Achieving Business Agility with Storage Area Networks (SANs)

Today, rapid storage growth and requirements for 24x7 availability reach beyond large companies and apply to small to mid-size enterprises (SMEs), including law firms. Law firms now run many of the same large company, storage hungry enterprise applications like email, database, file, and print storage. The number of legal-specific applications is increasing as well, including:

• Large litigation databases and images
• Accounting systems
• Document repositories and precedent files
• Case management systems

These applications require increasing needs across IT service levels, regulatory compliance, and data lifecycle management. Storage Area Networks (SANs) help law firms achieve business agility by harnessing and managing their storage infrastructure.

Basics of Storage Area Networking

Limits of Direct-Attached or Internal Storage

Direct-attached or internal storage limits storage resource sharing by specifically tying disk capacity to individual servers. The exchange of data must take place at upper layers over the local area network (LAN). While the LAN is optimized for server to client traffic, it cannot easily serve the needs of linking storage devices directly to servers. This makes it hard to share storage across servers, rapidly deploy new storage, and reach high levels of storage utilization.

Storage Area Network (SAN) Advantages

SANs link all servers to a single intelligent storage domain made up of a group of storage devices. This SAN-enabled storage domain allows for controlled access and sharing between all storage capacity and horsepower to all servers. From there, performance and flexibility increase dramatically. Similar to the benefits that LANs provide for connecting servers to clients, SANs provide a range of application and configuration possibilities for storage.

Comprehensive SAN Snapshot

Boost the Bottom Line with Network Storage

SANs provide numerous opportunities for investment returns that go directly to the bottom line such as:

• More efficient disk utilization reduces overall storage costs.
• Flexible growth paths increase performance, capacity, and functionality while extending SAN investments.
• Non-disruptive upgrades eliminate planned downtime, reduce operating costs, and maximize availability. Applications stay online ensuring service levels.
• Online maintenance reduces or eliminates frequent manual tasks such as volume expansion, saving administrators valuable time.

Primary SAN-Enabled Storage Applications

SANs deliver a range of storage applications that provide flexibility and capabilities not possible with internal or direct attached storage.

Server/storage consolidation, high-availability, and diskless servers

Shared storage maximizes storage utilization and streamlines server/OS migration. Multiple servers can be connected to a single SAN, including diskless servers where the OS image and primary applications reside on the SAN.

Automated Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM)

Tiered storage optimizes the cost/benefit equation for different application data sets. Now data requiring less frequent access that is tolerant of slightly longer seek times can be automatically moved to a less expensive class of storage.

Remote recovery and business continuity

Remote replication guarantees protection in the event of a site disaster. Once networked into a SAN, data can be easily transported via Fiber Channel or IP across a metropolitan or wide area network.

Sample Pre-Configured Application Clusters

SANs provide the underlying storage infrastructure for a variety of application clusters such as:

Legal infrastructure

Build litigation databases, accounting systems, document repositories and case management systems that use a single storage pool with built in local recovery and remote replication. Guarantee internal service levels that provide maximum uptime.

Email

Build flexible and expandable Exchange configurations with an automated recovery engine and complete elimination of volume expansion. Use automated HSM functions to migrate old or infrequently used attachments to lower (more cost effective) classes of storage.

Imaging

Present new volumes instantly for additional imaging storage. Retain older images on alternative, cost effective storage classes.

Today's Cost Equation for SANs

Today, mid-market companies require similar sophisticated, enterprise storage features as large companies. However, few mid-sized companies can afford the equipment and more specifically the trained personnel needed to maintain these high-end features. This disparity is fueling demand for new products and technologies to lower overall entry cost, automate functions for the average administrator, and provide enterprise-class features with a few simple mouse clicks.

Thankfully, mature, open, standards-based hardware now delivers more economical storage components. And new network storage architectures, software techniques, advanced virtualization, and sophisticated storage applications can be combined for true, unbounded storage system growth in a manner that makes sense for entry-level customers.

Now companies previously unable to afford or achieve advanced storage system benefits will be granted that opportunity. IT administrators previously required to attend extensive training to accomplish their tasks will be able to do so effortlessly. And users of mission-critical data, susceptible to loss or failure, will be able to rest assured that they have the highest levels of data protection.

By Gary Orenstein

Gary is the author of IP Storage Networking: Straight to the Core and Vice President of Marketing at Compellent

Please note the services and products mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect KKL's recommendation of the products or services listed. This listing is done for informational purposes only.

Copyright © 2010 Kraft & Kennedy, Inc.
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