The term 'Data Storage' has finally left
the darkest corners of the IT department (usually the deepest
basement) and much to its own amazement has found itself
firmly on the agenda of corporate and middle management,
with organisations paying far more attention to topics such
as fault tolerance, data management, information availability,
and scalable capacity. They even pay attention to storage
specialists nowadays, something utterly unheard of at the
dawn of data storage time.
For years many viewed the world of data storage systems
as a less important relation to network & desktop systems
management, staffed by people whose sole role in life was
to simply ensure the availability of a few gigabytes or
terabytes of handy capacity sitting around just in case
it was needed. Suppliers of data storage and management
solutions were sometimes seen as no more than hard drive
and tape drive salesmen. This has never been further from
the truth - now or then.
Data storage is not merely the supply of capacity. It incorporates
the management of data across networks, platforms, and applications.
It encompasses the distribution of data to the correct path
- be it archival systems, on-line volume control, near-line
data banks, or high volume real-time transaction processing.
It is about seeing the core of your systems - the data -
as a single living entity, and applying the correct filtering,
management, distribution, capacity, and security processes
to safeguard your most valuable asset.
Enterprise storage solutions are geared towards achieving
these aims in large scale, high volume environments. They
are designed to fulfil the access times, data throughput,
transfer times, and capacity required regardless of complexity,
simplicity, or sheer volume.
At StorageWorld, we specialise in data storage. This offers
us a distinct advantage over many other solution suppliers
as we do not get side-tracked by peripheral considerations.
We are focused. We view your data as the lifeblood of your
organisation, and we drive that message home to every client
we have. You can rebuild your offices, build new products,
but you cannot replace the very core of your organisation
if it is destroyed, lost, or inaccessible.
We offer a range of entry-level, mid-sized, and very high
capacity storage solutions for all sizes and types of environments.
Whether your organisation is working with demanding mission-critical
transaction systems, high I/O database systems, large data
libraries, HSM or data warehousing, image libraries or document
processing, or digital media processing and editing such
as Digital Video, your storage requirements are likely to
be very similar: large capacity combined with high-performance
throughput and guaranteed uptime.
Enterprise storage systems are designed
to offer exactly that - mass storage system architecture
scalable to terabytes of data capacity. Just
be careful of vendor interoperability and sneaky proprietary
standards.
Platform Independence
Main platform support falls into the UNIX and Windows arena
(NT4, W2K, 2003, XP etc.) with stranger beasts such as mainframes
left to IBM and their rocket engineers. However, true enterprise
storage systems have one exceptional advantage - they are
(or at least should be) independent of OS platform. A solid
high-end solution should be specifically designed to cope
with heterogeneous network environments, offering operating
system independence and full compatibility with any NOS
or client. We are happy to advise on any environment, system,
or platform. Some may be specific, others scalable across
multiple systems.
Storage Area Networking (SAN) is a prime example of return
of investment architecture whereby legacy equipment can
be incorporated into new, efficient storage subsystems regardless
of NOS, system, or environment. Although, in truth the cost
of implementing some SANs may make you feel that this small
crumb of ROI doesn't really cheer you up much and may leave
the accounts department listing you as company enemy number
one. Choose wisely.
A wide range of technology is available to suit enterprise
systems. From standard SCSI based server peripherals to
Fibre Channel storage area networks:
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- DLT
- Digital Linear Tape systems
- AIT
- Advanced Intelligent Tape systems
- DAT
- Digital Audio Tape systems
- SDLT
- Super Digital Linear Tape systems
- Ultrium
- Linear Tape Open (LTO) systems
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Fibre
Channel Technology
Fibre
Channel is ideal for enterprise applications because of
the faster transfer rates, network scalability & expandability,
single fibre or coax connections for long run lengths and
unlimited file transfer sizes. Click here for a brief pop-up
explanation of Fibre
Channel, or click here to go to our
Fibre Channel Section
for a more detailed overview.
Data
Rates and Capacity
Higher
performance with wider bandwidth than traditional storage
systems. Terabytes of capacity for large organisations.
Scalable solutions offering future capacity and interface
development. Implementation of a RAID system can offer substantially
improved I/O operations, higher simultaneous transaction
processing, and higher data throughput. From OLTP to video
streaming, array technology can vastly improve performance
over static legacy storage systems.
RAID Technology
In
a RAID Array, data is striped across multiple disk drives
connected in parallel. The minimum number of drives required
for higher performance is two - a simple striped array with
no parity.
To
implement RAID levels 3 or 5, a minimum of three disks
are required. One of the three disks (Level 3) will
be used to store parity, or the equivalent capacity of
one of the disks (Level 5). For more information on RAID
technology please read our RAIDhelp
section.
The
capacity lost to parity calculations drop in proportion
to the number of disks: 33% with three drives, 25% with
four drives, 20% with five etc. In an eight disk array
for example, the sum total of seven drives would be theoretically
available for actual storage and the equivalent of one
disk is dedicated for redundancy or parity information.
This calculation can be used as a rough rule of thumb,
though the actual capacity used by parity calculations
may exceed this figure in a real life situation.
RAID Level 6 is defined as a system capable of suffering
multiple hardware failures and still offer guaranteed
data availability and integrity. Enhanced Data Availability
and Protection (EDAP) incorporates the hard technology
behind the logical RAID format, offering even greater
protection and security.
Array technology is available to suit all environments,
offering guaranteed availability and scalable capacity
combined with high-performance data access and transfers.
Dedicated solutions offering server storage-independence
begin at a few gigabytes and scale to multiple terabytes
and beyond.
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