Technical Works : NetApp University

Storage Fundamentals

In this blog, I am discussing the storage devices and solutions for the organizations for fulfilling their needs. It also has an overview of Storage technologies , Such as DAS,NAS,SAN,Storage virtualization, flash storage and cloud computing.

DATA GROWTH

In the modern world, organizations are producing a large amount of data in digital format. The main source of data is human and machine,

Emails, home directories, and scanned files are the common human creating files and common machine generated contents comes from medical imaging systems, telecommunications, utility equipment and financial transactions.

The growing data may be stored in different locations and it must be used frequently for the smooth working of the organization. Managing and accessing the growing data in a cost effective method is the biggest challenge in storage technologies.

Factors to consider when investing in a storage salutation

Before investing in storage systems the organizations must consider various factors.Following are the main considerations.

Applications

Each organization has the different types of applications, and each application will need a different amount of storage for installing and working. The organization must consider its application before implementing a storage system.

Data Protection

Data protection is one of the main factors to consider when implementing a storage solution. Storage failures can be due to three facts ( Disc failure, Connection failure between disc and storage systems and natural disasters)

Disc failures can be protected by built-in protections and in case of physical damages or disasters, the data can be protected by using a disaster recovery strategy (As shown in the above image, the data can be backup in a tape and store in a different location).

Data Availability

In case of a failure, the data should be available to the user without any loses or delay.

Hardware redundancy is one of the methods for data availability, in this two storage systems are replicating data each other. If one fails the data will be available from the other disc.

Application availability is that in case of a hardware failure the application should be available.

Disaster recovery, as shown in the below picture, the business should not be affected or stopped due to a data loss. In this scenario, the data will be immediately available from an another location in case of a storage failure.

Data Security

In an organization, the data should be protected from external and internal breaches.

As shown in the above picture the data security can be implemented as including the storage to the existing security structure, or ensuring the data protection by storing the deleted data for a specific time and encrypting the data.

Scalability

An organization's storage salutation must be scalable as it should be growing along with the organization.

Storage grid is an example method for scaling storage (As shown in the picture storage grid uses many storages to store data)

Performance

The performance of a storage can be effected by various facts, like as shown in the below example, the performance of the fast storage system is effect by the slow service from the server.

Cost

When implementing a storage system, it should be cost-effective for the organization. The most important points to check are, it should have a simple management system as well as reliable and highly available, which will make it a cost-effective storage system for a long run because of it's low maintenance.

Review of Important Storage Factors

2.STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES

There are various types of storage technologies are available in the market. In this module we are talking about Direct-attached storage (DAS), Network attached storage (NAS), Storage area network (SAN),Storage visualization, flash technology and cloud computing.

DAS

DAS is the direct-attached storages in the network, It can be a hard disc in the server, desktop,laptop or external hard discs which are directly attached to the computers.

Das is cost effective and faster, but they can be used only in a small network and Das has a limited scalability.

NAS

NAS is connected to the network and it is taking away the file server duty from the server, so that make a faster accessing of applications and data over the network. In a NAS environment, the servers will handle the application and processing part and the data will be retrieved from the NAS device.

NAS is cost effective for a simple network, It is easy to install, deploy and manage. By using NAS the resources can be shared over the network, it can utilize the resources more efficiently.

SAN

In SAN infrastructure the Storage devices are connected to a high-performance storage network and the servers will be contacting the storage devices through SAN for the resources. FC SAN, iSCSI SAN, FCoE SAN are the three types of SAN.

SAN is ideal for transmitting large data processes like Databases and Imaging devices. SAN has scalability and high performance compared to DAS and NAS.

Storage Virtualization

Storage Virtualization contains one manageable unit which is attached to several physical storage devices.

In virtualized storages, users can access the required amount of space from the unit, but they will not know the physical structure of the storage or where the data is actually saved physically.It is also easy for the administrators to do the configuration and monitoring of the storage from one interface.

Flash Technology

Flash storages are different from the traditional discs, it uses electricity to store the data and it uses less power and flash storages are 100 times faster to read data than a normal disc.

The flash storages have a memory unit which stores data and has an Access controller unit which manages and controls the access to storage space. It is suitable for mission critical intensive applications.