Data Center Storage

Data Center Storage

by Hubbert Smith
Released April 2016
Publisher(s): Auerbach Publications
ISBN: 9781466507814

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Book description

We overspend on data center storage ... yet, we fall short of business requirements. It's not about the technologies. It's about the proper application of technologies to deliver storage services efficiently and affordably. It's about meeting business requirements dependent on data center storage. Spend less, deliver more. Data Center Storage: Cost-Effective Strategies, Implementation, and Management provides an industry insider's insight on how to properly scope, plan, evaluate, and implement storage technologies to maximize performance, capacity, reliability, and power savings. It provides business and use-case focused coverage of storage technology, including storage area networks (SAN), capacity-optimized drives, and solid-state drives. It offers key insights on financially responsible spending for data center storage. Delivered in accessible language, the book starts with a discussion of the business merits of replacing direct attached, compartmentalized storage with consolidated SAN-attached storage. The author advises on the use of service level applications (SLAs) as a tool to drive business unit collaboration with IT and prioritize those actions that impact productivity and profit from those that are less critical. This business guide to applied technologies disassembles big problems into digestible segments to help you understand, quantify, and fix any problems that arise as you work towards meeting your growing storage needs. The book builds on the consolidation and SLA driven approach to take advantage of the compelling benefits and potential savings of managed hosting and cloud storage.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Table of Contents
  7. About the author
    1. Acknowledgements
  8. What, Exactly, Will We Accomplish?
    1. The One Reason Every CIO or IT Manager Should Read This
    2. At Risk of Ruining the Ending…
    3. Business Data
  9. Part I Building Blocks, Power, and Consolidation
    1. Chapter 1 The Disk Drive: The Fundamental Building Block of Enterprise Storage
      1. 1.1 Using a Metrics-Based Approach to Get Past the Complexity
      2. 1.2 Metrics for the Basic Building Block: Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Devices
      3. 1.3 About HDD Capacity and Service Levels
      4. 1.4 Financial Responsibility and the Tradeoffs between Capacity, Form Factor, and Spin Speed
      5. 1.5 Demystifying Hard Disk Drive Performance
      6. 1.6 Hard Disk Drive Quick Guided Tour
        1. 1.6.1 Hard Drive Spin Speeds and Latency
        2. 1.6.2 Interface Speeds: SATA Speeds, SAS Speeds, FC Speeds
        3. 1.6.3 HDD Caching
        4. 1.6.4 HDD Queuing
        5. 1.6.5 Drive Performance Summary
    2. Chapter 2 Power and AC
      1. 2.1 Powering Down Inactive Drives, or MAID
      2. 2.2 Facilities and Power
        1. 2.2.1 Facilities: Air Conditioning
      3. 2.3 Establishing a Baseline for Performance, Capacity, and Power
      4. 2.4 Facilities Cooling Improvements Within Reach
    3. Chapter 3 Storage Consolidation
      1. 3.1 Cost of DAS versus SAN: Overprovisioning
      2. 3.2 Cost of DAS versus SAN: Backup Efficiency
      3. 3.3 Hot Data, Cool Data, and Consolidation, a Single-Tiered Systems Approach
      4. 3.4 Consolidation for Noncritical (Tier 2) Applications
      5. 3.5 More Silo System Avoidance
        1. 3.5.1 Corrective Action for Situations Where Silos Are Not Yet Deployed
        2. 3.5.2 Corrective Action for Situations Where the Silos are Already in Place
      6. 3.6 Consolidation Conclusion
    4. Chapter 4 Service Level Overview
      1. 4.1 Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
      2. 4.2 Reviewing SLAs with Business Unit Customers
      3. 4.3 Delivering on SLA Commitments
    5. Chapter 5 Uptime, Reliability, and SLAs
      1. 5.1 SLA Uptime: RAID Levels
      2. 5.2 SLA and Point in Time Copy: Avoiding the Backup Window Problem
      3. 5.3 SLA Uptime: Failover
      4. 5.4 SLA Cost and Billing
      5. 5.5 Performance and SLAs
    6. Chapter 6 Storage Tiering and SLAs
      1. 6.1 Comparing Scenarios
        1. 6.1.1 Scenario 1: Single-Tier Baseline
        2. 6.1.2 Scenario 2: Two Tiers
        3. 6.1.3 Scenario 3: Two Tiers, Better Service Levels
        4. 6.1.4 Scenario 4: Two Tiers, Significantly Better Service
        5. 6.1.5 From Scenario to Reality
    7. Chapter 7 Service Level Agreements and IT Bill-Back
      1. 7.1 IT Bill-Back Example of SLA
    8. Chapter 8 Demonstrating Delivery on SLA Service Levels
      1. 8.1 Customer Feedback and Service Levels
      2. 8.2 SLA Conclusion
    9. Chapter 9 Planning for Growth and Storage Tiering
      1. 9.1 Storage Growth, and SLA for Provisioning
    10. Chapter 10 Wrap-Up: Projects Within Reach
      1. 10.1 Improvement 1. Improve Efficiencies with Static Tiering
      2. 10.2 Improvement 2. Improve Power and Air Conditioning
      3. 10.3 Improvement 3. Consolidate and Reduce Server-Attached Storage
      4. 10.4 Improvement 4. Better Backup—Replace Tape
      5. 10.5 Improvement 5. Establish Tiered Storage and Service Level Agreements
      6. 10.6 Improvement 6. Migrate Cool data onto to Tier 2, Release Tier 1 Resources for Critical Applications
      7. 10.7 Improvement 7. IT Bill-Back
      8. 10.8 Improvement 8. Track and Improve
      9. 10.8 Conclusion
  10. Part II Managing Aging Data and E-Mail Expenses
    1. Chapter 11 Migration and Retiring Aging Systems
      1. 11.1 File Migration Project Planning
        1. 11.1.1 File Migration Plan, Discover, Test, QA, Provision, and Cut-Over
        2. 11.1.2 Aging Data and the Role of Near-Line Archive and Search
        3. 11.1.3 Block (Database, Email etc.) Application Data Migration
      2. 11.2 Migration Overview (Virtualized Storage)
    2. Chapter 12 Shared Folders and Content Management
      1. 12.1 Content Management System Cost Analysis, Before and After
    3. Chapter 13 Storage Strategies for E-Mail
      1. 13.1 E-Mail Quotas, PC Folders and PC Backup
      2. 13.2 E-Mail Hosting Providers
      3. 13.3 Checklist for E-Mail Project
    4. Chapter 14 Spending Wisely on Performance
      1. 14.1 Establish Clear Performance Criteria (in SLA Terms)
      2. 14.2 The Yardsticks of Storage Performance
      3. 14.3 Resolving Performance Issues in Production Systems
        1. 14.3.1 Paging
        2. 14.3.2 I/O Size
        3. 14.3.3 Fragmentation
        4. 14.3.4 Individual Account Problems
        5. 14.3.5 Resource Contention
        6. 14.3.6 Time of Day
        7. 14.3.7 Storage Array Misbehavior
        8. 14.3.8 Storage Caching
        9. 14.3.9 Storage Rearrangement
        10. 14.3.10 Fibre Channel Zoning
        11. 14.3.11 Latency
      4. 14.4 Solid State Drives (SSDs) and Solid State Storage (SSS)
        1. 14.4.1 Where and How to Use SSDs
        2. 14.4.2 SSD Endurance, Life Cycle, and Warranty
        3. 14.4.3 Flash and RAM
    5. Chapter 15 Performance and Backup
    6. Chapter 16 The Right Tools for Reliability, Uptime, Disaster Recovery, and Archiving
      1. 16.1 Server Problem (Direct Attached Storage)
      2. 16.2 Server Problem (External SAN Storage)
      3. 16.3 Drive Failure
      4. 16.4 Accidental Data Deletion or Modification, or Virus
      5. 16.5 Storage Array Controller Failure
      6. 16.6 Cable Failure
      7. 16.7 SAN Switch Problem
      8. 16.8 Data Center Power Problem
      9. 16.9 Data Center Air Conditioning Problem
      10. 16.10 Data Center Interior Problem (Sprinklers)
      11. 16.11 Data Center Act of Nature
      12. 16.12 Spending Wisely on Reliability
    7. Chapter 17 Reliability and Server Failover
      1. 17.1 How Server Failover Works
      2. 17.2 Load Balancing
    8. Chapter 18 Reliability and Continuous Data Protection, Synchronous Replication
    9. Chapter 19 Reliability and Near-Continuous Data Protection, Asynchronous Replication
    10. Chapter 20 Reliability and Data Integrity (T10-DIF or T10-PI)
    11. Chapter 21 Virtualization Overview: Focus on the Business Benefits
      1. 21.1 Virtual Machine Sprawl
      2. 21.2 Aligned Server Virtualization and Storage
    12. Chapter 22 Storage Virtualization
      1. 22.1 Virtualized Storage and Shared Storage for Virtualized Servers
      2. 22.2 Thin Provisioning
      3. 22.3 Storage Provisioning Before and After
        1. 22.3.1 Thin Provisioning and Growth
    13. Chapter 23 Virtualization, Storage Tiers, and Manual Data Movement
      1. 23.1 Information Lifecycle Management (ILM or HSM)
    14. Chapter 24 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
      1. 24.1 Why VDI?
      2. 24.2 Implementing Virtual Desktops
        1. 24.2.1 Option 1: The Clone Approach
        2. 24.2.2 Option 2: The Snapshot Approach
      3. 24.3 Common Mistakes to Avoid
      4. 24.4 Data Security
    15. Chapter 25 Converged NAS and SAN
    16. Chapter 26 Storage for Nontraditional IT Applications
      1. 26.1 Video Surveillance
      2. 26.2 Audio (Call Center)
      3. 26.3 Web Marketing, Web Content, and Converged Communications
      4. 26.4 Storage Approaches for Converged Applications
    17. Chapter 27 Part II Wrap-Up: Projects Within Reach
      1. 27.1 Improvement 0. Every Proposal to Spend on Expanding Tier 1 Storage Hardware Must Include a Proposal to Migrate/Archive Data off Tier 1.
      2. 27.2 Improvement 1. Initiate Migration Projects to Retire Old Hardware and Archive Aging Data.
      3. 27.3 Improvement 2. Establish Performance Profiles for Key Storage Systems, and Establish a Performance SLA.
      4. 27.4 Improvement 3. Establish a Knowledge-Base to Debug/Resolve Storage Performance Issues Quickly
      5. 27.5 Improvement 4. Pilot SSDs.
      6. 27.6 Improvement 5. Use a Storage Array-Based Snapshot/Backup.
      7. 27.7 Improvement 6. Use Server Failover and Spend Wisely on Storage Reliability.
      8. 27.8 Improvement 7. Create E-Mail Quotas, PC Mail Folders, and PC Network Backup.
      9. 27.9 Improvement 8. Replace Shared Folders with a Content Management System.
      10. 27.10 Improvement 9. Using Manual Storage Tiers, Move Aging Data from Tier 1 to Tier 2.
      11. 27.11 Improvement 10. Pilot Automated Storage Tiers.
      12. 27.12 Improvement 11. Use a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
      13. 27.13 Improvement 12. Establish IT Infrastructure Standardization.
    18. Part II Conclusions
  11. Part III Managed Hosting and Cloud
    1. Chapter 28 Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing
    2. Chapter 29 The Business Driving Managed Hosting: What It Means to You
      1. 29.1 Why Managed Hosting?
      2. 29.2 Data Center Definition(s) According to TIA-942
      3. 29.3 Working Around the Overfull Data Center
      4. 29.4 The Dynamic Data Center and Cash Flow
      5. 29.5 Is Managed Hosting Proven and Viable?
    3. Chapter 30 Managed Hosting Vetting Process
      1. 30.1 Hosting Provider Categories
        1. 30.1.1 Services-Centric Hosting
        2. 30.1.2 Dedicated or Shared Hosting
        3. 30.1.3 Facility-Centric Hosting (Includes Interconnection and Co-Location)
        4. 30.1.4 RFQ, Selection, SLA and Risk Management
      2. 30.2 Implementing SLAs
      3. 30.3 Managing the Risk
      4. 30.4 Hosted Management Migration Project Planning and Execution
      5. 30.5 Managed Hosting Simple Cost Analysis: Before and After
    4. Chapter 31 Why Cloud is Relevant
      1. 31.1 Origins and Blueprint of Cloud Computing
      2. 31.2 Cloud and the CIO
        1. 31.2.1 Security
        2. 31.2.2 Availability
        3. 31.2.3 Performance
        4. 31.2.4 Cost
        5. 31.2.5 Standards
        6. 31.2.6 Refining the Answers
      3. 31.3 Traditional IT versus Cloud Approaches
    5. Chapter 32 Implementing Cloud Storage in Your Operation
      1. 32.1 Cloud-Based E-Mail
      2. 32.2 Cloud-Based Content Management and Collaboration
    6. Chapter 33 Hybrid Cloud
      1. 33.1 Steps to Prepare for Cloud Technologies
        1. 33.1.1 Be Selective on Cloud Migration
        2. 33.1.2 Have Data Management Retention Policies
        3. 33.1.3 Have a Migration Process
      2. 33.2 Examining Key Norms of Traditional IT versus Cloud Approaches
      3. 33.3 Cloud Performance
    7. Chapter 34 Cloud Spectrum of Options
      1. 34.1 Handling Objections and Resistance to Change
      2. 34.2 Trends in Public Cloud that Will Materialize in IT and Private Cloud
    8. Chapter 35 End Game and Hardware Roadmap to Leverage the Cloud
    9. Chapter 36 Strategy and Execution
    10. Chapter 37 Constructing a Roadmap
      1. 37.1 Managing a Roadmap
      2. 37.2 Roadmap Execution, Package Phase Definition and Approvals
    11. Chapter 38 Risk Management
    12. Chapter 39 Part III Wrap-Up: Projects Within Reach
      1. 39.1 Improvement 1. Find the Right Managed Hosting Provider for Your Business
      2. 39.2 Improvement 2. Compare Managed Hosting Service Level Agreements and Managed Hosting Risk Management
      3. 39.3 Improvement 3. Find the Right Cloud Storage Provider
      4. 39.4 Improvement 4. Implement Cloud-Based E-mail
      5. 39.5 Improvement 5. Implement Cloud-Based Content Management and Collaboration
      6. 39.6 Improvement 6. Implement a Hybrid Cloud Project
      7. 39.7 Improvement 7. Create a Storage Strategy and Execution Plan that Includes a ZBB, Roadmap(s), and Supporting Phase Gate Project Management/Approval Process
    13. Part III Conclusion
  12. Appendix A Storage Protocol Basics
  13. Appendix B Project Management
  14. Appendix C People, Process, Technology
    1. C.1 Push Decisions into the Hands of Those Most Capable
    2. C.2 Develop a Culture of Peer Reviews
    3. C.3 Give Credit Where Credit is Due
    4. C.4 Create an Environment Where it’s Okay to Ask for Help
    5. C.5 Create Status Reports with a Project Management Slant
    6. C.6 Encourage Communication and Require Transparency
    7. C.7 Insist on Execution; Find and Resolve Dysfunctionality
  15. Appendix D Root Cause, Corrective Action Process
  16. Appendix E Iometer: Performance Testing in the Lab
    1. E.1 Which Benchmark?
    2. E.2 The Iometer Fileserver Benchmark
    3. E.3 Diagrams
    4. E.4 Reporting and Interpreting the Results
    5. E.5 Conclusion
    6. E.6 References
  17. Glossary
  18. Index

Product information

  • Title: Data Center Storage
  • Author(s): Hubbert Smith
  • Release date: April 2016
  • Publisher(s): Auerbach Publications
  • ISBN: 9781466507814