What is Services Oriented Storage Solution?

Services Oriented Storage is a strategy that aligns storage resources with business needs. It's an approach that creates a flexible, adaptive storage platform. In the services oriented approach, technologies like storage virtualization and common management tools enable the deployment of Storage Services, such as disaster recovery, data classification, search, and archiving, across a multivendor storage environment. IT can deliver these services whenever and wherever requested, meeting user and application requirements for performance, scalability, availability, data security and affordability.

Why Services Oriented Storage Solutions?

Value Proposition

Services Oriented Storage can help businesses:

* Simplify storage management

* Improve service levels

* Increase storage utilization

* Lower costs

* Scale up and integrate easily, while protecting their investment

Unified Storage... Simplified for YOU

What is Unified Storage?

Unified storage (sometimes termed network unified storage or NUS) is a storage system that makes it possible to run and manage files and applications from a single device. To this end, a unified storage system consolidates file-based and block-based access in a single storage platform and supports Fibre Channel SAN, IP-based SAN (iSCSI), and NAS (network attached storage).

How is it implemented in practice?

Unified storage is often implemented in a NAS platform that is modified to add block-mode support.

Benefits:

· Simultaneously enables storage of file data and handles the block-based I/O (input/output) of enterprise applications.

· Reduced hardware requirements – Instead of separate storage platforms, like NAS for file-based storage and a RAID disk array for block-based storage, unified storage combines both modes in a single device.

· Easy to administer since there is only a single device to be deployed.

· Lower Capital expenditures for the enterprise.

· Simpler to manage.

· Advanced features like storage snapshots and replication.

· Unified storage systems generally cost the same and enjoy the same level of reliability as dedicated file or block storage systems

BACK UP, For The Sake Of Your Critical Data

Critical data is the lifeline of any business and hence needs to be archived. But what is the best way to do so? How long can this data be stored? And can lost data be recovered?

We look at some answers.

Key BenefITs

• Don’t lose any essential data.
• Comply with all audit and government requirements.
• Reduce storage costs, by moving data across a hierarchy of media.

Back up, For The Sake Of Your Critical Data

Every day, a huge amount of critical data is created in any business through its daily transactions with dealers, distributors, customers, employees, etc. There are also records like contracts, taxes, client contact details, etc, which are of immense importance. All this critical data needs to be preserved/archived for future reference. This is done by making a back-up of the data regularly, based on the requirements of the company. Most firms take daily back-ups of critical data. The back-up helps them when they need access to a file that was used a few months, or even years, ago.

“The business data, be it in paper or digital form, is the lifeline for any organisation. So, storing and backing it up carefully is of utmost importance to keep the lifeline always up,” justifies Arun Attri, IThead, Barista Coffee Company

Storage options

There are various methods of storing critical data. In general, back-ups are done to tape, with multiple back-up sets. Critical data is often backed up to disk storage and then moved to tape. When backed up to disk, the data restore time is less. The use of disk-based storage improves recovery time objectives (the time and service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster), offers superior reliability and improves the efficiency of WAN Wide Area Network)-based remote back-up and replication. Disk storage is the best way to preserve data for longer periods of time. With data de-duplication in use, disk storage can offer the same economies as tape storage. “Data de-duplication is one emerging solution to the challenge of backing up exponentially growing volumes of data and preserving it for extended periods of time. Data de-duplication is a process that eliminates redundant data from the total volume of data that needs to be backed up. In doing so, it reduces both secondary storage requirements and network bandwidth needs,” adds P K Gupta, director, Asia Pacific & Japan (back-up, recovery and archive solutions), EMC Global Services. For example, when an e-mail with an attachment is received by multiple recipients within the organisation, data de-duplication ensures that only the first instance of the attachment is backed up. All other back-ups simply point back to the previously stored instance of the file.

For network-based solutions, the recommended method is using a centralised storage solution—the user’s data is stored to NAS (network attached storage) and then backed up to tape. Disks are expensive, so data is stored in tapes with multiple copies. Most firms use disks and tapes for critical data storage. “Tapes as well as disks are used for storage. We use HP-Tape Library (Ultrium-3)”, says Attri. Renny V Mathew, systems administrator, Avio Helitronics Infosystems, reveals, “We use LTO (linear tape open—a high performance magnetic tape storage technology) Gen 3, Symantec Backup exec 11d for server software, and Tandberg T24 Tape Library Single Drive with 12 tape slots.”

The frequency of back-ups

Daily and weekly back-ups of crucial data are the need of the hour. There are two main back-up methods: daily incremental and weekly full back-ups. “We take daily incremental and weekly full backups,” says Mathew. The daily, weekly or monthly back-up is stored and also tested regularly. Attri asserts, “We take incremental (daily) as well as full back-ups (weekly) of our critical data in our Backup Tape Library using HPData Protector software. On a monthly basis, the copy of the full back-up is also replicated to separate disks for storage. We even do restore tests for old tapes after some interval to check the health of the data and media.”

Software like Buffalo’s Memeo Auto Backup help users to take regular back-ups by setting instructions for daily or weekly back-ups. The EMC Avamar data de-duplication solution provides daily back-ups that can be quickly recovered in just one step — eliminating the hassle of restoring full and subsequent incremental back-ups to reach the desired recovery point.

Backed up for years and years

The time period for data storage depends on company policies, regulations and guidelines. “We can store data to tape for a period of 2-3 years. And we can store data to disk depending on the life of the disk. Using RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) technology (that uses two or more hard disk drives to achieve greater levels of performance and reliability for large volumes of data) we can store data for over a 100 years,” says Kamal Kannan, engineer storage, 22by7 Solutions Pvt Ltd.

This is an excerpt from the article "Critical data Storage" published in the July 2008 issue of BenefIT magazine.

Source: ManageIT section from BenefIT magazine July Edition.

The Storage Disk Space you bought recently is soon exhausting. Are you considering buying more disk space?

Ever thought of reducing your Backup Window?

Read on…

Data De-Duplication often called "intelligent compression" or "single-instance storage" is a method of reducing storage needs by eliminating redundant data, operating at the file, block, and even the bit level. Only one unique instance of the data is actually retained on storage media, such as disk or tape. Redundant data is replaced with a pointer to the unique data copy. Hence only one instance of the data is saved.

Why do you need it?

Data de-duplication helps to improve data protection, speed up service and reduce cost.

Where does de-duplication take place?

De-duplication can happen at:

1. The Host or Source: Here, the data is checked for duplicate matter at the client itself before sending the data to the storage system.

2. The Destination: Here, the complete data is sent over the network to the designated storage system. Then the De-duplication system starts working at the disk device or on the virtual tape library as a process after the data is received.

Host Based systems are significantly advantageous over the Destination based systems because they send only one instance of the data over the network, thereby ensuring that the network bandwidth is not clogged. Also, since only the unique data is received by the storage system, it makes it easier and faster to store the data and create recovery points.



What are the Key business benefits of data de-duplication?

The following are the benefits derived by an organization that implements data de-duplication:

· Increasing overall data integrity and end with reducing overall data protection costs.

· Lower storage space requirements – it reduces the amount of disk space needed by users for backup by 90 percent.

· Longer disk retention periods

· Reduced power, space and cooling requirements

· Higher restore service levels

· Media Handling errors are reduced

· Availability of more recovery points on fast recovery media

· Efficient use of disk space

· Better recovery time objectives for a longer time

· Reduces the need for tape backups

· Reduces the data to be sent over a WAN for replication, remote backups and disaster recovery, which in turn ensures that the network bandwidth is not choked.

Say Good Bye to Data Leakage--

A recent survey of top security professionals carried out by a leading Consultancy firm revealed some scary but realistic statistics:

1 in 3 companies investigated a breach of confidential data last year.

1 in 4 companies experienced an “embarrassing” leak of confidential information.

1 in 5 emails contains a legal, financial or regulatory risk.

If you are like most corporations, you are finding yourself in the midst of an information explosion. Sensitive data is no longer controlled under lock and key in data centres or file cabinets. Sensitive data is everywhere. This data is an easy prey to leakage which will hamper the competitive advantage that you may have in the market.

This is where Data Leak Prevention (DLP) technology/products come to your rescue.

What is DLP?

DLP is nothing but the use of various techniques to prevent critical data from unnecessarily leaving the organization. DLP products can be defined as:

“Products that, based on central policies, identify, monitor, and protect data at rest, in motion, and in use, through deep content analysis.”

Some of the most common techniques used in these products to detect and prevent unauthorized extrusion of data are:

1. Rule bases/ Regular expressions

2. Database fingerprinting

3. Exact File Matching

4. Partial Document Matching

5. Statistical Analysis

6. Conceptual/Lexicon

7. Predefined Categorization.

What are the main features to look out for in a DLP solution?

In this day and age, it is impossible to expect your employees to be fully cognizant and ready to comply with all data protection compliance rules. Hence look for a DLP technology that can:

1. Protect sensitive data without slowing down your business or frustrating employees trying to do their job.

2. Meet data protection compliance guidelines through the ability to encrypt, redact, block or quarantine sensitive data before it damages your business.

3. Real time performance

4. Virtually zero false-positive rates.

Superfast mini tape from Tandberg

Tandberg touts superfast mini tape library
Bryan Betts


June 09, 2008 (Techworld.com) Tandberg Data is claiming to have the fastest 2U tape library on the market after upgrading its StorageLibrary line with the latest half-height LTO-4 drives.

Tandberg says the upgraded StorageLibrary product now provides up to 123TB of compressed storage — although the 2U model has 12 tape slots for a compressed total of perhaps 20TB.

The Norwegian storage vendor has also updated its eight-slot StorageLoader — a smaller tape autoloader — with half-height (HH) LTO-4.

The compact tape drives have been available for only a few weeks, and provide a high capacity — 800GB of uncompressed data per cartridge. They allow Tandberg to fit two drives into a 2U library, so the library is about double the speed of one with a single drive, at up to 1.7TB/hour. Tandberg's larger libraries with more drives are even faster, of course.

Compared with LTO-3, the LTO-4 HH has double the storage capacity, runs 50% faster and includes 256-bit AES encryption in hardware, said Bharat Kumar, vice president of marketing and development at Tandberg. It supports nonerasable WORM tapes for long-term archiving, he added.

Meanwhile, rival tape library developer Overland Storage has poured cold water on Tandberg's speed claims.

"Performance is a bit of an odd thing to talk about, because the LTO-4 won't be the limiting factor - the bottleneck will be elsewhere in the system," said Chris James, Overland's European marketing director. He argued that the only real way to improve performance is to put a disk-based VTL (virtual tape library) in front of the tape library.

Not so, countered Simon Anderson, Tandberg's tape product manager. He pointed to LTO-4's ability to adjust its streaming speed so it can work efficiently even when its host server can't feed it at its rated 120MB/sec.

Half-height drives are the future, he said. "If you look at the LTO road map, there is no full-height LTO-5 — it will be half-height only, planned for 2010."

James agreed that the introduction of LTO-4 HH is significant — not just because it allows a library to host twice as many LTO-4 drives, but also because it can store twice as much data.

"20TB in 2U is pretty chunky," he said. "Given that a tape library generates 2% of the heat and consumes 5% of the power of the equivalent in disk storage, there's significant space and cost advantages to be had from migrating data to tape as soon as possible."

Tandberg said that a 24-slot StorageLibrary with a single IBM LTO-4 HH drive and a SCSI interface (Fibre Channel and SAS versions are also available) would sell for under $6,300. The smaller StorageLoader, with one LTO-4 HH and two magazines, each holding four tape cartridges, will sell for around $4,500, the company added.

Source: Computer World

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