Seriously storage

IP Storage is a technology that sup-ports block mode data transfer over IP/
Ethernet Networks. IP Storage technology provides for inte-grating existing
protocols such as SCSI and Fiber Channel, directly with the IP Protocol. The
advantage of this integra-tion is that storage and networ-king can be merged
seamlessly. It means that the storage will use IP technology to provide for SAN,
storage resource man-agement and provide storage services in the network.

In India, and to a certain extent worldwide, storage has predominantly been
in the form of direct attached storage (DAS). Now, as storage-guzzling operating
systems, applica-tions and solutions get more collaborative, the need for
shareable storage and enhan-cement of storage as per requi-rements, is being
felt.

The current generation of storage implementations have either gone the NAS
(Network Attached Storage) way or the SAN (Storage Area Network) way depending
on the require-ment of the client. In case of NAS devices since it uses file
protocols to service require-ments from clients, it is gene-rally termed as
Network filers. Since the NAS uses TCP/ IP, a routable protocol to service
clients, it can address require-ments over wide area networks as well as
Internet with proper configuration. SANs have generally been storage on network,
enabling SAN storage to be connected and allocated to several servers, which
also means that the servers can be removed from the shared storage subsystem
without disrupting the operation.

The advantage of IP-enab-ling storage is that organiza-tions can now use IP
protocol to manage the storage services within the organization on a separate
network rather than using different protocols for LAN and storage resource.

One has to remember FC technology came in to cater to the storage services to
over-come the then limitation of earlier IP LANS as well as those of SCSI Buses.
In case of Ether-net it was more to do with the transfer rates, rather than the
management and security features. While in case of SCSI it was distance
limitations

and addressable devices on SCSI Bus.

With the advent of enhance-ments in the IP/ Ethernet technologies these
differences are vanishing. IP storage helps and supports building of inex-pensive
IP-based storage net-works over existing infrastru-cture, typically over Gigabit
Ethernet networks.

With the proliferation of Gigabit Ethernet Networks in most organizations,
adopting IP storage is a practical choice for LANs, MANs or WANs. This gives the
advantage of remote disk access, synchronous and asynchronous remote mirro-ring,
Disaster Recovery or even remote backups in most cases.

The current trend in storage solutions market is towards consolidating
(virtualization of) storage along with NAS-SAN convergence. This has come about
with users and organiza-tions demanding cost-effective and simple storage
infrastru-cture catering to the exponen-tial growth in demand for storage space.

IP storage is one of the key factors which is driving storage technologies
towards this, with cost and technology adva-ntage, the progress towards
unification seems more likely.

Advantages offered by IP as a technology:

• Open standards.
• Available technical man power
• Availability of proven QoS and Security standards and functionalities.
• Cost effective Products and solutions.

From Managing to Management

A heterogeneous mix of storage devices and the use of proprietary
technologies are driving up storage-related expenditure. The rapid growth in the
amount of data used by applications and the constant change driven by the coming
and going of applications and technology have lead us to highly complex storage
enviro-nments requiring a great deal of administrator activity and attention.

The result is a storage infra-structure-management challe-nge
that has been described by some as being so costly that total cost of ownership
(TCO) has replaced initial purchase price as the relevant metric when evaluating
storage solutions.

And all this is resulting in... change.

"Change" requires storage network administrators to create and
maintain spreads-heets with serial numbers, firmware levels and connection
information for Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), switches and storage
devices. "Change" requires application owners to spend time tracking
their storage utilization, forecasting future data growth and planning for the
necessary application downtime when storage hardware is added or refreshed.
"Change" requires storage administrators to track overall hardware
utilization and plan upgrade activities with an eye toward minimizing
application downtime.

In the storage environment, the costs involved in managing
change contribute directly to an overall TCO that has been described as being so
signi-ficant, that the initial purchase price is no longer important.

Answering all of the ques-tions which an administrator faces
(see box) with the help of suitable software, allows us to draw a good picture
of the storage network. The next step is to improve the resolution of this
picture:

• How full are the file systems on my hosts and which ones
  are approaching an out-of-space condition?

• Which files, users or groups are leading to out-of-space
  conditions?

• How full are the databases on my hosts and which ones are
  more likely to have space-allocation problems soon?

• Which user or tablespace is leading to database
  space-allocation problems?

• How am I using up my allocated file system and database
  space over time?

In traditional environ-ments, a host system owns storage and
has its own unique volume manager and file system. This model crea-tes a
management stovepipe. Individual system administra-tors are forced to manage
storage resources on a host-by-host basis. One of the more time-consuming and
frequent changes in the sto-rage environment is the pro-cess of growing,
shrinking or moving storage capacity. Companies can evolve to an on-demand
operating enviro-nment by consolidating host-based volume management and file
system functions into single points of control in the storage network.

With contributions from editorial advisors-SR Prasa-nna
Kumar, Senior Product Manager with XSERVE India, and Subram Natarajan, Senior
Solutions Architect, IBM Storage group.

With contributions from editorial advisors-SR Prasanna
Kumar, Senior Product Manager with XSERVE India, and Subram Natarajan, Senior
Solutions Architect, IBM Storage group