Storage

The Abstracts

Desktop, Nearline and Enterprise HDDS - What's the Difference?

Willis Whittington Download

Desktop, Nearline & Enterprise Disc Drives - What's the Difference? 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:

1. To make the student aware of the different storage requirements necessary for each tier in Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)
2. To explain the hardware, firmware and feature set differences between Desktop, Nearline and Enterprise disk drives and the importance of selecting the right HDD for the user's application.

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:

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

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, functionality) 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. T10 SCSI-3 OSD extensions).  While Object-Based Storage Devices (OSDs) are tightly linked with the SCSI-3 architecture model Object Storage Systems translate the object-based storage paradigm into the next higher layers of the I/O stack and combine the basic T10 SCSI-3 OSD principles with advanced data processing technologies. 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 leveraging the disk related RAID concept to storage grids of 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 dynamically according to specific requirements.    All the described technologies will complement each other and provide building blocks for sophisticated storage solutions. 

Learning Objectives:

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

Storage Consolidation with IP Storage

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.

Solid State Storage for the Enterprise

Woody Hutsell and Brian McKean 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 provide some examples of  the variance in the operational characteristics among different flash based SSD. The presentation will discuss the fit of various memory based storage devices with enterprise applications.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understand types of solid state storage available for enterprise applications.
2. Understand that not all Flash SSDs are the same.
3. Discuss applications for solid state storage in the enterprise.

Continuous Available Commodity Storage

Rekha Singhal and Zia Saquib Download

We shall discuss an alternative cost effective means of building SAN using iSCSI on TCP/IP network. We proposes an architecture, which we are currently working on, for networked  storage using TCP/IP network. The main features of our storage  area network are that the storage is inexpensive, continous available,  scalable to LAN/WAN, flexible and have high performance.  The key components of the solutions are Controller and the  optimized IP Storage node which may be build using commodity  hardware. These components may be placed together in a single  node or in two different nodes giving rise to 2 layer and 3 layer  architectures respectively. We also aim to derive a theoretical  framework for measuring performances of these architectures. 

Learning Objectives:

1. Audience learn in details about the iSCSI protocol which can be deployed on LAN and WAN as well especially for disaster recovery
2. Audience learn about the different architecture of the storage system using iSCSI over TCP/IP and how the products of the existing vendors fall under these architectures,
3. Audience get the flavour of the theoretical measure of the performance which may be changed by changing the architecture and choose the best according to one's customized needs.

Advanced iSCSI Management Capabilities

Gene Nagle Download

This presentation will provide an overview of the more advanced capabilities of iSCSI storage systems and address best practices that various types of customers should consider in order to take maximum advantage of these iSCSI advanced features. 

Learning Objectives:

1. The attendee should be able to design a new iSCSI installation or evaluate an existing installation for optimization of performance while maintaining data protection and security
2. The attendee should be able to select the advanced iSCSI SAN techniques that best fit his/her type of data and size of organization
3. By attending this session, attendees will: Have an understanding of advanced security features and determine the security features that are most applicable to their network storage implementation. Have an understanding of Storage Network Management and Performance Optimization Techniques and choose the most appropriate capabilities for initial implementation and ongoing scalability.  Consider the most appropriate operations management toolset for discovery of nodes, configuring initiators, managing and protecting storage assets.

Consolidating Primary and Secondary Data Storage

John Matze Download

Storage and server consolidation has emerged as a core strategy for organizations to bring IT expenses under control.  Centralizing operations through consolidation enables IT mangers to slash operational expenses by increasing utilization of storage and server assets.    On the storage side, iSCSI SAN technology has rapidly gained acceptance as the ideal storage consolidation platform.   Consolidation practices are about to enter the next phase with the new generation of iSCSI storage arrays. In the not too distant future IT manager will have the option of deploying a single array that has the cost and performance characteristics needed to handle both primary and secondary storage requirements. This presentation will cover the concept of "tierless" iSCSI storage, examining the traditional primary and secondary storage applications and how they are served in a consolidated storage environment on a tierless iSCSI array and the enabling technologies for tierless storage arrays. We will address RAID level issues, including the fit for RAID 6, RAID 51 and RAID 61, how D2D backup can be deployed in a tierless storage platform and the need for encrypting tierless data.  Also covered will be the benefits of deploying consolidated tierless storage along with consolidated servers deployed as virtual machines and why it makes sense for Microsoft servers to use the iSCSI array to boot from the SAN. 

Learning Objectives:

1. Learn how to slash operational expenses by increasing utilization of storage and server assets
2. Learn how to maximize iSCSI SAN technology for storage consolidation
3. Understand "tierless" iSCSI storage; reexamine the traditional primary and secondary storage applications.