Storage

The Abstracts

Desktop, Nearline and Enterprise Disk Drives - Delta by Design

Willis Whittington Download

For the past twenty five years the storage marketplace has been divided into two major categories namely "Desktop" and "Enterprise". Recently, a third player variously known as "Nearline", "Reference" or "Business Critical" has evolved to provide a low cost, high capacity storage solution for Enterprise data that no longer needs to exist in a high availability transactional processing environment, but must maintain 24 x 7 availability as a reference or backup resource. Each of these classes of drives requires a unique and specific set of attributes to fulfill its role. This presentation will explore these differences and explain why you need to use the right drive for the right application.

For the past twenty five years the storage marketplace has been divided into two major categories namely "Desktop" and "Enterprise". Recently, a third player variously known as "Nearline," "Reference" or "Business Critical" has evolved to provide a low cost, high capacity storage solution for Enterprise data that no longer needs to exist in a high availability transactional processing environment but must maintain 24 x 7 availability as a reference or backup resource. Each of these classes of drives requires a unique and specific set of attributes to fulfill its role. This presentation will explore these differences and explain why you need to use the right drive for the right application.

Learning Objectives

• To make the student aware of the differences between the three classes of drives in terms of Performance, Capacity, Reliability, Data Integrity, Power Consumption, and Cost.
• To understand the risks and pitfalls of selecting a class 'x' drive in a class 'y' application.

'Green' Storage

SW Worth Download

The next few years will bring widespread awareness of the environmental impacts (especially energy costs) associated with data storage. Already several regulations and initiatives (e.g. ROHS, WEEE, Energy Star) affect manufacturers of storage components or computers. There are also some innovative storage technologies specifically targeted towards energy conservation, including MAID, along with the well-known alternatives of removable storage (tape and optical). Several vendors have also begun to offer data on power use, energy consumption, and cooling loads in response to competitive pressures from other vendors and customers. Some vendors and consultants are offering energy modeling as part of their TCO analysis, either for competitive reasons or as part of their professional services portfolio. This SNIA Tutorial will quickly review basic engineering topics relevant to understanding 'Green', including stuff you may have successfully avoided, such as environmental chemistry, thermodynamics, energy vs. power, and heat transfer. We will review current problems in data center design, including increasing computational and storage density and the resulting energy and cooling issues. Conceptual models sufficient to understand or even develop energy budgets will be taught. All of this will converge on a basic model for TCO that includes energy modeling.

Learning Objectives

• Understand what various groups mean by 'Green', especially as this term relates to storage network components and systems.
• Understand some of the factors that should (or will) motivate your interest in 'Green' storage, including regulation, competition, and TCO.
• Understand why 'Opex' (Operating expenses) can outweigh 'Capex' (Capital expense) in TCO models, and how 'Green' factors increasingly influence Opex.

Storage Performance 101

Ray Lucchesi Download

Storage is constantly evolving, and performance tuning with it. Tuning storage for the best performance was never easy, some tricks have gone extinct made unnecessary by new technology, some have never gone away, and others have emerged only with the latest technology. This tutorial will provide an understanding of storage array performance tuning today to pass on the latest techniques to the next generation of storage administrators. There are aspects of storage performance every administrator should know to speak effectively to vendors and users. Some shops are driving their storage to the limit while others have storage essentially idling away - knowing the difference can help you know when to stand pat or when to tune your storage performance.

Learning Objectives

• Understand storage array performance, publicly available performance benchmarks, and techniques to tune storage subsystems.
• How to buy and configure high performing storage without spending a fortune.
• How to monitor your storage to maintain peak performance.

Storage Consolidation with IP Storage: Capabilities, Best Practices and Futures

David Dale Download

This presentation, an update to a very popular SNIA Tutorial, outlines the benefits of networked storage, contrasting the different options. It then goes into detail on iSCSI-based SAN configurations, capabilities, options and best practices, including contemporary iSCSI storage features. The presentation explains via customer case studies how these capabilities deliver distinct benefits to IT organizations. Finally, emerging and future technologies and capabilities are considered, including 10Gb Ethernet.

This session will appeal to IT managers, administrators and architects interested in best practices and deployment considerations of storage consolidation solutions available with IP Storage technologies today.

Storage Protocol Analyzers: Not Just for R&D Anymore

Brandy Barton Download

In recent years, a growing number of data centers have begun to employ the use of traditional R&D analysis tools, such as protocol analyzers, into their production SAN environments. Reasons for this adoption have been cited as protecting the ROI of the SAN, decreasing downtime, reducing the risk of outages and preventing lost or corrupt data. This session will provide an overview of protocol analyzer tools and how to use them.

Learning Objectives

• Describe how protocol analyzers work, in general.
• Identify proper analyzer placement techniques
• Identify key SAN issues and how to find them using a protocol analyzer. Time permiting, this will include some light trace analysis.

NAS and iSCSI Technology Overview

Wolfgang Singer Download

Requirements for additional storage are booming. There is a strong trend that most of today's storage will be consolidated and 'networked'. This presentation shows the different approaches to 'Storage Networking. Topics discussed will include: -What are the differences between SAN, NAS, NAS Gateways and iSCSI- What are the advantages and disadvantages of these technologies - Which problems does NAS solve - Why is NAS better than a standard file server

Learning Objectives

• This session will appeal to IT managers, administrators and storage architects interested in storage consolidation, and wanting to know how IP Storage broadens their options.
• Get an insight about today's 'storage networking' options and a view of what the future might bring.

Solid State Storage for the Enterprise

Woody Hutsell Download

This presentation will discuss the types of solid state storage systems directed at enterprise. The presentation will look at DDR-RAM and Flash based storage devices and their technical differences. The presentation will discuss the fit of various memory based storage devices with enterprise applications. Discuss the fit of solid state disk in ILM.

Learning Objectives

• Understand types of solid state storage available for enterprise applications.
• Discuss applications for solid state storage in the enterprise.
• Discuss solid state storage as part of a broader ILM strategy.

Benefits of Hardware Compression in Storage Networks

Gerry Simmons & Tony Summers Download

This tutorial will educate participants on the benefits and algorithmic details on lossless data compression in Storage Networks, especially those focused on implementing Data De-duplication. A brief history and background of Data Compression will be given as a primer on the different data compression algorithms in use today. This will include performance data on the specific compression algorithms, as well as performance on different data types. Participants will come away with a good understanding on the best places in the data path to include compression, and the benefits to be gained. Technological advances in data compression will be discussed and how they affect system level solutions.

The Storage Evolution:  From Blocks, Files and Objects to Object Storage Systems

Christian Bandulet Download

In light of the enormous increase in storage requirements (capacity, scalability, performance, compliance, concurrency, migration, security, Object Storage Systems seem to be a natural extension of traditional block- and file-based technologies.

This tutorial will discuss advanced file-based technologies (NAS, NAS Aggregation/Virtualization, NAS Clustering, Scalable NFS, File Area Networks) and emerging object-based technologies (e.g. SCSI-3 OSD extensions).

While Object-Based Storage Devices (OSDs) are tightly linked the SCSI-3 architecture model Object Storage Systems translate the object-based storage paradigm to the next higher layers in the I/O stack and combines the basic SCSI-3 OSD principles with advanced data processing technologies and requirements. There are many possible incarnations of Object Storage Systems such as Object Storage Servers (OSS) and Content Addressable/Aware Storage (CAS). Federations of Objects Storage Systems with global namespaces create a single data image enhancing the disk related RAID concept to Redundant Arrays of Independent/Inexpensive Nodes (RAIN).

Object Storage Systems will also morph into Intelligent Storage Nodes (ISN) which are hybrids of servers and storage (Storver). ISNs can take different storage personalities (Block, OSD, NAS, VTL, CAS, ...) and provide complex data services (semantics, search, virtual files systems, CDP, encryption, capacity optimization, compliance, migration, transformation, security, ...). They are also programmable and can be customized according to specific requirements.

All the described technologies will complement each other and provide building blocks for sophisticated storage solutions.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the basic principles and restrictions of block-, file- and object-based data access
• Understand how different emerging technologies will merge into Object Storage Systems.
• Understand how the further development of Object Storage Systems will create Intelligent Storage Nodes blurring the distinction between server and storage.