understanding unified storage architecture . Unified storage growing in popularity . Unified storage advantages
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Contents Understanding unified storage architecture
NAS Need-to-Knows In part one of his Storage Decisions Q&A interview, Evaluator Group senior strategist Randy Kerns outlines two ways to build a unified storage system . File storage focuses on and explains the differences between converged, unified and integrated data scalable NAS storage products.
. Scale-up vs. scale-out What makes a storage system unified? How do we define unified NAS storage? . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and Kerns: It depends on who you talk to, but the way we like to talk about it with our clients in the IT world is by saying, 'It's a system that can do both block scale-up and file in the same system. It will meet the demands for applications that . Improve NAS require block access, plus all of the file-based applications and typical user management with private home directories you have.'
storage clouds Does that mean all unified systems are architected in the same way?
SAN Need-to-Knows Kerns: No. Two primary approaches have been taken. One is to integrate . FC dominates enterprise the capabilities so that block and file are equivalent. They work through the same physical controller, and that's a very effective and economical way of storage networking doing it. Then there are other approaches that will take a block storage . Storage networking system and put what, in effect, is a network-attached storage [NAS] controller infrastructure trends or a NAS head in front of it. They'll package it as unified storage, even though it's two separate systems that have been put together. Both can be . iSCSI performance Q&A very effective, and both have strengths and weaknesses. Typically, the . Primer: Getting started combined solution can be a little bit more economical, but the packaged with iSCSI solution may have opportunities to do some different caching, for example, of the data. Unified Storage Need-to- Knows What are the criteria for evaluating unified storage architecture?
. Understanding unified Kerns: Ultimately, it's what you want to accomplish and what you're trying to storage architecture do with that system. For the most part, you're combining the resource platform, if you will, for block and file, and then you're providing that . Unified storage growing information to users or your applications. Some people look at it as a way to in popularity centralize administration of the storage platform. Some systems have the . Unified storage capability of having a single administrative interface, while others may require two different interfaces. advantages
What's the difference between unified, converged and integrated storage systems?
Kerns: [The answer depends on] who you talk to. Some vendors try to run with a particular word and build a case and a particular identity around the name. Unified storage has been relatively successful and fairly well identified, I think, in the user community. Converged storage is still a little
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Contents misunderstood -- maybe misrepresented -- but converged is where you can get the server and the storage together on a single platform, and that's NAS Need-to-Knows generally what it means, although not always the case depending on which vendor you talk to. That's the way most IT people understand it. . File storage focuses on Integrated storage can mean a couple of different things. It can mean the scalable NAS same thing as converged or something like an appliance where you have a . Scale-up vs. scale-out prepackaged offering that has the application and storage together. NAS . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and File-based growth increases popularity of unified storage
scale-up systems
. Improve NAS In part two of his Storage Decisions Q&A interview, Evaluator Group senior management with private strategist Randy Kerns explains why the complexity of managing block and storage clouds file systems separately is driving the adoption of unified storage systems.
SAN Need-to-Knows What are the pros and cons of adopting unified storage systems?
. FC dominates enterprise Kerns: Typically, we see [people using it] in environments that are in the storage networking smaller enterprise or midsized business [category], and they want to add in a . Storage networking file-based storage [array] where they may not have had it before. They were using just typical servers, running a file system on the server. They want infrastructure trends network-attached storage [NAS], but still have a demand for block storage . iSCSI performance Q&A and want to have it in a single footprint, if you will, so they can consolidate . Primer: Getting started two different systems or expand -- not add another complete system. Getting a unified system may be perfect for them; they'll now have one box that can with iSCSI do everything to fit their needs. That's the usual way we see people acquire unified storage. Unified Storage Need-to-
Knows Is there a way to know when a unified storage system isn't necessary? . Understanding unified Kerns: You can always go with two different systems. What we find is that as storage architecture you move higher in the enterprise, particularly in the enterprise data center, . Unified storage growing you'll find that NAS with file-based storage is typically administered in popularity separately, and maybe has different people managing it than those managing block-based storage. [In part, that‟s because] NAS is growing . Unified storage much faster than block-based storage. They'll buy a NAS system specifically advantages to meet that demand with a new project. Typically, we see higher in the enterprise that they have two separate systems -- but it's whatever works for your particular customer. When you move down market, though, you see the footprint and administration becoming more of a concern, and unified storage gets into the mix earlier on.
Unified storage isn't a new idea, so why have we been hearing so much about it recently?
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Contents Kerns: There's been a lot of excellent vendor promotion and they've done a NAS Need-to-Knows good job of conditioning the market and getting people to think about it. The growth in file-based storage has also brought the issue up significantly. . File storage focuses on People are realizing, 'I need to address this. How am I going to do it?' The NAS system is the best way to do it. Then you ask, 'How can I get a NAS scalable NAS system to meet this combination of block and file?' Most storage systems . Scale-up vs. scale-out today have enough capacity and performance to manage both, so getting a NAS consolidated system, in many instances, is warranted. If people look at a . NAS options: Pros and [unified storage system] -- the availability, awareness and growth in file- based storage is what's driving [the technology]. cons of scale-out and scale-up . Improve NAS Unified storage systems offer cost savings and management with private management advantages storage clouds A handful of recent unified storage systems offerings have grabbed the SAN Need-to-Knows attention of industry experts and data storage managers who believe that a single foundation for managing block, file and object data is especially . FC dominates enterprise appealing as virtual server environments and the cloud force storage pros to storage networking look for consolidation and standardization wherever possible.
. Storage networking "By only having to buy a single storage system, there are capital savings infrastructure trends involved," said Ben Woo, managing director at Neuralytix Inc., a New York . iSCSI performance Q&A City-based strategy consultancy specializing in the information industry. "When managing one system rather than two, there are operational savings . Primer: Getting started to be had. Ultimately, the simplicity of having everything in a single unit with iSCSI makes sense for many businesses."
Unified Storage Need-to- In this video whiteboard presentation, Woo outlines the key architectural Knows points and benefits of unified storage systems.
. Understanding unified "On the SAN side, you should think about block protocols that go down the storage architecture wire -- ones and zeroes,” he said. “On the NAS side, you should think about . Unified storage growing files. Typically, they're a group of blocks, which is represented in a Word or Excel document." in popularity . Unified storage For storage administrators, unified storage holds the appeal of cutting advantages workloads -- sometimes by half, Woo said. For major storage vendors, approaches to unified storage systems vary. "What you'll see with unified storage is that IT vendors come at this in two different ways," he noted.
You have the integrated approach, where a single unified storage system will have both the SAN component and the NAS component together under one operating system. Alternatively, they may consider a more modular approach in which there's a NAS gateway or a NAS "head" that front ends a traditional SAN storage system.
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Contents The latter is what Woo calls a modular approach to unified storage systems. NAS Need-to-Knows "On the integrated side, NetApp is a prime example of this particular . File storage focuses on approach. However, from a modular perspective, we see companies like EMC, HP, IBM, Dell and Oracle," he noted. scalable NAS
. Scale-up vs. scale-out NAS . NAS options: Pros and cons of scale-out and scale-up . Improve NAS management with private storage clouds
SAN Need-to-Knows . FC dominates enterprise storage networking . Storage networking infrastructure trends . iSCSI performance Q&A . Primer: Getting started with iSCSI
Unified Storage Need-to- Knows
. Understanding unified storage architecture . Unified storage growing in popularity . Unified storage advantages
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Contents
NAS Need-to-Knows Free resources for technology professionals . File storage focuses on TechTarget publishes targeted technology media that address your need for scalable NAS information and resources for researching products, developing strategy and . Scale-up vs. scale-out making cost-effective purchase decisions. Our network of technology-specific NAS Web sites gives you access to industry experts, independent content and . NAS options: Pros and analysis and the Web‟s largest library of vendor-provided white papers, cons of scale-out and webcasts, podcasts, videos, virtual trade shows, research reports and more scale-up —drawing on the rich R&D resources of technology providers to address . Improve NAS market trends, challenges and solutions. Our live events and virtual seminars management with private give you access to vendor neutral, expert commentary and advice on the storage clouds issues and challenges you face daily. Our social community IT Knowledge SAN Need-to-Knows Exchange allows you to share real world information in real time with peers and experts. . FC dominates enterprise
storage networking What makes TechTarget unique? . Storage networking TechTarget is squarely focused on the enterprise IT space. Our team of infrastructure trends editors and network of industry experts provide the richest, most relevant . iSCSI performance Q&A content to IT professionals and management. We leverage the immediacy of . Primer: Getting started the Web, the networking and face-to-face opportunities of events and virtual with iSCSI events, and the ability to interact with peers—all to create compelling and Unified Storage Need-to- actionable information for enterprise IT professionals across all industries Knows and markets. . Understanding unified storage architecture Related TechTarget Websites . Unified storage growing
in popularity . Unified storage advantages
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