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Managing the information that drives the enterprise Vol. 10 No. 9 November 2011 NAS BUYING TIPS DR MONITORING APPS STORAGE ALSO INSIDE Get real about the cloud Time is right for SSDs Best fit for scale-out NAS Hybrid clouds gain favor Tale of the tape Storage Pay Still On the Rise With an economy stuck in neutral, storage professionals’ paychecks are still growing— but for job satisfaction, money isn’t everything.
57

Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Nov 02, 2014

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Technology

Rajesh Nambiar

latest issue of Storage magazine offers an in-depth exploration of the latest trends and technologies in storage today. Article include:

Get real about the cloud
Time is right for SSDs
Best fit for scale-out NAS
Hybrid clouds gain favor
Tale of the tape
And much more
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Transcript
Page 1: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Managing the information that drives the enterprise

Vol 10 No 9 November 2011

NAS BUYING TIPS bull DR MONITORING APPS

STORAGE

ALSO INSIDEGet real about the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Best fit for scale-out NAS

Hybrid clouds gain favor

Tale of the tape

Storage Pay

StillOn the

RiseWith an economy stuck

in neutral storage professionalsrsquo paychecks

are still growingmdashbut for job satisfaction money isnrsquot everything

FROM OUR SPONSORS

3 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGEinside | november 2011

Letrsquos get real about the cloud5 EDITORIAL Yoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the

cloud storage market to get a real handle on how it might fit into your data storage environment by RICH CASTAGNA

Time is right for SSDs8 RANDOM ACCESS Solid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But new low-cost systems built specifically for solid-state are generating a lot of interestby DAVE RAFFO

Salary survey Storage prosrsquo pay still on the rise11 Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage

professionalsrsquo paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases by ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

NAS system buying decisions21 Whether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just trying to stem the

tide of file data new developments in NAS systems and a wide range of products create a bevy of attractive alternativesby JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

Disaster recovery readiness monitoring applications33 Developing and implementing disaster recovery plans can be complex and

time-consuming but a new class of apps can help you see if your DR plansare in sync with your IT operations by PAUL KIRVAN CISA FBCI CBCP

Who really needs scale-out systems43 HOT SPOTS Industries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can provide high-performance application supportby TERRI MCCLURE

Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments48 READWRITE The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud

hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage by JEFF BYRNE

Tape still plays a role in the data center52 SNAPSHOT In our latest Snapshot survey 58 of Storage readers say

theyrsquore using tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have banished tape entirely by RICH CASTAGNA

From our sponsors54 Useful links from our sponsors

server rooms that require GPs NaviGatioN

We get that virtualization can drive a better ROI Highly certified by Microsoft VMware HP and others we can evaluate design and implement the right solution for youWersquoll get you out of this mess at CDWcomvirtualization

soLveD

copy2011 CDW LLC CDWreg CDWbullGreg and PeOPLe WHO Get Ittrade are trademarks of CDW LLC

c

Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

5

LOUD STORAGE IS limitless Cloud storage is ubiquitous Cloud storage is elasticCloud storage is economical Cloud storage will bring world peace curecancer and balance the budget

Yes Irsquove bought into all the promises about cloud storage but Irsquom notquite ready to drink the Kool-Aid chant the cloud storage mantra andstagger into the ether like some zombie extra from Night of the Living DeadIrsquod feel a little more comfortable if we could just squeeze the word ldquopo-tentiallyrdquo into those four ldquoCloud storage is rdquo sentences above

Itrsquos not just the relentless vendor hypemdashitrsquos turning into a story aboutexpectation and maybe even just a dab or two of exaggeration

Gartner IDC and just about any analyst firm with at least a toe in thedata storage market waters have pitched predictions of runaway growthfor the cloud computing market The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) recently issued a report detailing the results of its cloud computing survey In the reportrsquos description of the cloud marketCompTIA cited Gartnerrsquos prediction that ldquocloud storage will grow at 895CAGR to $288 billionrdquo by 2015 The report also noted IDCrsquos prediction whichisnrsquot restricted to just storage ldquoIDC predicts that public cloud IT spendingwill grow from $215 billion in 2010 to $729 billion in 2015rdquo

But CompTIA is careful to point out that current expenditures for cloudservices represent approximately 2 of the whole IT spend so even if itdoubles itrsquos still just a drop in the bucket in the big IT picture

And if Irsquom going to do any finger-pointing I also have to point at us Ourmost recent survey research shows that approximately 21 of companiesuse cloud storage services for non-backup purposes and about 28 ofthem use some form of cloud backup for at least one app Those are prettygood numbers for relatively new technologies but wersquove also seen someups and downs with our stats which might indicate that companies arejust testing cloud storage rather than committing to it

We need a little context to be able to look at cloud storage in a rational

editorial | rich castagna

Letrsquos get real about the cloudYoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the cloud storage market to get a real handle on

how it might fit into your data storage environment

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

6 STORAGE November 2011

manner and to see where it may be appropriate as an additionreplacementto on-premises storage Billion-dollar predictions and multi-digit growthrates arenrsquot nearly as impressive if you consider the starting point If Irsquomonly spending $1 today but plan to spend $2 next year itrsquos a 100 hike butitrsquos still just two bucks

Approaching cloud storage from a practical point of view will yield muchbetter results for users and providers alike ldquoCloud-based email storagebackup and recovery and business productivity applications are in the high-est demand among customers buying cloud solutions todayrdquo the CompTIAreport noted And itrsquos hardly surprising these are the most mature areas ofcloud storage and probably even cloud computing as a whole

On the horizon I expect mobilecomputing to be a bigmdashand maybethe mainmdashincentive for companiesto buy into cloud storage servicesSmartphones tablets and whateverultraportable form factor is aroundthe corner pose special problemsfor IT and storage managers inparticular These devices can createa situation in which corporate datais created modified and deletedwithout it ever being stored ondata center gear or maybe without it ever even passing through the datacenter You could argue that the mobile scenario already exists with remoteoffices but remote offices have a physical presence that could be tiedrelatively easily into centralized resources if desired

Although the vendors tend to paint an all-or-nothing picture of cloudstorage (ldquoNo more backupsrdquo) itrsquos likely that hybrid solutions that integratecloud resources with installed systems will best satisfy our needs forsome time to come Itrsquos a reasonable approach thatrsquos relatively free fromhyperbole but there are still just a handful of players trying to bridgethose two environments I expect this market will be ldquojustifiedrdquo as soon as both the heavy-metal and cloud guys in the storage industry realizethat working together just makes sense 2

Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group

Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the December 2011 issue

On the horizon I expect mobile computing to be abigmdashand maybe themainmdashincentive forcompanies to buy intocloud storage services

EMC PRESENTS

EMC2 EMC and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective ownerscopy Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation All rights reserved Source IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011)

ldquoDiscover the Power of Next Generation Backuprdquo

See why EMC is the leader in backup and recovery at wwwEMCcomtransformbackup

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

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PAC

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REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

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END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

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AVA

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CO

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GREENEFFICIENCY

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WER

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VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

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STR

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TUR

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RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

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FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

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22 STORAGE November 2011

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HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 2: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

FROM OUR SPONSORS

3 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGEinside | november 2011

Letrsquos get real about the cloud5 EDITORIAL Yoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the

cloud storage market to get a real handle on how it might fit into your data storage environment by RICH CASTAGNA

Time is right for SSDs8 RANDOM ACCESS Solid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But new low-cost systems built specifically for solid-state are generating a lot of interestby DAVE RAFFO

Salary survey Storage prosrsquo pay still on the rise11 Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage

professionalsrsquo paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases by ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

NAS system buying decisions21 Whether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just trying to stem the

tide of file data new developments in NAS systems and a wide range of products create a bevy of attractive alternativesby JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

Disaster recovery readiness monitoring applications33 Developing and implementing disaster recovery plans can be complex and

time-consuming but a new class of apps can help you see if your DR plansare in sync with your IT operations by PAUL KIRVAN CISA FBCI CBCP

Who really needs scale-out systems43 HOT SPOTS Industries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can provide high-performance application supportby TERRI MCCLURE

Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments48 READWRITE The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud

hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage by JEFF BYRNE

Tape still plays a role in the data center52 SNAPSHOT In our latest Snapshot survey 58 of Storage readers say

theyrsquore using tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have banished tape entirely by RICH CASTAGNA

From our sponsors54 Useful links from our sponsors

server rooms that require GPs NaviGatioN

We get that virtualization can drive a better ROI Highly certified by Microsoft VMware HP and others we can evaluate design and implement the right solution for youWersquoll get you out of this mess at CDWcomvirtualization

soLveD

copy2011 CDW LLC CDWreg CDWbullGreg and PeOPLe WHO Get Ittrade are trademarks of CDW LLC

c

Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

5

LOUD STORAGE IS limitless Cloud storage is ubiquitous Cloud storage is elasticCloud storage is economical Cloud storage will bring world peace curecancer and balance the budget

Yes Irsquove bought into all the promises about cloud storage but Irsquom notquite ready to drink the Kool-Aid chant the cloud storage mantra andstagger into the ether like some zombie extra from Night of the Living DeadIrsquod feel a little more comfortable if we could just squeeze the word ldquopo-tentiallyrdquo into those four ldquoCloud storage is rdquo sentences above

Itrsquos not just the relentless vendor hypemdashitrsquos turning into a story aboutexpectation and maybe even just a dab or two of exaggeration

Gartner IDC and just about any analyst firm with at least a toe in thedata storage market waters have pitched predictions of runaway growthfor the cloud computing market The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) recently issued a report detailing the results of its cloud computing survey In the reportrsquos description of the cloud marketCompTIA cited Gartnerrsquos prediction that ldquocloud storage will grow at 895CAGR to $288 billionrdquo by 2015 The report also noted IDCrsquos prediction whichisnrsquot restricted to just storage ldquoIDC predicts that public cloud IT spendingwill grow from $215 billion in 2010 to $729 billion in 2015rdquo

But CompTIA is careful to point out that current expenditures for cloudservices represent approximately 2 of the whole IT spend so even if itdoubles itrsquos still just a drop in the bucket in the big IT picture

And if Irsquom going to do any finger-pointing I also have to point at us Ourmost recent survey research shows that approximately 21 of companiesuse cloud storage services for non-backup purposes and about 28 ofthem use some form of cloud backup for at least one app Those are prettygood numbers for relatively new technologies but wersquove also seen someups and downs with our stats which might indicate that companies arejust testing cloud storage rather than committing to it

We need a little context to be able to look at cloud storage in a rational

editorial | rich castagna

Letrsquos get real about the cloudYoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the cloud storage market to get a real handle on

how it might fit into your data storage environment

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

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6 STORAGE November 2011

manner and to see where it may be appropriate as an additionreplacementto on-premises storage Billion-dollar predictions and multi-digit growthrates arenrsquot nearly as impressive if you consider the starting point If Irsquomonly spending $1 today but plan to spend $2 next year itrsquos a 100 hike butitrsquos still just two bucks

Approaching cloud storage from a practical point of view will yield muchbetter results for users and providers alike ldquoCloud-based email storagebackup and recovery and business productivity applications are in the high-est demand among customers buying cloud solutions todayrdquo the CompTIAreport noted And itrsquos hardly surprising these are the most mature areas ofcloud storage and probably even cloud computing as a whole

On the horizon I expect mobilecomputing to be a bigmdashand maybethe mainmdashincentive for companiesto buy into cloud storage servicesSmartphones tablets and whateverultraportable form factor is aroundthe corner pose special problemsfor IT and storage managers inparticular These devices can createa situation in which corporate datais created modified and deletedwithout it ever being stored ondata center gear or maybe without it ever even passing through the datacenter You could argue that the mobile scenario already exists with remoteoffices but remote offices have a physical presence that could be tiedrelatively easily into centralized resources if desired

Although the vendors tend to paint an all-or-nothing picture of cloudstorage (ldquoNo more backupsrdquo) itrsquos likely that hybrid solutions that integratecloud resources with installed systems will best satisfy our needs forsome time to come Itrsquos a reasonable approach thatrsquos relatively free fromhyperbole but there are still just a handful of players trying to bridgethose two environments I expect this market will be ldquojustifiedrdquo as soon as both the heavy-metal and cloud guys in the storage industry realizethat working together just makes sense 2

Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group

Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the December 2011 issue

On the horizon I expect mobile computing to be abigmdashand maybe themainmdashincentive forcompanies to buy intocloud storage services

EMC PRESENTS

EMC2 EMC and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective ownerscopy Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation All rights reserved Source IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011)

ldquoDiscover the Power of Next Generation Backuprdquo

See why EMC is the leader in backup and recovery at wwwEMCcomtransformbackup

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Time is right for SSDs

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8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

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17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most

As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge

of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information

is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 3: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

3 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGEinside | november 2011

Letrsquos get real about the cloud5 EDITORIAL Yoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the

cloud storage market to get a real handle on how it might fit into your data storage environment by RICH CASTAGNA

Time is right for SSDs8 RANDOM ACCESS Solid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But new low-cost systems built specifically for solid-state are generating a lot of interestby DAVE RAFFO

Salary survey Storage prosrsquo pay still on the rise11 Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage

professionalsrsquo paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases by ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

NAS system buying decisions21 Whether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just trying to stem the

tide of file data new developments in NAS systems and a wide range of products create a bevy of attractive alternativesby JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

Disaster recovery readiness monitoring applications33 Developing and implementing disaster recovery plans can be complex and

time-consuming but a new class of apps can help you see if your DR plansare in sync with your IT operations by PAUL KIRVAN CISA FBCI CBCP

Who really needs scale-out systems43 HOT SPOTS Industries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can provide high-performance application supportby TERRI MCCLURE

Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments48 READWRITE The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud

hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage by JEFF BYRNE

Tape still plays a role in the data center52 SNAPSHOT In our latest Snapshot survey 58 of Storage readers say

theyrsquore using tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have banished tape entirely by RICH CASTAGNA

From our sponsors54 Useful links from our sponsors

server rooms that require GPs NaviGatioN

We get that virtualization can drive a better ROI Highly certified by Microsoft VMware HP and others we can evaluate design and implement the right solution for youWersquoll get you out of this mess at CDWcomvirtualization

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copy2011 CDW LLC CDWreg CDWbullGreg and PeOPLe WHO Get Ittrade are trademarks of CDW LLC

c

Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

5

LOUD STORAGE IS limitless Cloud storage is ubiquitous Cloud storage is elasticCloud storage is economical Cloud storage will bring world peace curecancer and balance the budget

Yes Irsquove bought into all the promises about cloud storage but Irsquom notquite ready to drink the Kool-Aid chant the cloud storage mantra andstagger into the ether like some zombie extra from Night of the Living DeadIrsquod feel a little more comfortable if we could just squeeze the word ldquopo-tentiallyrdquo into those four ldquoCloud storage is rdquo sentences above

Itrsquos not just the relentless vendor hypemdashitrsquos turning into a story aboutexpectation and maybe even just a dab or two of exaggeration

Gartner IDC and just about any analyst firm with at least a toe in thedata storage market waters have pitched predictions of runaway growthfor the cloud computing market The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) recently issued a report detailing the results of its cloud computing survey In the reportrsquos description of the cloud marketCompTIA cited Gartnerrsquos prediction that ldquocloud storage will grow at 895CAGR to $288 billionrdquo by 2015 The report also noted IDCrsquos prediction whichisnrsquot restricted to just storage ldquoIDC predicts that public cloud IT spendingwill grow from $215 billion in 2010 to $729 billion in 2015rdquo

But CompTIA is careful to point out that current expenditures for cloudservices represent approximately 2 of the whole IT spend so even if itdoubles itrsquos still just a drop in the bucket in the big IT picture

And if Irsquom going to do any finger-pointing I also have to point at us Ourmost recent survey research shows that approximately 21 of companiesuse cloud storage services for non-backup purposes and about 28 ofthem use some form of cloud backup for at least one app Those are prettygood numbers for relatively new technologies but wersquove also seen someups and downs with our stats which might indicate that companies arejust testing cloud storage rather than committing to it

We need a little context to be able to look at cloud storage in a rational

editorial | rich castagna

Letrsquos get real about the cloudYoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the cloud storage market to get a real handle on

how it might fit into your data storage environment

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

6 STORAGE November 2011

manner and to see where it may be appropriate as an additionreplacementto on-premises storage Billion-dollar predictions and multi-digit growthrates arenrsquot nearly as impressive if you consider the starting point If Irsquomonly spending $1 today but plan to spend $2 next year itrsquos a 100 hike butitrsquos still just two bucks

Approaching cloud storage from a practical point of view will yield muchbetter results for users and providers alike ldquoCloud-based email storagebackup and recovery and business productivity applications are in the high-est demand among customers buying cloud solutions todayrdquo the CompTIAreport noted And itrsquos hardly surprising these are the most mature areas ofcloud storage and probably even cloud computing as a whole

On the horizon I expect mobilecomputing to be a bigmdashand maybethe mainmdashincentive for companiesto buy into cloud storage servicesSmartphones tablets and whateverultraportable form factor is aroundthe corner pose special problemsfor IT and storage managers inparticular These devices can createa situation in which corporate datais created modified and deletedwithout it ever being stored ondata center gear or maybe without it ever even passing through the datacenter You could argue that the mobile scenario already exists with remoteoffices but remote offices have a physical presence that could be tiedrelatively easily into centralized resources if desired

Although the vendors tend to paint an all-or-nothing picture of cloudstorage (ldquoNo more backupsrdquo) itrsquos likely that hybrid solutions that integratecloud resources with installed systems will best satisfy our needs forsome time to come Itrsquos a reasonable approach thatrsquos relatively free fromhyperbole but there are still just a handful of players trying to bridgethose two environments I expect this market will be ldquojustifiedrdquo as soon as both the heavy-metal and cloud guys in the storage industry realizethat working together just makes sense 2

Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group

Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the December 2011 issue

On the horizon I expect mobile computing to be abigmdashand maybe themainmdashincentive forcompanies to buy intocloud storage services

EMC PRESENTS

EMC2 EMC and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective ownerscopy Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation All rights reserved Source IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011)

ldquoDiscover the Power of Next Generation Backuprdquo

See why EMC is the leader in backup and recovery at wwwEMCcomtransformbackup

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 4: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

server rooms that require GPs NaviGatioN

We get that virtualization can drive a better ROI Highly certified by Microsoft VMware HP and others we can evaluate design and implement the right solution for youWersquoll get you out of this mess at CDWcomvirtualization

soLveD

copy2011 CDW LLC CDWreg CDWbullGreg and PeOPLe WHO Get Ittrade are trademarks of CDW LLC

c

Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

5

LOUD STORAGE IS limitless Cloud storage is ubiquitous Cloud storage is elasticCloud storage is economical Cloud storage will bring world peace curecancer and balance the budget

Yes Irsquove bought into all the promises about cloud storage but Irsquom notquite ready to drink the Kool-Aid chant the cloud storage mantra andstagger into the ether like some zombie extra from Night of the Living DeadIrsquod feel a little more comfortable if we could just squeeze the word ldquopo-tentiallyrdquo into those four ldquoCloud storage is rdquo sentences above

Itrsquos not just the relentless vendor hypemdashitrsquos turning into a story aboutexpectation and maybe even just a dab or two of exaggeration

Gartner IDC and just about any analyst firm with at least a toe in thedata storage market waters have pitched predictions of runaway growthfor the cloud computing market The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) recently issued a report detailing the results of its cloud computing survey In the reportrsquos description of the cloud marketCompTIA cited Gartnerrsquos prediction that ldquocloud storage will grow at 895CAGR to $288 billionrdquo by 2015 The report also noted IDCrsquos prediction whichisnrsquot restricted to just storage ldquoIDC predicts that public cloud IT spendingwill grow from $215 billion in 2010 to $729 billion in 2015rdquo

But CompTIA is careful to point out that current expenditures for cloudservices represent approximately 2 of the whole IT spend so even if itdoubles itrsquos still just a drop in the bucket in the big IT picture

And if Irsquom going to do any finger-pointing I also have to point at us Ourmost recent survey research shows that approximately 21 of companiesuse cloud storage services for non-backup purposes and about 28 ofthem use some form of cloud backup for at least one app Those are prettygood numbers for relatively new technologies but wersquove also seen someups and downs with our stats which might indicate that companies arejust testing cloud storage rather than committing to it

We need a little context to be able to look at cloud storage in a rational

editorial | rich castagna

Letrsquos get real about the cloudYoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the cloud storage market to get a real handle on

how it might fit into your data storage environment

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

6 STORAGE November 2011

manner and to see where it may be appropriate as an additionreplacementto on-premises storage Billion-dollar predictions and multi-digit growthrates arenrsquot nearly as impressive if you consider the starting point If Irsquomonly spending $1 today but plan to spend $2 next year itrsquos a 100 hike butitrsquos still just two bucks

Approaching cloud storage from a practical point of view will yield muchbetter results for users and providers alike ldquoCloud-based email storagebackup and recovery and business productivity applications are in the high-est demand among customers buying cloud solutions todayrdquo the CompTIAreport noted And itrsquos hardly surprising these are the most mature areas ofcloud storage and probably even cloud computing as a whole

On the horizon I expect mobilecomputing to be a bigmdashand maybethe mainmdashincentive for companiesto buy into cloud storage servicesSmartphones tablets and whateverultraportable form factor is aroundthe corner pose special problemsfor IT and storage managers inparticular These devices can createa situation in which corporate datais created modified and deletedwithout it ever being stored ondata center gear or maybe without it ever even passing through the datacenter You could argue that the mobile scenario already exists with remoteoffices but remote offices have a physical presence that could be tiedrelatively easily into centralized resources if desired

Although the vendors tend to paint an all-or-nothing picture of cloudstorage (ldquoNo more backupsrdquo) itrsquos likely that hybrid solutions that integratecloud resources with installed systems will best satisfy our needs forsome time to come Itrsquos a reasonable approach thatrsquos relatively free fromhyperbole but there are still just a handful of players trying to bridgethose two environments I expect this market will be ldquojustifiedrdquo as soon as both the heavy-metal and cloud guys in the storage industry realizethat working together just makes sense 2

Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group

Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the December 2011 issue

On the horizon I expect mobile computing to be abigmdashand maybe themainmdashincentive forcompanies to buy intocloud storage services

EMC PRESENTS

EMC2 EMC and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective ownerscopy Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation All rights reserved Source IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011)

ldquoDiscover the Power of Next Generation Backuprdquo

See why EMC is the leader in backup and recovery at wwwEMCcomtransformbackup

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

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17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most

As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge

of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information

is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their

information regardless of format mdash Iron Mountain With unmatched experience putting us at your side makes

information easier to manage We can do more together

Safeguard your Information Visit us at ironmountaincom

categoRIze aRcHIVe IMage dIScoVeR deStRoY

copy2011 Iron Mountain Incorporated All rights reserved Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the US and other countries

all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 5: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

c

Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

5

LOUD STORAGE IS limitless Cloud storage is ubiquitous Cloud storage is elasticCloud storage is economical Cloud storage will bring world peace curecancer and balance the budget

Yes Irsquove bought into all the promises about cloud storage but Irsquom notquite ready to drink the Kool-Aid chant the cloud storage mantra andstagger into the ether like some zombie extra from Night of the Living DeadIrsquod feel a little more comfortable if we could just squeeze the word ldquopo-tentiallyrdquo into those four ldquoCloud storage is rdquo sentences above

Itrsquos not just the relentless vendor hypemdashitrsquos turning into a story aboutexpectation and maybe even just a dab or two of exaggeration

Gartner IDC and just about any analyst firm with at least a toe in thedata storage market waters have pitched predictions of runaway growthfor the cloud computing market The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) recently issued a report detailing the results of its cloud computing survey In the reportrsquos description of the cloud marketCompTIA cited Gartnerrsquos prediction that ldquocloud storage will grow at 895CAGR to $288 billionrdquo by 2015 The report also noted IDCrsquos prediction whichisnrsquot restricted to just storage ldquoIDC predicts that public cloud IT spendingwill grow from $215 billion in 2010 to $729 billion in 2015rdquo

But CompTIA is careful to point out that current expenditures for cloudservices represent approximately 2 of the whole IT spend so even if itdoubles itrsquos still just a drop in the bucket in the big IT picture

And if Irsquom going to do any finger-pointing I also have to point at us Ourmost recent survey research shows that approximately 21 of companiesuse cloud storage services for non-backup purposes and about 28 ofthem use some form of cloud backup for at least one app Those are prettygood numbers for relatively new technologies but wersquove also seen someups and downs with our stats which might indicate that companies arejust testing cloud storage rather than committing to it

We need a little context to be able to look at cloud storage in a rational

editorial | rich castagna

Letrsquos get real about the cloudYoursquoll need to look past the ldquoirrational exuberancerdquo of the cloud storage market to get a real handle on

how it might fit into your data storage environment

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

6 STORAGE November 2011

manner and to see where it may be appropriate as an additionreplacementto on-premises storage Billion-dollar predictions and multi-digit growthrates arenrsquot nearly as impressive if you consider the starting point If Irsquomonly spending $1 today but plan to spend $2 next year itrsquos a 100 hike butitrsquos still just two bucks

Approaching cloud storage from a practical point of view will yield muchbetter results for users and providers alike ldquoCloud-based email storagebackup and recovery and business productivity applications are in the high-est demand among customers buying cloud solutions todayrdquo the CompTIAreport noted And itrsquos hardly surprising these are the most mature areas ofcloud storage and probably even cloud computing as a whole

On the horizon I expect mobilecomputing to be a bigmdashand maybethe mainmdashincentive for companiesto buy into cloud storage servicesSmartphones tablets and whateverultraportable form factor is aroundthe corner pose special problemsfor IT and storage managers inparticular These devices can createa situation in which corporate datais created modified and deletedwithout it ever being stored ondata center gear or maybe without it ever even passing through the datacenter You could argue that the mobile scenario already exists with remoteoffices but remote offices have a physical presence that could be tiedrelatively easily into centralized resources if desired

Although the vendors tend to paint an all-or-nothing picture of cloudstorage (ldquoNo more backupsrdquo) itrsquos likely that hybrid solutions that integratecloud resources with installed systems will best satisfy our needs forsome time to come Itrsquos a reasonable approach thatrsquos relatively free fromhyperbole but there are still just a handful of players trying to bridgethose two environments I expect this market will be ldquojustifiedrdquo as soon as both the heavy-metal and cloud guys in the storage industry realizethat working together just makes sense 2

Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group

Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the December 2011 issue

On the horizon I expect mobile computing to be abigmdashand maybe themainmdashincentive forcompanies to buy intocloud storage services

EMC PRESENTS

EMC2 EMC and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective ownerscopy Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation All rights reserved Source IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011)

ldquoDiscover the Power of Next Generation Backuprdquo

See why EMC is the leader in backup and recovery at wwwEMCcomtransformbackup

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

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For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 6: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

6 STORAGE November 2011

manner and to see where it may be appropriate as an additionreplacementto on-premises storage Billion-dollar predictions and multi-digit growthrates arenrsquot nearly as impressive if you consider the starting point If Irsquomonly spending $1 today but plan to spend $2 next year itrsquos a 100 hike butitrsquos still just two bucks

Approaching cloud storage from a practical point of view will yield muchbetter results for users and providers alike ldquoCloud-based email storagebackup and recovery and business productivity applications are in the high-est demand among customers buying cloud solutions todayrdquo the CompTIAreport noted And itrsquos hardly surprising these are the most mature areas ofcloud storage and probably even cloud computing as a whole

On the horizon I expect mobilecomputing to be a bigmdashand maybethe mainmdashincentive for companiesto buy into cloud storage servicesSmartphones tablets and whateverultraportable form factor is aroundthe corner pose special problemsfor IT and storage managers inparticular These devices can createa situation in which corporate datais created modified and deletedwithout it ever being stored ondata center gear or maybe without it ever even passing through the datacenter You could argue that the mobile scenario already exists with remoteoffices but remote offices have a physical presence that could be tiedrelatively easily into centralized resources if desired

Although the vendors tend to paint an all-or-nothing picture of cloudstorage (ldquoNo more backupsrdquo) itrsquos likely that hybrid solutions that integratecloud resources with installed systems will best satisfy our needs forsome time to come Itrsquos a reasonable approach thatrsquos relatively free fromhyperbole but there are still just a handful of players trying to bridgethose two environments I expect this market will be ldquojustifiedrdquo as soon as both the heavy-metal and cloud guys in the storage industry realizethat working together just makes sense 2

Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group

Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the December 2011 issue

On the horizon I expect mobile computing to be abigmdashand maybe themainmdashincentive forcompanies to buy intocloud storage services

EMC PRESENTS

EMC2 EMC and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective ownerscopy Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation All rights reserved Source IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011)

ldquoDiscover the Power of Next Generation Backuprdquo

See why EMC is the leader in backup and recovery at wwwEMCcomtransformbackup

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

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Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 7: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

EMC PRESENTS

EMC2 EMC and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries All other trademarks are the property of their respective ownerscopy Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation All rights reserved Source IDC Worldwide Purpose Built Backup Appliance 2010-2015 Market Analysis and Forecast 2010 Vendor Shares report (May 2011)

ldquoDiscover the Power of Next Generation Backuprdquo

See why EMC is the leader in backup and recovery at wwwEMCcomtransformbackup

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

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STORAGEMANAGEMENT

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NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

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CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

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CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

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RED

UC

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SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

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the cloud

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21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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Scale-out systems

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

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WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 8: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

8 STORAGE November 2011

nO MATTER HOW much hype it receives no storage technology is welcomedwith open arms in a data center It always has to kick the door down

Even technologies that have become established such as iSCSI anddata deduplication had periods of doubt and mistrust before they scoredbig Large vendors are often slow to adopt the new technologies andusers arenrsquot sure what to make of them But vendors such as EqualLogicand LeftHand showed that iSCSI could make life easier on administratorsand maybe save them some money in the process Data Domain did thesame for data deduplication and backup

Now we could be at a similar breakthrough point with solid-state storageSolid-state isnrsquot a new technology but it was a latecomer to enterprisestorage When it arrived a few years ago it promised no cost savings but a performance boost It was offered first by EMC and soon after by the other large storage vendors But their attempts to fit solid-state drives(SSDs) into storage arrays built for spinning disk negated much of the performance gain and its high cost remained a stumbling block

ldquoFlash was supposed to be revolutionary in the data center but mostpeople couldnrsquot afford the revolutionrdquo said Scott Dietzen CEO at flash SAN startup Pure Storage

Pure Storage is among a new generation of vendors with SSD systemsthat are promising another revolution similar to the ones that spawnediSCSI and dedupe Nimbus Data Systems started it in 2010 and others suchas Kaminario Pure Storage and SolidFire have followed with all-flash SANsXIO (the storage company formerly known as Xiotech) has adapted itsunique ISE architecture into a hybrid system with flash and spinning disk

These systems were built or modified specifically for solid-state andcosts are kept down by including management features that the estab-lished disk vendors usually charge extra for Theyrsquore not only about SSDthey include features storage administrators have come to rely on such

random access | dave raffo

Time is right for SSDsSolid-state was a latecomer to enterprise storage

and had to be retrofitted into data centers But a newgeneration of systems built specifically for solid-state

are keeping costs down and interesting users

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most

As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge

of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information

is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their

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Safeguard your Information Visit us at ironmountaincom

categoRIze aRcHIVe IMage dIScoVeR deStRoY

copy2011 Iron Mountain Incorporated All rights reserved Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the US and other countries

all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

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SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 9: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

as snapshots load balancing dedupe high availability and thin provisioningFactoring in dedupe some of these vendors say they can sell you all-

flash arrays for close to $10 a gigabyte even less in some cases If theycan do that and make their systems reliable and efficient that will be anaffordable revolution

Itrsquos too early to say if any of thesevendors will be successful but eBayhas already installed more than 100TB of Nimbus storage If these newSSD products make it big you can expect to see the likes of Dell EMCHewlett-Packard Hitachi Data Sys-tems IBM and NetApp follow in thefootsteps of upstart vendors The established vendors have made somemovement Most now offer lowercost multi-level cell (MLC) flash drives with software or firmware that improves the reliability of MLC drives NetApp broke from the herd by usingflash as cache in its arrays and EMC is preparing systems with flash-basedPCIe cards in servers EMC also sells all-flash storage systems but theyrsquorebasic VNX and VMAX arrays with all SSDs and controllers built for hard drives

The next step would be for the big vendors to develop controllers forSSDs instead of retrofitting disk controllers

For years disk vendors have talked about how they would replace tapeAnd they might soon make good on the threat disk may replace tape atthe top of the media endangered species list But these new flash vendorsare talking about sending spinning disk to the technology museum just as disk vendors claimed they would do to tape

Of course spinning disk will never go away completely For all the gainsit has made as a backup medium disk still hasnrsquot completely replaced tapejust as open systems havenrsquot killed the mainframe and Ethernet will neverkill Fibre Channel in storage networking I also hear stories of people stillusing physical (non-virtual) servers although I canrsquot confirm those rumorsby reading this or other IT publications

But solid-statersquos time is coming in storage and it will reduce the relianceon spinning disk especially as the top storage tier Who knows maybe therewill be a place for hard drives as an archive tier 2

Dave Raffo is senior news director for TechTargetrsquos Storage Media Group publications

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

9 STORAGE November 2011

Itrsquos too early to say ifany of these vendorswill be successfulbut eBay has alreadyinstalled more than100 TB of Nimbusstorage

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

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STORAGEMANAGEMENT

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NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

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CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 10: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade

Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate

deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and

signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR

using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs

and improving the bottom line

Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach

to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was

just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best

Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the

leading competitor

Get more bang for your backup today

Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost

provide higher pleading competi

Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan

Contact us to learn more at (8

copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved

Q

d

s

u

a

O

t

j

P

le

G

F

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

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13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

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Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

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To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 11: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE November 2011

Storage prosrsquo pay

still on the rise

Even with an economy thatrsquos stubbornly stuck in neutral data storage professionalsrsquo

paychecks reflect modest yet welcome increases

BY ELLEN OrsquoBRIEN

DATA STORAGE PROFESSIONALS are holding their own during precariouseconomic times according to the ninth annual Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Salary Survey Theyrsquore managing to increase theiroverall average salaries and stay optimistic that their paychecks willcontinue to grow in 2012

Despite ongoing unemployment issues and fears of a double-dip recession storage pros who responded to our in-depth survey regardingtheir salaries careers incentives budgets and benefits managed to increase their year-over-year earnings for the ninth year running

When it came to storage projects our 266 survey respondents seemto fall almost evenly on either side of the recession vs recovery argu-ment approximately half reported they were in ldquomaintenance moderdquowith budgets restricted The other half detailed ambitious projects suchas multisite data center migrations creating virtual environments andmoving to private clouds

Asked to become experts in more technologies each year this yearrsquoscrop of respondents expressed a shared concern there isnrsquot enoughtime in the day to learn everything there is to know about todayrsquos datastorage market

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

11

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

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For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

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bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

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SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 12: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

12 STORAGE November 2011

Our 2011 Salary Survey respondents earned an average of $86926 a

5 jump from their 2010salaries When lookingahead to 2012 this yearrsquosrespondents predictedtheir average annualsalaries would jump by another 4 to $90392

This yearrsquos respondentssaw a larger year-over-year increase than lastyearrsquos crop who barelymanaged a 1 increase inpay vs 2009 Participantswere also a bit gloomierlast year predicting theirsalaries wouldnrsquot budge in the coming year andmight even drop The current grouprsquos estimated4 jump would translateto nearly a 10 raise between 2010 and 2012

BIG PICTURE

Our 2011 respondents reported salariesthat were 5 higher than last year

DRILL DOWN

This yearrsquos crop of respondents saw agreater year-over-year salary increase thanlast yearrsquos respondents They also beat outthe 2009 class of survey participants whenit came to annual increase in pay

QUOTABLE

ldquoEven with the economy the way it is good resources are being kept within organizations and if you are good at what you do companies are always looking for good resourcesrdquo

$0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

201220112010

$90392$86926$82668

Average Salary Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Salaries stretch outlook brightens

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

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STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 13: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Respondents expresseda high level of satis-faction with their

employee benefits in the four categories we surveyed health dental vacation and flex-time A little more than 60 rated their health benefitsas good very good or excellent

The majority of respon-dents (679) said theirbenefits packages didnrsquotchange compared to lastyear 10 cited improvedbenefits while 196 sawthem reducedmdashnot a veryencouraging number but adefinite improvement vs the30 who fell into that category last year

BIG PICTURE

Overall satisfaction with company benefitsplans was high

DRILL DOWN

196 saw benefits reduced and some reported being asked for higher co-pays

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom being forced to take time [off] insteadof getting overtime payrdquo

My company does not provide a benefits package

My benefits package was improved

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits did not change

679196

1025

Review of Benefits Package2011 vs 2010

Benefits scorecard Some cuts and high marks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

13 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

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Time is right for SSDs

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14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

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43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Tale of the tape

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 14: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

In 2011 storage prosmanaging the largestdata storesmdashmore

than 500 TBmdashcommandedthe highest annual averagesalary at $110085

Otherwise the resultswerenrsquot conclusive enoughto say that paychecksgrew right alongside theamount of data managed

There was also a steady rise in compensation as it related to the number ofdirect reports Storage prosmanaging small teamswith fewer than five peopleearned $81608 and the average salary climbedsteadily to $122667 forthose managing between21 and 50 IT team members

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros managing the largest teamsand the most terabytes earned the highestsalaries

DRILL DOWN

Just as with terabytes bigger budgets addup to higher pay Managers with budgetsless than $500000 earned average annualsalaries of $77140 Those managing budgetsbetween $11 million and $5 million earned$100740

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy ideal job would be minemdashbut withmore skilled staff around merdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 120000

More than 500 TB

100 TB to 500 TB

10 TB to 99 TB

1 TB to 9 TB

Less than 1 TB

None $86818

$59500

$78938

$84384

$78180

$110085

Average 2011 Salary Based onTerabytes Managed

How many terabytes are in your paycheck

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

14 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

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SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 15: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress

Visit wwwecientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater

eciency and flexibility with Fluid Data storage from Dell

Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation

PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage

Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

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XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most

As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

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bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

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SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 16: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Respondents from thePacific region (AlaskaCalifornia Hawaii

Oregon and Washington)averaged salaries of$95526 pushing them tofirst place after the regionranked fourth in last yearrsquossurvey New England and the Northwest andSouthwest regions werebunched closely finishingsecond third and fourthrespectively

The Southeast regionbrought up the rear (as it did last year) with an average annual salary of$79161 Slightly higher was the Mountain region(repeating last yearrsquos placement) with an aver-age salary of $79837

In Canada data storageprofessionals reportedearning an average annualsalary of $85938 puttingthem ahead of two US regions

BIG PICTURE

The Pacific region took top honors in theregional salary comparison Last yearrsquoswinner New England ranked second

DRILL DOWN

Nearly all our regional divisions rankedclosely together in terms of salary onlythe Mountain and Southeast regions averaged below $80000

QUOTABLE

ldquoPhiladelphia is a small IT community Ihave made good connections with people I see again and againrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

Southeast

Mountain

Canada

Midwest

Mid-Atlantic

Southwest

Northwest

New England

Pacific $95526

$92750

$91667

$91475

$90364

$87655

$85938

$79837

$79161

Average 2011 Salary by Region

Pacific region wins by a nose

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

16 STORAGE November 2011

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

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OM

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VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

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STORAGEMANAGEMENT

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OL

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TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

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CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

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AVA

ILA

BIL

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CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

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INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

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SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

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CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

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MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

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UN

STR

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TUR

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POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

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FIC

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CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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with a Thawte SSL Certificate

wwwthawtecom

copy 2010 Thawte Inc All rights reserved Thawte the Thawte logo and other trademarks service marks and designs are registered

or unregistered trademarks of Thawte Inc and its subsidiaries and affiliates in the United States and in foreign countries All other

trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

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bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

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bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

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bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 17: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

College graduatesearned more than highschool graduates but

only by a sliver Howeveryears of dedicated datastorage experience defi-nitely make a differencemdashno matter what the level of education A collegegraduate with less thantwo years of dedicatedstorage experience aver-aged $78064 With sixyears to 10 years of dedi-cated storage experiencesalaries rose to $88303

A warning to newbies In tough economic timesmany companies weed out applicants withoutdiplomas

Another way to increasesalaries was to have onetwo or three certificationswith each one boostingearning potential accord-ing to our survey Afterthree however the mathstopped working and paychecks leveled off

BIG PICTURE

Years on the job count but the real payoff is in years of dedicated storage experience

DRILL DOWN

College graduates earn about the same asIT pros who attended college for two yearsThe highest paid group of survey respon-dents held Masterrsquos degrees and had morethan 10 years of dedicated storage experience

QUOTABLE

ldquoIrsquom always learning something new Itrsquoschallengingrdquo

$0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000

More than 20 years

16 to 20 years

11 to 15 years

Six to 10 years

One to five years $65714

$68561

$81621

$95049

$94772

Average 2011 Salary as It Relates to Years in IT

In a complex market experience counts

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

17 STORAGE November 2011

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

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MA

XIM

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INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

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AVA

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BIL

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CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

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INC

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AV

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AB

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SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

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MIG

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STE

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G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

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MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

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DA

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POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

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CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

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22 STORAGE November 2011

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HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

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For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 18: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

A little over 65 of respondents citedsalary as the No 1

factor in their choice ofjob Career advancementwas the second reason cited by respondents forchanging or taking a new job

When asked about theleast important factors intheir job choice benefits(433) and location (254)landed at the bottom of thepriority list

Only 13 of respondentsvoted salary as their leastimportant factor

BIG PICTURE

When choosing a job salary trumps allother considerations

DRILL DOWN

Career advancement ranks second in considerations while location and benefitscompeted for least important factors

QUOTABLE

ldquoMy salary is representative of a commitment the company has to ITrdquo

Other

Benefits

LocationJob responsibilities

Career advancement

Salary

OtherSalary

Career advancementJob responsibilities

Location

Benefits

654158

6767

21 33

433

254

133

133

13 34

Most Important Factors in Job Choice

Least Important Factors in Job Choice

Salary career advancement are chief motivators

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

18 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

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AV

AIL

AB

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RED

UC

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SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

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POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

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TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

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AG

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STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 19: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

19 STORAGE November 2011

In 2011 survey partici-pants were squarelyfocused on that most

valuable of resourcestime Whether it was thespeed at which projectsget completed the hoursspent on documentation or red tapemdashor too manyhours spent in a car andtoo few at the dinnertablemdashrespondents weremade happy or unhappydepending on how muchcontrol they had over theirtime

Long hours long com-mutes and projects withelusive end dates were allreasons for job dissatisfac-tion Working at home thesatisfaction in meetingdeadlines and seeing results and the ability towork fast without a lot ofhigher ups having to signoff on every move were all named as reasons toappreciate their currentpositions 2

Ellen OrsquoBrien is the Executive Editor for theSearchStoragecom andSearchCloudStoragecom websites

BIG PICTURE

Smart peers and respect from the businessside of the company go a long way

DRILL DOWN

Business leaders who undervalue storageand budget cuts continue to plague storagepros Work-life balance helps ease the pain

QUOTABLE

ldquoItrsquos a great place to work Itrsquos not oftenthat I miss the kidsrsquo soccer gamesrdquo

Three reasons to

ldquoThe diversity of the technology I get to work withrdquo

ldquoBeing allowed to move on with [projects] 90 of the timerdquoldquoRelaxed environment and

lots of flexibilityrdquo

ldquoNo official work-from-home policyrdquoldquoLack of communication between

levels of managementrdquoldquoDealing with people that have unreasonable expectationsrdquo

rave

Three reasons to rant

The time of their lives

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

T

STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

IGH

AVA

ILA

BIL

ITY

CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

GED

INC

RE

AS

E D

ATA

AV

AIL

AB

ILIT

Y

RED

UC

EDR

ISK

SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS

CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

AN

CE

MIG

RA

TIO

N

CLU

STE

RIN

G

CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

EFFE

CTI

VE

MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

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CH

IVE

UN

STR

UC

TUR

ED

DA

TA

POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

US

EDS

TOR

AG

EC

APA

CIT

Y

IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

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22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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Time is right for SSDs

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 20: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

IMPROVEDUTILIZATION

CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT

RED

UC

EC

OM

PLE

XIT

Y

VO

LUM

EM

AN

AG

EMEN

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STORAGEMANAGEMENT

CO

NTR

OL

VIR

TUA

LEN

VIR

ON

MEN

TS

MA

XIM

IZE

STO

RA

GE

CA

PAC

ITY

REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS

INTELLIGENTARCHIVING

DATA PROTECTION

STORAGEOPTIMIZATION

END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H

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AVA

ILA

BIL

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CEN

TRA

LLY

MA

NA

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INC

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AV

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CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP

ERFO

RM

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MIG

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N

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STE

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CONSOLIDATESERVERS

CO

ST

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MITIGATEDOWNTIME

GREENEFFICIENCY

PO

WER

SA

VIN

GS

DATACENTEREFFICIENCY

MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY

MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE

REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA

DATACENTERSTORAGE

AR

CH

IVE

UN

STR

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TUR

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DA

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POLICYBASEDARCHIVING

IDEN

TIFY

UN

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APA

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IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE

EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE

RECLAIM

LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE

RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S

TOR

AG

E EF

FIC

IEN

CY

STORAGE SOFTWARE

SYMANTEC IS

THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader

copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

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22 STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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Time is right for SSDs

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 21: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

eGet real about

the cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

21 STORAGE November 2011

XPONENTIAL GROWTH OF unstructured data continues to spur file storagegrowth and network-attached storage (NAS) deployments According to a research study done by Milford Mass-based Enterprise Strategy Group(ESG) one-fifth of users report NAS capacity growth of more than 50 per year and 54 of organizations with NAS installations said their storagecapacity is growing by at least 20 per year Most companies opt for NASstorage rather than file shares on servers because of the reliability perform-

NAS SYSTEM BUYING

DECISIONSWhether yoursquore dealing with big data issues or just tryingto stem the tide of file data new developments in NASsystems and a wide range of products put them centerstage as attractive alternatives BY JACOB NORBEL GSOEDL

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

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24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

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For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Tale of the tape

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50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 22: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

ance scalability and storage management advantages of NAS as well asfeatures such as replication snapshotting thin provisioning and efficientcloning Available as gateways to front-end block-based storage and ascomplete systems with their own storage NAS systems are now used by companies ranging from very small outfits to large enterprises

NAS MARKET SEGMENTATIONAt the low end of the NAS spectrum are systems for home users Priced aslow as $100 they may come with two or four drives with an option for RAID01 and include features such as a single gigabit Ethernet port web-basedadministration the ability to create users and file shares support for basicquotas for file shares and a backup application With modest performanceand no ability to scale theyrsquore intended for ldquoprosumerrdquo users and the smallofficehome office (SOHO) market Examples of these entry-level NAS sys-tems are D-Link ShareCenter EMCrsquos Iomega StorCenter Netgear Stora andSeagate BlackArmor families

Low-end to midrange NAS appliances that are usually found in smaller organizations are the next level up Capacities can range from a few terabytesto more than 100 TB with some supporting SAS in addition to SATA drivesThese systems usually offer some high-end protocols and features such as various RAID levels Microsoft Active Directory (AD) support snapshotsreplication and a dedicated backup interface Appropriately sized with multicore CPUs sufficient memory SAS drive options and multiple gigabitports they deliver decent performance Usually priced under $25000theyrsquore intended for small offices and remote offices of larger organizationswith limited IT staffs and budgets Usability and support options are key requirements in this segment The various Microsoft Windows StorageServer-based NAS offerings Netgear ReadyNAS and Nexsan E5000 familiesand Overland Storage SnapServer family are examples of systems in thisNAS segment At the higher end of the spectrum NetApp with its FAS2000family is also targeting this space

ldquoThe focus of low-end to midrange NAS systems is to combine ease ofuse with affordability and pertinent NAS features such as AD integrationreplication and snapshotsrdquo said Greg Schulz founder and senior analyst at Stillwater Minn-based StorageIO Group

Moving farther up the ladder are NAS systems for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises This segment has been dominatedby EMC and NetApp with BlueArc (now part of Hitachi Data Systems) and

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

22 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 23: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

23 STORAGE November 2011

HomeSOHO NAS

Modest

Not available

RAID 1 andsometimesRAID 5

Very limited

Very low

MidrangeNAS

Adequate

Very limited

Critical componentsare redun-dant dual-controlleroptions for highavailability

Provides essentialfeatures

Very affordable

Enterprisescale-upNAS

Usually opti-mized for ahigh numberof IOs

Scales vertically by addingspindles

No singlepoints of failure dual-controller architecturefor highavailability

Most completefeature set

High

Scale-outNAS

High numberof IOs and highthroughput

Very goodproportion-ally scalesperformanceand capacityby addingnodes

No singlepoints of failure resilient to multiplefailures at one time

Lagging enterprisescale-upNAS systems

High

Performance

Scalability

Redundancy

Features

Cost

NAS system segments

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 24: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

emerging scale-out NAS vendors on their heels ldquoIn enterprise deals you always see NetApp or EMC or both and sometimes some of the other playersrdquo Schulz said EMCrsquos acquisition of Isilon Systems and NetApprsquos support of scale-out deployments in Data Ontap 8 help tilt the odds towardEMC and NetApp

High performance support for hun-dreds of terabytes up to petabytes of capacity high availability (HA) enterprise-level support and an ever-growing list of NAS features arecharacteristic of this product classEnterprise NAS systems are pushingthe feature envelope in a seeminglycontinuous attempt to expand featurerequirements For instance supportfor both block- and file-based proto-cols the ability to scale horizontally and deduplication are changing fromnice-to-haves to must-haves Enterprise NAS systems are usually optimizedfor traditional corporate apps that is to excel in serving a large number ofsmall files and to display good performance with back-office apps such asMicrosoft SharePoint Exchange and SQL Server but theyrsquore usually not thefirst choice for applications that push throughput limits

Certain applications and industriesmdashsuch as the mediaentertainmentindustry and gasoil exploration where very large files rather than a lot ofsmaller files prevailmdashrequire very high throughput and massive scalabilityThis has been the sweet spot of scale-out and high-performance NASsystems such as EMC Isilon Hewlett-Packard (HP) StorageWorks X9000Network Storage Systems IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage(SONAS) and Panasas

NAS FEATURES IN DEPTHRegardless of your company size or file-storage needs itrsquos essential toconsider the key NAS attributes and features to ensure yoursquoll arrive at abuying decision you wonrsquot regret later These are the key areas to look atwhen evaluating NAS systems

bull Dual controller vs scale-out NAS architecturebull Storage efficiencybull Unified storagebull Virtualization

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

24 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoIn enterprise dealsyou always seeNetApp or EMC orboth and sometimessome of the otherplayersrdquo

mdashGREG SCHULZ founder and senior analyst StorageIO Group

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

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To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

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Time is right for SSDs

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NAS systems

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Tale of the tape

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52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 25: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

DUAL CONTROLLER VS SCALE-OUT NAS ARCHITECTUREFully redundant dual-controller NAS systems have dominated the enterprisespace since they first appeared on the market in the early 1990s Theyscale vertically by adding disk spindles and all components are tightly coupled and share a common pool of resources Once the performancelimit is reached the only scaling option is to add additional NAS systemsthat operate independently of each other Because they scale by addingspindles they perform well with workloads that primarily consist of randomaccess of small files which represents the prevailing workload in enterprisedata centers

Conversely scale-out NAS consistsof loosely coupled processing nodesstarting with as few as two that oper-ate in parallel and scale horizontally byadding additional nodes Even thoughthe degree of parallelism amongscale-out systems varies in generalprocessing nodes work in concert todeliver files Each time a node is addedperformance of the overall system increases proportionally For the mostpart a scale-out NAS approach elimi-nates the need for expensive forkliftupgrades to replace existing systemsinstead it makes it possible for the existing single NAS system to expandto multiple petabytes The benefits ofscale-out NAS are pretty compelling improved performance of both IO andthroughput improved scalability cost reduction simplified managementby only having to manage a single large system and elevated high avail-ability ldquoWe predict that by 2015 80 of all storage systems [NAS and blockbased] will be based on scale-out designsrdquo said Terri McClure a senior analyst at ESG

The ability to support scale-out deployments is increasingly becoming arequirement for enterprise NAS systems and traditional scale-up systemswill be gradually relegated to the SMB space But even in the SMB spacetheyrsquoll face the scale-out threat especially from NetApp with its scale-outdeployment support in Data Ontap 8 Perhaps the strongest indicator wersquovereached a scale-out inflection point is that the leading NAS vendors have

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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25 STORAGE November 2011

For the most part a scale-out NASapproach eliminatesthe need for expen-sive forklift upgradesto replace existingsystems instead it makes it possiblefor the existing single NAS systemto expand to multiplepetabytes

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all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 26: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

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of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information

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copy2011 Iron Mountain Incorporated All rights reserved Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the US and other countries

all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 27: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

all signed up to the scale-out paradigm Dell through its acquisition of Exanet and having released initial gateway products based on Exanet (theNX3500 a NAS gateway for the PowerVault iSCSI arrays and the NX7500 a NAS gateway for the EqualLogic array family) EMC by acquiring Isilon HP with StorageWorks X9000 IBM with SONAS and NetApp

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

27 STORAGE November 2011

The state of NFStTHE NETWORK FILE SYSTEM (NFS) protocol was originally developed bySun Microsystems and quickly evolved to the standard on Unix- andLinux-based operating systems Supported by most NAS systems in addition to Server Message BlockCommon Internet File System(SMBCIFS used with Microsoft Windows systems) itrsquos becomingeven more relevant as a result of sev-eral recent developments CurrentlyNFS Version 3 is prevalent and used bymost companies ldquoVery few of our cus-tomers use NFS Version 4 at this pointrdquosaid Drew Schlussel EMCrsquos director of product management for VNX

NFSv4 has been available for severalyears and stands out for its advancedsecurity features and better perform-ance NFSv41 which was ratified in2010 supports clustered systems andthe ability to provide parallel access to files distributed across multiplenodes via the parallel NFS (pNFS) extension As scale-out NAS architec-tures move into the mainstream NFSv41rsquos support of pNFS will likelyspur adoption VMwarersquos NFS storage support and enhancementsare further popularizing NFS ldquoWersquore seeing NFS becoming morepopular for VMware rather than going with block-based storage[iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo Schlussel said

ldquoWersquore seeingNFS becomingmore popularfor VMwarerather thangoing withblock-basedstorage [iSCSIFibre Channel]rdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director ofproduct management for VNX EMC

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

28 STORAGE November 2011

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

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To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 28: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE EFFICIENCYFeatures and capabilities that allow you to store more data on physicaldisks should be a central piece of any storage array evaluation The costsavings of having to buy less physical storage can be significant and caneasily offset higher acquisition costs In other words a more expensiveNAS may cost you less over its lifetime than a less-expensive one with inferior storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning efficientsnapshots thin clones deduplication and compression Implementationand efficacy of these features vary among NAS products One area of differentiation is the granularity at which these features operate In themajority of NAS systems theyrsquore applied to volumes but in some they canbe applied to directories or even files ldquoThe EMC Isilon supports snapshotsreplication and quotas at a file and directory levelrdquo said Sam Grocott vicepresident of marketing at EMC Isilon

The following NAS storage efficiency features should be considered tominimize physical storage requirements

Thin provisioning The ability to allocate more storage than is physicallyavailable is pertinent to achieving high storage utilization This is especiallyimportant in systems that support both file- and block-based protocolswhere thin provisioning enables volumes and NAS pools to be sized inde-pendently of actual physical storage and where physical storage is assignedfrom a common storage pool on an as-needed basis Without thin provi-sioning sufficient physical storage has to be allocated to each volume and storage pool ahead of time In systems that support thin provisioningphysical storage is allocated dynamically when needed

Efficient snapshots Snapshots in NAS systems are invaluable for dataprotection Theyrsquore scheduled to be taken periodically and can optionally be replicated to other NAS systems for disaster recovery (DR) or other dataprotection purposes Supported by most contemporary NAS systems effi-cient snapshots copy data changes and use a system of pointers to refer-ence the initial full snapshot Efficient snapshots not only save valuabledisk space but also reduce the time it takes to complete them minimizingthe performance impact while snapshots are taken

Thin clones Relevant in NAS systems that support block-based protocolsthin clones require little to no storage on creation Similar to efficient snap-shots thinly cloned volumes refer to the original volume via pointers Onlydata on the cloned volume that changes needs to be stored Pioneered byNetApp with FlexClone thin clones are now supported by a growing list ofNAS vendors

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Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

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bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 29: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Deduplication and compression Standard in backup and archival prod-ucts data deduplication and compression are becoming more prevalent onprimary storage systems While support for deduplication in NAS storage isstill sparse it can be implemented as a post-process scheduled task or inreal-time For instance deduplication in NetApp filers can be enabled on aper-volume basis and is performed by a scheduled process that deduplicates4 KB blocks of data usually during off hours On the contrary the OracleSun ZFS Storage 7000 series performs deduplication in real-time while datais written to disk

Automated storage tiering The ability to keep active data on fast expensive storage and move inactive data to less-expensive slower tiershelps to limit the amount of expensive tier-1 storage neededwithout significantly impactingperformance For any NAS systemyou consider data movement between the different tiers (solid-state storage fast SAS tiers andslower high-capacity SATA tiers)should be automatic with block- or byte-level granularity ratherthan the volume-level granularityat which data is moved The moregranular the better Some systemslike EMCrsquos Fully Automated StorageTiering (FAST) depend on policiesthat define when data should bemoved others like NetApp and Oracle (in the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 series)advocate that the storage system should be smart enough to automatical-ly keep data on the appropriate tier without requiring user-defined policies

UNIFIED STORAGEWith the two leading NAS vendorsmdashEMC in its VNX array family and NetAppin all its systemsmdashsupporting file-system protocols (NFS and CIFS) andblock-based protocols (Fibre Channel and iSCSI) in a single storage arraythe unified storage approach is gaining popularity This is especially true for SMB companies looking for a single storage system that meets all their

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

29 STORAGE November 2011

The ability to keepactive data on fastexpensive storage andmove inactive data toless-expensive slowertiers helps to limit theamount of expensivetier-1 storage neededwithout significantlyimpacting performance

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

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To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

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WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 30: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

storage needs deliver file shares and services but also serve as storage for virtualized servers and back-office applications such as Microsoft SQLServer SharePoint and databases

ldquoSmall and midsize companies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-trades storage system thatrsquos easy tomanage and affordablerdquo said DrewSchlussel EMCrsquos director of productmanagement for VNX

STORAGE AND VIRTUALIZATIONWith the accelerated deployment ofvirtualized servers integration withand features that aid virtualized com-puting infrastructures are becomingimportant storage evaluation criteria It starts with determining how quicklyand efficiently volumes can be assigned to virtual machines (VM) ldquoWithFlexClone we can rapidly clone VMware VMDK images with the click of abuttonrdquo said Jason Blosil NetApprsquos product marketing manager

The simplicity of deploying virtualized servers whose VM images arestored on a single NAS and if created as thin clones share many of thesame physical storage blocks can easily result in performance problemsIdentifying the mechanisms a NAS system has in place to support theunique requirements of virtualized servers is crucial to preventing un-pleasant performance surprises as the number of VMs increases Somevendors use a combination of solid-state storage and automated storagetiering via policies or cache to keep hotspots in the fastest storage tier

VMware has been providing the vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI)to offload storage and associated management functions from vSphere to storage systems but prior to vSphere 5 support was mostly limited toblock-based storage In vSphere 5 VAAI has been enhanced to better sup-port NFS and network-attached storage for tasks like thin provisioning andsnapshots VAAI support helps remove storage bottlenecks by offloadingresources of intense storage and management tasks from the hypervisorto the storage system

Finally hypervisor plug-ins for VMware vCenter and Microsoft SystemCenter Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that provide storage management

STORAGE

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30 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoSmall and midsizecompanies are usually looking for a jack-of-all-tradesstorage systemthatrsquos easy to man-age and affordablerdquo

mdashDREW SCHLUSSEL director of product management for VNX EMC

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

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33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 31: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

and reporting from within hypervisor consoles enable IT generalists andserver administrators to perform storage tasks

EVOLVING NAS SYSTEMSBecause of their many merits NAS systems in the form of gateways toblock-based storage and standalone systems with their own storage havebecome an essential component of todayrsquos data centers With increasedsupport for scale-out architectures block-based protocols along with file-system protocols tight integration with virtualized environments and storageclouds and an expanding list of features NAS system are moving closer tobecoming a storage system nirvana a single fast and massively scalablestorage system for all applications and data 2

Jacob Norbel Gsoedl is a freelance writer and a corporate director for businesssystems He can be reached at jgsoedlyahoocom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

31 STORAGE November 2011

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 32: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic

IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Tale of the tape

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

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WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 33: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

33 STORAGE November 2011

DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) planning is typically a significant undertaking that requiresmany work hours and often a considerable budget But creating a plan is only part ofthe process the plan must be tested frequently enough to ensure it will work as expected But testing is a time-consuming and often disruptive activity so itrsquos often notdone as regularly as it should be A new category of applicationsmdashDR readinessmonitoring appsmdashcan facilitate the testing process

DRreadiness

monitoring applicationsPlanning developing and implementing disaster recovery planscan be complex and time-consuming but a new class of apps canhelp you determine if your DR plans are properly synchronizedwith your IT operations BY PAUL KIRVAN

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

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35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

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36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

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To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 34: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

DR monitoring applications address one of the key causes of recoveryfailures configuration drift Configuration drift occurs when storage andother IT gear is upgraded or replaced but the DR documentation and pro-cedures arenrsquot updated to accommodate those changes With the DR docsout of synch with the real-world setup recovery efforts are more likely tofail The purpose of monitoring applications is to find those discrepanciesand improve the odds of a successful test or actual recovery

WHAT SHOULD BE MONITOREDFrom a disaster recovery perspective the logical first point of focus wouldbe protecting critical data This means backing up data on-site and off-siteusing a variety of methods including disk-to-disk (D2D) and disk-to-tape(D2T) backup data mirroring to an off-site location or cloud service andshipping backup tapes to an off-site storage facility

The next focal point would be hard-ware and applications You want to ensure these assets are regularlymonitored for proper performance After that but not necessarily in orderof relevance are network-based assets such as local-area networks(LANs) wide-area networks (WANs)storage-area networks (SANs) premises-based systems such as routers andswitches and voice systems such asPBX systems and Voice over IP (VoIP)systems

In a typical data center operationalassets are linked together in a varietyof ways mostly via networking assets The links and relationships amongthe various resources may be complex making it even more difficult to detect configuration drift or other discrepancies

Successful disaster recovery plans are worthless unless theyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensure everything thatrsquos critical to the business is being addressed But the majority of organizations typically exercise their DRplans only once a year or even less frequently

To maintain a careful vigil over your critical data protection activities aswell as systems applications and networks yoursquoll need timely performance

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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34 STORAGE November 2011

Successful disasterrecovery plans areworthless unlesstheyrsquore regularlyexercised to ensureeverything thatrsquoscritical to the business is beingaddressed

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 35: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

35 STORAGE November 2011

Issue

General

Existing IT environment

Integration into DR plans

Cloud-based technologies

Network

IT management

Outsourcing and managed services

Questions to askKey points to consider

bull What do you want to monitorbull What information do you want to collect Is it for the entire IT environment

(on-site and off-site) or just partsbull Who will use the monitoring systemsbull Will the system work in a virtualized environmentbull Is output only data or data analyzed against metricsbull Can system find dependencies and other relationships single points of failure

and any other weaknesses before mapping them to your requirements

bull Define a ldquonormalrdquo operating environmentbull Do you want software to look for all possible risksbull Is just flagging unknowns enoughbull How will the monitoring tool integrate with daily operationsbull What data and parameters are essential for optimal knowledge of the backup

environmentbull Does the tool replace or complement existing monitoring appsbull Can existing monitoring systems be adapted modified or upgraded to support

DR monitoring capabilities

bull What results are required to support the DR planbull Define the data yoursquoll need prior to conducting an exercisebull Can the DR monitoring system replace DR exercising How will it supplement

exercisesbull Do overall backup strategies need to be changed with the introduction of

DR monitoring tools

bull If you use cloud storage services how should the DR monitoring system integrate with them

bull Will the system operate outside data center boundaries Will it be used to monitor external applications

bull Will DR monitoring tools enhance the value of cloud services

bull Do DR monitoring systems have to examine network infrastructures or are current systems adequate

bull Will the system have to monitor VoIP systems or older PBX systemsbull Will the monitoring system be used for unified communications call center

environments or audiovideoconferencing systemsbull Will the monitoring tool provide performance and DR data across multiple

communications environments

bull Will the DR monitoring tool be used as part of a normal change management process

bull Are there any limitations related to the number and type of systems that can be analyzed by the DR monitoring tool

bull Conduct a risk analysis of what might happen if no DR monitoring applications were being used

bull Determine the return on investment of a DR monitoring application

bull If you use a third-party service provider (eg hot site firm managed services vendor outsourced data center) does the service offer DR monitoring as a value-added extra or fee-based service

What to ask before buying a DR monitoring application

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

CDISoutheast1900SouthBoulevardSuite310CharlotteNC28203

To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

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bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 36: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

data from all critical assets If you know the health of your IT infrastructurein real-time yoursquoll be better prepared to respond quickly and effectivelywhen something disrupts operations

EXISTING PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEMSIf your organization is in the medium- to large-scale range chances areyou have already invested in a variety of performance monitoring tools You may have applications that scan only one system and others that maymonitor a broad range of activitiessuch as network performance or information security monitors

But if you add disaster recoveryon top of your existing monitoringactivities yoursquoll have to determine ifthe existing performance monitorscan integrate with the DR plans Evenmore important is the need for per-formance data to be optimized for DRplan requirements such as validatingthat data replication activities arebeing completed as planned Andwhat if you have hundreds or thou-sands of applications distributedeverywhere How can you determinethat everything is performing normally If a critical system begins to mal-function it needs to be brought to your attention as quickly as possible

DR MONITORING SYSTEMS EXPLAINEDA relatively new category of software products has emerged that can pro-vide actionable performance data that can be synchronized with DR plansAccording to Jon Toigo CEO at Toigo Partners International there are threedifferent types of disaster recovery monitoring tools ldquoThere are softwareproducts that store information about your plan and create the plan docu-ments Next are tools that set up scenarios to help you fail over from oneset of technology to another set while providing data replication servicesAnd third there are passive tools that monitor the data protection processesrdquoWersquoll focus on the third type of DR monitoring tools

STORAGE

STORAGE November 2011

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Time is right for SSDs

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

36

Even more importantis the need for per-formance data to beoptimized for DR planrequirements suchas validating thatdata replicationactivities are beingcompleted asplanned

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

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To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 37: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

CDI Cloud services feature bull Infrastructureasaservice(akaIaaS)whichexpandscomputingcapacityquicklythrough

managedvirtualmachinesandexpandablestorage

bull BackupanddisasterrecoveryservicesthatcombinelocalstandbyservercapabilitieswithreplicationandrecoverabilityoptionswithintheCDICloud

bull Managedanti-virusandanti-spamofferingsthatareupdatedcontinuouslytokeepaheadofthelatestcyber-securitythreats

Why CDI Cloud Services

CDIoffersclouddatacenterlocationsinAtlantaandSecaucusNJbuiltwithrigorousattentiontosecurityreliabilityandperformanceThesedatacentersareSAS-70TypeIIcertifiedwhichshouldsatisfytherigorousservicerequirementsoffinancialservicesandhealthcareorganizationsHighlightsinclude

bull Industrial-strengthinfrastructuretechnologiesfromCiscoHewlett-PackardEMCandVMwarebull State-of-the-artheatingventilationandair-conditioning(HVAC)optionsandbackupgeneratorsmdash

alladdingupaminimumofN+1redundancybull Dualpowergridsthatcanbeequippedwithalternatingcurrent(AC)ordirectcurrent(DC)power

asrequiredbull Multipletelecommunicationscarrierswithredundantfacilitiesbull 24x7staffingbycertifiedsystemstorageandnetworkteamsbull Securitycamerasbiometrichandgeometryreadersandlockedcabinetsbull Seismicfloodfire-detectionandsuppressionsystemsbull Advancedbordergatewayprotocol(BGP)andloadbalancingtechniques

Expanded Infrastructure Without the Capital Expense

CloudcomputingservicesletorganizationsofallsizesscaletoaddserversandITinfrastructurecapacityastheircomputingneedsrequirewithoutstrainingtheircapitalbudgetsCloudcomputingresourcesarebilledonasubscriptionbasissotheycanbeconsideredpartofabusinessrsquosoperationalexpenses

CDICloudComputingampManagedHostingdrawsonclosetotwodecadesofexpertiseinimplementingandmanagingcomplexdatacentersforhigh-profileclientsindemandingindustriessuchasfinancialservicesandhealthcareOurteamcanassesswhichcloudservicesarethebestfitforanorganizationmarryourcloudserviceswithexistingon-siteinfrastructuretocreateaseamlesshybridcloudcomputingsolutionandmonitorandmanagetheentireend-to-endsolution

CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

CDIManagedServices585ColonialParkDriveSuite201RoswellGA30076

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNJ696Route46WestTeterboroNJ07608

ComputerDesignandIntegrationLLCmdashNY500FifthAvenueNewYorkNY10110

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To find out if CDI Managed Services are right for you please contact us

888-524-3877A CDI Company

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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41 STORAGE November 2011

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bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

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48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

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Time is right for SSDs

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Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

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53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 38: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

As a storage manager your primary concern is likely data protection so yoursquoll want something that monitors all protection-related activities as described earlier You may assume that normal due diligence activitieswould be sufficient and another specialized system wouldnrsquot be necessary

ldquoDespite your due diligence and efforts to build a high-availability datareplica you may still not have an exact duplicate of your production envi-ronmentrdquo said Kathleen Lucey FBCI president of Montague Risk Manage-ment vice president of the Business Continuity Institutersquos (BCI) USA Chapterand vice chairperson of the BCI Global Membership Council ldquoThere couldconceivably be undetected incompatibilities among some components Ifincompatibilities do exist you may not know about them until you switchto the backup site and things donrsquot workrdquo

That same kind of attention mustbe paid to critical IT operational activities such as change manage-ment and configuration managementldquoAre todayrsquos practices in servicemanagement and change manage-ment necessary to ensure the in-tegrity of DR capabilities and plandocumentationrdquo asked Douglas Weldon FBCI an IT executive with a major financial services firm andpresident of the BCIrsquos USA ChapterldquoThe answer is yes these practicesare indeed necessary but additionaltools are needed to fill in the gaps ofon-going monitoringrdquo

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses the monitoring productshould be able to flag all changes regardless of sizerdquo said Harvey BetanMBCI and president of H Betan Inc aNew York City-based business continuity consultancy ldquoBeing an automatedproduct it can also inspect the IT environment faster than an individualrdquo

In an ideal world data center managers have a single interface thatlinks all monitoring systems and provides a concise integrated dashboardof all infrastructure performance Reports on disaster recovery perform-ance metrics would be one of the outputs

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

38 STORAGE November 2011

ldquoAside from detecting operatingweaknesses themonitoring productshould be able toflag all changesregardless of sizeBeing an automatedproduct it can alsoinspect the IT envi-ronment faster thanan individualrdquo

mdashHARVEY BETAN MBCI president H Betan Inc

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

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When you want to establish trusted relationships

with anyone anywhere on the internet turn to Thawte

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trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 39: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Disaster recovery monitoring systems perform four primary functions1 Data capture and discovery 2 Data compilation 3 Data analysis using predefined configuration data and performance

metrics 4 Data presentation

DR monitoring systems typically connect to their intended systems viainternal (eg LANs) and external networks (eg the Internet) Systemsldquosniffrdquo for specific activities as definedin their logic by sending out speciallydesigned packets to look for specificactivities

Data captured during the discoveryprocess is analyzed according to predefined parameters ldquoThese prod-ucts collect information on applications systems hardware configurationslinks between systems etc to pro-duce a map of the IT infrastructureand the linkagesrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigosaid ldquoThey can also be integrated withconfiguration management database[CMDB] software for easy referencerdquoThe CMDB stores data about IT infra-structure assets relationships andconfigurations But since it doesnrsquot have analytic capabilities itrsquos difficult toeffectively use that data to protect data and ensure business continuity

SOME EXAMPLES OF DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAptare Inc StorageConsole 8 Fabric Manager StorageConsole 8 is amonitoring system that addresses data storage itrsquos designed to providegreater visibility and management capabilities into SANs Itrsquos part of anAptare portfolio that also includes Backup Manager Capacity Manager Virtualization Manager and Replication Manager The SAN mapping capabilitygives administrators a view of the SAN topology from server to fabric tostorage systems A change management feature performs a dependencyanalysis based on proposed changes to a SAN

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

39 STORAGE November 2011

These products collect informationon applications systems hardwareconfigurations linksbetween systemsetc to produce a map of the IT infrastructure and the linkagesmdashJON TOIGO CEO Toigo Partners International

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

Building Trust Around The Globe

When you want to establish trusted relationships

with anyone anywhere on the internet turn to Thawte

Securing Web sites around the globe with

bull strong SSL encryption

bull expansive browser support

bull multi-lingual customer support

bull recognized trust seal in 18 languages

Offering outstanding value Thawte is for those

who know technology Secure your site today

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copy 2010 Thawte Inc All rights reserved Thawte the Thawte logo and other trademarks service marks and designs are registered

or unregistered trademarks of Thawte Inc and its subsidiaries and affiliates in the United States and in foreign countries All other

trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

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Time is right for SSDs

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45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

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copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

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Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

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Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

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Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 40: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

BMC Software Inc Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping Thesystem features a library of predefined product configurations (32000-plus updated monthly) reference data for hardware power consumptionand heat dissipation and software end-of-life dates as well as automateddiagnostics that identify the location and cause of discovery issues Soft-ware doesnrsquot have to be installed on discovered devices

Continuity Software RecoverGuard The latest version of this productRecoverGuard 40 leverages data contained in the CMDB by scanning theinfrastructure performing analyses of the information it collects and identi-fying issues that could impact availability recoverability or data protectionRecoverGuardrsquos knowledge base contains more than 2000 gap signaturesand hundreds of potential data protection gaps

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Corsquos Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced Edition (DDMA) This system automates discovery and depend-ency mapping of services applications and underlying infrastructure Mapping helps facilitate failure impact analyses which minimize downtimeImproved visibility into the existing IT infrastructure helps reduce opera-tional expense defers capital expense and improves business uptime Ac-cording to HP 80 of all service disruptions are caused by faulty changesThis product can provide visibility for improved change management

VMware Incrsquos vCenter Application Discovery Manager VMwarersquosproduct provides continuous discovery and mapping of applications theirdependencies and configurations The system provides real-time visibilityinto the data center from an application standpoint VMware support enables discovery of application services and configurations in virtual environments and complements VMware vCenter Server by mapping the physical to virtual dependencies

PRE-PURCHASE PLANNING FOR DR MONITORING SYSTEMSAs with any system acquisition successfully implementing a DR monitoringapplication takes a fair amount of planning Perhaps the most importantpart of the process is determining specific needs and what you hope toaccomplish with a product For more tips about evaluating and buying a DR monitoring app see the chart entitled ldquoWhat to ask before buying aDR monitoring applicationrdquo

ldquoDo the basics Make sure the product works and works on your configu-rationrdquo Montague Risk Managementrsquos Lucey recommended ldquoUse change

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

40 STORAGE November 2011

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

Building Trust Around The Globe

When you want to establish trusted relationships

with anyone anywhere on the internet turn to Thawte

Securing Web sites around the globe with

bull strong SSL encryption

bull expansive browser support

bull multi-lingual customer support

bull recognized trust seal in 18 languages

Offering outstanding value Thawte is for those

who know technology Secure your site today

with a Thawte SSL Certificate

wwwthawtecom

copy 2010 Thawte Inc All rights reserved Thawte the Thawte logo and other trademarks service marks and designs are registered

or unregistered trademarks of Thawte Inc and its subsidiaries and affiliates in the United States and in foreign countries All other

trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

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SPONSOR RESOURCES

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bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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SPONSOR RESOURCES

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 41: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

control and the monitoring tool to ensure that all production changes arealso concurrently applied to backup configurationsrdquo

Betan from H Betan agreed and added ldquoThe product should also not usetoo many resources that could slow down normal processing Be sure totest the system thoroughly before it enters productionrdquo

NEW TOOLS FOR AN OLD PROBLEMTo ensure your disaster recovery efforts are performing optimally DR mon-itoring tools can help by proactively spotting potential problems beforethey occur ldquoA DR monitoring system can help users achieve several keygoalsmdashthey need to be able to recover and restore their data re-host theapplications and reconnect their usersrdquo Toigo Partnersrsquo Toigo said Added executive Weldon ldquoThese systems are at an early level of maturity andsince each IT environment will be different remember that one size will not fit allrdquo

By identifying potential threats in real-time DR monitoring tools can enhance your ability to respond to and recover from emergencies thusproviding a higher level of disaster recovery and overall preparedness 2

Paul Kirvan is an independent consultantIT auditor and technical writereditoreducator with more than 22 years of experience in business continuity and disasterrecovery

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

41 STORAGE November 2011

Building Trust Around The Globe

When you want to establish trusted relationships

with anyone anywhere on the internet turn to Thawte

Securing Web sites around the globe with

bull strong SSL encryption

bull expansive browser support

bull multi-lingual customer support

bull recognized trust seal in 18 languages

Offering outstanding value Thawte is for those

who know technology Secure your site today

with a Thawte SSL Certificate

wwwthawtecom

copy 2010 Thawte Inc All rights reserved Thawte the Thawte logo and other trademarks service marks and designs are registered

or unregistered trademarks of Thawte Inc and its subsidiaries and affiliates in the United States and in foreign countries All other

trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

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bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

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bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

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bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

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  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 42: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Building Trust Around The Globe

When you want to establish trusted relationships

with anyone anywhere on the internet turn to Thawte

Securing Web sites around the globe with

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bull expansive browser support

bull multi-lingual customer support

bull recognized trust seal in 18 languages

Offering outstanding value Thawte is for those

who know technology Secure your site today

with a Thawte SSL Certificate

wwwthawtecom

copy 2010 Thawte Inc All rights reserved Thawte the Thawte logo and other trademarks service marks and designs are registered

or unregistered trademarks of Thawte Inc and its subsidiaries and affiliates in the United States and in foreign countries All other

trademarks are property of their respective owners

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 43: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

bGet real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

43 STORAGE November 2011

EFORE NOW you might not have considered your IT shop as one that needs ascale-out system But scale-out systemsmdashwhich started out in the network-attached storage (NAS) space because some industries rely on very largefiles that require a lot of bandwidth to meet performance requirementsmdashhave far-reaching implications for a varied number of environments today

For instance several major industries that once operated in traditionalpaper- or microfilm-based modes are finding that their digital data storesare threatening to overwhelm them These are attractive vertical marketsfor scale-out NAS vendors that can provide high-performance applicationsupport

hot spots | terri mcclure

Who really needs scale-out systemsIndustries that once operated in traditional paper-based

models are finding themselves overwhelmed by their digital data stores But scale-out NAS can

provide high-performance application supportSc

ale-u

p

Scale-out

General Purpose Enterprise IT

Consumer and Prosumer

Media andEntertainment

BiotechBioinformatics

Web-Based Applications and

Services

Manufacturingand Design

Oil and Gas

FinancialServices

HPC Workloads(Universities

R amp D)

Price

and m

ulti-u

ser p

erfor

manc

e (fil

e ops

sec

)

Capacity and bandwidth-intensive performance (MBps)Source Enterprise Strategy Group 2011

VERTICAL AFFINITY FOR SCALE-OUT NAS

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 44: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

44 STORAGE November 2011

If we look at the throughput vs IO axis model in the ldquoVertical affinity for scale-out NASrdquo graphic these industries have many applications that require the very high throughput the parallel data services found in manyscale-out NAS systems (and coming next year with pNFS) can deliver ex-ceeding the MB per second capabilities of traditional scale-up NAS systems

As recently as five years ago this chart would have looked very differentMany of the workloads in the upper right would have been crowded into theleft-hand side of the chart But advances in processor technologymdashsuch asmulticore processing and much faster chip setsmdashand video graphics anddesign softwaremdashsuch as 3-D CAD 4-D medical imaging and high-definitionTV to name just a fewmdashhave created new types of workloads that demanda very different performance profile They create huge files and multithread-ed requests that a single- or dual-processor scale-up system wouldnrsquot be able to service in a timely manner causing production to slow or the system to time out waiting for the request

Letrsquos take a deeper dive into a few verticals to illustrate my point

Financial services These users who are accustomed to managing extremely large volumes of transactional information are also now heavyusers of high-performance parallelfile systems for efforts such as market-performance forecasting and business intelligence These ef-forts involve files that arenrsquot just bigtheyrsquore also long running compute-intensive and require a high level ofdata protection and immediate dataavailability Financial services users in particular look for scale-out archi-tectures that remove data integrationbottlenecks Data integration is a core task in financial services IT For theseusers an ideal NAS solution is one that performs faster as the number ofnodes increases

Life sciences Not surprisingly organizations engaged in health-relatedscientific discovery are actively interested in parallel file system solutionsoffering high-bandwidth data transfer and massive scalability At these organizations collaboration at an intensive level is typically evident Forexample the IT team may need to find ways to enable sharing of very largegene-sequencing files or proteomic data across thousands of researchers

Financial servicesusers in particularlook for scale-outarchitectures thatremove data inte-gration bottlenecks

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 45: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

45 STORAGE November 2011

To be successful these companies must accelerate their discoveryprocesses the faster they develop a new drug the faster it can be testedand approved for use in real-world medical and scientific applications One IT-centric way for such organizations to accelerate a drug discoveryprocess is to use a high-performance parallel file system infrastructurethat never requires disruptive forklift upgrades

Manufacturing and design High-tech manufacturers aerospace com-panies nano-electronics startups CADCAM design firms and many othersalso need tremendous amounts of storage And theyrsquore all looking forways to optimize data management Users in these industries need fault-less capacity expansion to handle digital growth and improve informationsharing among engineering teams Outages are economically damaging inthese environments so users in the manufacturing and design segmentseek to deploy file-based storage that offers near-total reliability and easycapacity upgrades on the fly They look for automation to assist with file-system administration data movement replication and migrationtiering

Media and entertainment The operating model of media and enter-tainment organizations has evolved dramatically In years past they per-haps produced print magazines that are now available in an ldquoonline-onlyrdquoformat Not only does all editorial content need to be quickly available toreaders and content generators butall the advertising files do too Largevideo files are also exacerbating thedata growth problems at digitally intensive media and entertainmentcompanies

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations are generating and pro-tecting terabytes or petabytes of filedata At some enterprises much ofthe data is created at the ldquoedgerdquomdashinremote news bureaus or CGI designstudios separated from main data centers That operational structure bringsproblems related to data replication for backup and can even impede thedisaster recovery (DR) capability of the infrastructure Media and entertain-ment organizations are looking at high-performance scale-out NAS solutionsto solve a variety of problems for instance to improve the performanceof a virtual server infrastructure or to ensure that information is instantlyand always available to content creators and consumers

Todayrsquos media and entertainmentorganizations aregenerating and protecting terabytesor petabytes of file data

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 46: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Oil and gas Uncovering oil and gas reserves was once a guessing gameToday itrsquos a precise scientific endeavor that relies on digitized data Three-dimensional visualization to spot possible resources has become an ever-present tool for the industry as fields decline and extraction operations become more complex IT managers working in the oil and gas vertical market are challenged to find NAS infrastructures that can support thesharing and protection of the huge data sets resulting from oil reservemodelingsimulation work Without an architecture that can maintain performance as data storage capacity grows sustaining a competitiveedge becomes more difficult mainly because the ldquotime-to-resultrdquo (the extraction of the resource) lengthens Scale-out NAS is a good solution foroil and gas organizations dealing with enormous computational simulationsthat in a very direct fashion hold the key to their competitive success

Traditional high-performance computingacademics and researchAstrophysicists molecular biologists chemists nuclear physicists andeven social scientists working in the public sector are heavy generatorsand consumers of data For example at the Large Hadron Collider run byCERN the team in charge of IT was managing 70 PB of storage by mid-2010Even far smaller research facilities (usually working in cost-constraineduniversity settings or commercial labs) rely on high-performance gridcomputing and parallel file system architectures to support modeling andsimulation efforts that could solve real-world problems and answer bigquestions Their work requires low-latency network clusters that can handleextremely intensive performance and bandwidth demands

These industries were the first real adopters of scale-out systems because they absolutely needed the performance capabilities scale-outsystems provide in terms of throughput But a majority of shops shouldrealize the efficiency and operational savings that come with storingmany petabytes of data within a single namespace Thatrsquos why scale-outsystems are finding a home in cloud infrastructures allowing companieslike Gluster (recently acquired by Red Hat)mdashwhich offers a scale-out filesystem that runs on commodity hardware and can support block file andobject datamdashto gain big interest from cloud-based businesses and enter-prises building private clouds Enterprise Strategy Group forecasts that80 of all external NAS systems revenue will come from scale-out systemshipments by 2015 and both ldquobig file datardquo and cloud will be at the core ofthat growth 2

Terri McClure is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

46 STORAGE November 2011

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 47: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

DYNAMIC SECURITY FOR THE GLOBAL NETWORK

Do All BAckup AnD RecoveRy SolutionS DeliveR FlexiBility AnD Simplicity conSiDeR youRSelF WARneD

[ Tough quesTion 8]

SonicWALLrsquos all-new Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series easily and flexibly prevents data loss and downtime with continuous or scheduled point-in-time backup and one-touch restore featuring granular policy enforcement and data de-duplication CDP protects local and remote Windowsreg Mac OSreg or Linuxreg servers desktops or laptops Multiple disaster recovery options include Site-to-Site Backup Offsite Backup Local Archiving and Universal System Recovery With CDPrsquos granular protection administrators can reliably back up only business-related data CDP also lets administrators enforce global policies and schedules or allow users to set their own Data de-duplication technology optimizes storage efficiency by handling more data with less disk space Learn more about the easy-to-use and flexible SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Series at wwwsonicwallcomwarning

copy 2011 SonicWALL Inc SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo are registered trademarks of SonicWALL Inc

NETWORK SECURITY

SECURE REMOTE ACCESS

WEB AND E-MAILSECURITY

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BACKUP ANDRECOVERY

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 48: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

48 STORAGE November 2011

hYBRID CLOUDS HAVE been getting more than their fair share of attention fueledby recent announcements by VMware and other big players Hybrid cloudsbring together public off-premises clouds and on-premises clouds (whichtoday may be nothing more than traditional in-house IT environments) tocreate a more functional solution But the secret sauce of a hybrid cloud isthe connecting technologies that reside in the middle To effectively bridgeoff-premises clouds with on-premises computing and storage environ-ments a hybrid cloud solution should provide enterprise-class securitycross-cloud management workloaddata portability and interoperability

Hybrid clouds offer some compelling advantages and we believe theyshould be the ultimate ldquoend gamerdquo of any organizationrsquos cloud deploymentstrategy Though the market is still developing major hardware and soft-ware vendors are already working to bring hybrid cloud offerings to marketInterestingly the hybrid cloud model is probably further along in the datastorage market where suppliers are already building and delivering hybrid-like cloud storage products

Most current cloud storage use cases are designed to augment existingstorage practices in a companyrsquos data center or private cloud by extendingsome of those practices into a public cloud The first wave of products issquarely focused on overcoming challenges that canrsquot easily be resolvedwithout the help of a cloud The most widely adopted solutions to date arebuilt on gateways that enable backup and recovery archiving and disasterrecovery (DR) Other emerging use cases include cloud-enabled primaryand near-line storage and storage configurations that use the cloud to enhance application scalability availability andor performance

Letrsquos take a look at a VMware backup and recovery use case One of thebiggest pain points for VMware administrators today is backup Given typical

readwrite | jeff byrne

Cloud storage ahead of the packfor hybrid cloud deployments

The idea of turning over storage systems to the cloud hasnrsquot caught on with enterprises but hybrid cloud storage products show how to leverage both in-house and off-site storage

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 49: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

VMware consolidation ratios in the range of six to 10 virtual machines (VMs)per host a virtual server administrator must choose a backup approachthat successfully protects each VM without impacting application perform-ance To address this challenge many small- to medium-sized businesses(SMBs) have turned to VMware Data Recovery (VDR) which efficiently backsup VM images to disk by deduplicating data and updating only blocks thathave changed since the last backup

Using VDR to streamline VMware backup is a great first step but whathappens in the event of a prolonged outage or disaster Most SMBs canrsquotafford to set up and maintain a remote physical DR site but most coulduse the cloud

TwinStrata Incrsquos CloudArray is a block-based cloud storage gate-way that leverages native iSCSIand is packaged as either a physi-cal or virtual appliance for VMwarevSphere Microsoft Hyper-V or CitrixXenServer environments VMwareData Recovery sends deduplicatedbackup data to a CloudArray appli-ance which is stored in thin provisioned virtual volumes Data is written tothe CloudArray cache (with the level of caching configurable on a per-volumebasis) and then replicated to cloud storage At-rest and in-flight encryptionensures that data is secure CloudArray supports all major public clouds orprivate clouds

In the event of a prolonged outage frequently accessed data is immedi-ately restored from cache and data in the cloud is replicated back to theCloudArray appliance either at a VM or file level Data recovery from thecloud can also be automated and orchestrated by employing VMwarevCenter Site Recovery Manager This approach provides rapid data recoverywithout the burden of supporting a remote site If you currently use tapefor data archiving this approach can result in even bigger savings sinceyoursquoll no longer have tape maintenance and logistical costs

Riverbed Technology offers a similar type of cloud storage gateway solu-tion via its Whitewater appliance but itrsquos file based rather than iSCSI basedWhitewater presents itself to popular backup applications as a CIFS or NFSdisk With disk space of 2 TB to 8 TB Whitewater can cache recent backupdata locally for rapid recovery The appliance takes advantage of RiverbedrsquosWAN acceleration technology and built-in deduplication to replicate data

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

49 STORAGE November 2011

Most SMBs canrsquot affordto set up and maintaina remote physical DRsite but most coulduse the cloud

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 50: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

to a public storage cloud such as Amazon S3 ATampT Synaptic Storage as aService (based on EMC Atmos) or Nirvanix Cloud Storage Network As withthe TwinStrata product no hardware is needed in the cloud and data is fullyencrypted both in motion and at rest

With TwinStrata CloudArray and Riverbed Whitewater the cloud becomesanother storage tier providing backup and recovery archiving or full DR pro-tection These innovative products take advantage of cloud storagersquos greateststrengths pay-as-you-go economics coupled with scalability and agility

Letrsquos look at a completely different cloud storage use case focused onincreasing Microsoft SharePoint scalability availability and performanceSharePoint is widely used in busi-nesses of all sizes but it has somearchitectural limitations that makeit less effective as it scales to cover more data and more usersIn particular the inefficient stor-age of objects in Microsoft SQLServer database tables can lead toperformance and data protection issues as well as difficulties in implementing high-availability (HA) and DR solutions

StorSimple Incrsquos SharePointDatabase Optimizer product wasdeveloped to address these issues The product consists of a StorSimpleappliance and Microsoft framework plug-in for SharePoint servers Ratherthan storing file objects (BLOBs) in SQL Server which reduces efficiencyand drives up capacity requirements and cost the SharePoint Database Optimizer first deduplicates and compresses the file objects and then usesEBS or RBS BLOB interfaces to store the objects in encrypted form in a publicor private cloud Database sizes are reduced by up to 95 allowing the BLOBvolumes to take advantage of cloud economics

On the other hand the StorSimple appliance initially stores SharePointmetadata database volumes on built-in solid-state drives (SSDs) and usesa Weighted Storage Layout (WSL) mechanism to automatically tier contentbased on usage patterns moving infrequently accessed metadata volumesto the cloud

StorSimplersquos SharePoint approach has several major benefits including

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

50 STORAGE November 2011

With TwinStrataCloudArray andRiverbed Whitewaterthe cloud becomesanother storage tierproviding backup andrecovery archiving or full DR protection

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 51: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

dramatically greater scalability and performance far more efficient use ofstorage capacity and lower overall costs And by separating metadata fromfile objects and streamlining their storage StorSimple accelerates backupsand enables cost-effective HA and DR protection

We believe these three sample products are great examples of the out-of-the-box thinking that characterizes a growing number of emerging hybrid-like cloud storage offerings And we anticipate a steady stream of cloudstorage innovations coming in the year ahead 2

Jeff Byrne is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group He can be reachedat jeffbyrnetanejagroupcom

STORAGE

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

51 STORAGE November 2011

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 52: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Tape still plays a role in the data centerLETrsquoS SKIP the ldquotape is deadrdquo rhetoric and get down to facts 58 of Storage readersuse tape as much or more than they did three years ago and only 16 have ban-ished tape Thatrsquos not to suggest disk isnrsquot bigger than ever in backup but itrsquos noteven close to sending tape to the showers for good Forty-nine percent of respon-dents use disk more in their backups than they did three years ago while 11 donrsquotuse any disk at all in their backup ops Regardless of the mix of disk and tape 80say that eventually all or some of their backup data winds up on tape Most firms(60) will leave backups on disk for 30 days or less before spinning them off to tapeTape clings to its backup role but itrsquos not the only one itrsquos good at 37 use tape fornon-backup apps like archival (83) and nearline storage to augment disk (28) Itdoesnrsquot look like the tables will turn too much for tape next year as one-third ofthose surveyed expect to buy some tape gear in the coming year mdashRich Castagna

ldquo The economics of tape vs disk still preclude the exclusive use of one technologymdashrather disk provides a beneficial front-end cache to long-term tape storagerdquo

mdashSurvey respondent

snapshot

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

52 STORAGE November 2011

80

Compared to three years ago how would you characterize your companyrsquos use of tape

Say all or some of their data backed up to disk

eventually gets copied to tape

11

8

21

60

Longer than 90 days

60 days to 90 days

30 days to 60 days

Less than 30 days

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

How long does your backup data stayon disk before being spun off to tape

What tape equipment will your company purchase

within the next 12 months

68 We will purchase new tape drives

40 We will purchase at least one new tape library

40 We will purchase new robotics or other tape library equipment

Respondents could make multiple choices

We donrsquot use any tape in our backup process

We still use tape but less than we did three years ago

Our use of tape hasnrsquot changed much in three years

We use tape more now than we did three years ago

26

3226

16

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 53: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

Get real aboutthe cloud

Time is right for SSDs

Salary survey

NAS systems

DR readinessmonitoring

Scale-out systems

Hybrid clouddeployments

Tale of the tape

Sponsorresources

53 STORAGE November 2011

STORAGE

COMING IN

DecemberHot Storage Technologies 2012Storage mag and SearchStoragecomeditors put their heads together andpredict the top new techs that willhave the most profound impact onstorage environments over the next

12 months We also grade our choicesfrom the previous year See what storage techs should be on your

must-have list for 2012

Mobile Backup Therersquos an App for That

Users might have a significant amountof their firmrsquos intellectual property onultra-portable devices Some vendorsoffer apps to protect that data and

ensure it stays within corporate confines We look at whatrsquos availablehow well it will work and whatrsquos still

needed to protect mobile data

Quality Awards VI Tape LibrariesWho said tape is dead Certainly notthe legions of users who value tapersquoseconomy portability and usefulnessfor long-term storage of backup andarchive data Our Quality Awards pro-gram surveys users of midrange and

enterprise tape libraries about qualitytechnical support features and otherkey servicereliability considerations

And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of

our Snapshot reader survey

TechTarget Storage Media Group

Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna

Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien

Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors

Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii

Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim Hefner

Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke

Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman

Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Ed Hannan

Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead

Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales

TechTarget Conferences

Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds

Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom

Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466

editorstoragemagazinecom

STORAGE

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 54: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 37

bull CDI Cloud Computing amp Managed Hosting

bull CDI Cloud-enabled Backup amp Disaster Recovery

See ad page 4

bull Storage Management Control your Data

bull Smarter Storage Management

See ad page 15

bull Fluid Data Storage Driving Flexibility in the Data Center - Eight Must Have Technologiesfor the IT Director

bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 55: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 7

bull Improving Backup and Recovery for VMware vSphere Environments

bull Backup and Recovery of Large Scale VMware Environments

See ad page 32

bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management

bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention

See ad page 26

bull Cloud Tape Hybrid Data Protection Best Practices

bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 56: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 10

bull Deduplication for Dummies

bull Learn how data deduplication technology works and how Quantumrsquos disk-based backupsolutions can help your data center exceed expectations

See ad page 20

bull High performance scalable Network Attached Storage solution for the enterprise

See ad page 42

bull Extended Validation SSL Certificates

bull Securing your Online Data Transfer with SSL

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page
Page 57: Storage Magazine - November 2011 Edition

SPONSOR RESOURCES

See ad page 47

bull SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection Video Guide

bull Five Best Practices to Optimize Backup Management for Effective Data Recovery

bull SonicWALL CDP Case Study Video Continental Group

  • Cover
  • November Table of Contents
  • Lets get real about the cloud
  • Time is right for SSDs
  • Storage pros pay still on the rise
  • NAS system buying decisions
  • DR readiness monitoring applications
  • Who really needs scale-out systems
  • Cloud storage ahead of the pack for hybrid cloud deployments
  • Tape still plays a role in the data center
  • Editorial mastheadDecember 2011 preview
  • Sponsor resource page