©1996 ECsoft Group plc 1 Server Farms & SANs Carl Davies - Technical Support Team Leader

PinkRoccade - an Anglo Dutch Organisation GroupUK History 50 years30 years Revenue €816m £64m Staff Market Position All Sectors Tier 1Tier 1/ Mid-Market Number 37 in world largest IT Services companies, 3rd largest % revenuegrowth Source: Computer Business Review - ITIL Education & Consulting Market Leader - Innovator in Shared Services - “Distinctive Managed Services offering (based on ITIL and Prince2 Methodologies) will help set it apart from others servicing the mid market.” Ovum Holway

On-Site and Fully Hosted Support Offerings Competencies Applications Management, Development, Integration & Support. Data Centre, Network Management Support, Field Services ITIL Education Help Desks, Support & Service Management Managed Services

PinkRoccade UK Ltd – Customers

Agenda What is Server Farm? –What are the Benefits and Disadvantages? What is a SAN? –What are the Benefits and Disadvantages? Implementation and Support Challenges –Considerations and issues during implementation – Support Issues Questions

Server Farms Also known as:-Also known as:- Server Cluster Computer FarmComputer Farm Server RanchServer Ranch

Server Farms Key Elements The server farm is a group of networked serversThe server farm is a group of networked servers Intercommunication between server Accessible by users The server farm streamlines processing By distributing the the workload between individual components of the farm Harnesses the power of multiple servers Load balancing software required

Server Farms Examples User Logon Requests Domain Controllers

Server Farms Examples Public Network MS Win 2k servers with MS NLB services User Requests SCSI or Fibre Attached Storage Virtual Server

Server Farms Benefits –Reduce the Total Cost Of Ownership Reducing Support Costs Centralising the infrastructure Reducing amount of different server builds Easier to provide “Resilience” and therefore “High Availability” Ensuring that all servers are equally utilised Maximising return on investment

Server Farms Disadvantages –Development and UAT Environments May be more expensive to truly reflect production environment and ensure valid results from testing

SAN Storage Requirements Operating Systems Applications User dataDefinition A high speed sub network of shared storage devices available to all servers on the LAN and WAN.

SAN What Does a SAN look like

SAN Basic Configuration

SAN Fibre Channel Fabric Presentation Layer Switching Layer Disk & Subsystem Layer

SAN Purpose of a SAN Store data in a central location and make it available to different operating systems such as:- Windows UNIX Linux AIX Mainframe

SAN Purpose of a SAN (2) Provide flexible disc configuration Multiple disk sets Striped disk sets Mirrored disk sets RAID 5 Hot stand-by configurations Easy, quick and flexible expansion Add additional disk storage Deploy disk sets quickly

SAN SAN v NAS Solutions NAS – Suitable for providing user data available across the network. SAN – Suitable for providing back-office system storage, as well as application and user data.

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Business Issues Should Lead The Technology Issues

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Business Issues SLA Driven Detail the business criteria that needs to be met Need to be able to measure the effectiveness of the solution Regulatory and Legislative Compliance Compliance for different types of data

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Data Lifecycle Management Working records Vs Fixed content How long do we need to keep data for? Does the data always need to be on-line? Near-line storage Archiving Processes for Data Management The cost of storage should be accountable Policies for managing data Quotas Billing / Accounting

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Data Security (Access & Fraud) How do we prevent our electronic data from being manipulated.

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Technical Issues Production Storage Appropriate storage for the business need Do we need a SAN? Would NAS be better? Backup and Restore “The Killer Application” Have we got appropriate backup devices and software? Is there an overnight backup window? Do we need to configure the SAN for Snapshot / Shadow data

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Disaster Provision What is the requirement for DR / Business continuity Multiple Sites Data replication / Mirroring Has the DR provision been fully tested? Long Term Viability of Data Medium Where are the back- office systems that we want to provide storage for? Needs to be a high speed network Have we got an appropriate support structure? SAN technology requires specialist support skills

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Several support teams will need to communicate HDS Storage Arrays SAN Fabric Win NT Solaris Win2000 Mainframe AIX System Admin Network Admin ???? SAN Administrator

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations Regulatory Issues SEC - American Securities Regulatory Body Data Protection Act (UK) Sarbanes-Oxley Act (USA)

SAN Implementation and Support Considerations “Design for Flexibility” What are our future storage needs? Have we checked the business plan / road map? Over what period? What type of systems will be connecting? Can our solution deal with new technologies?

SAN What can go wrong? Generally the same types of issues as any project No definition of requirements to implementation parties Unable to check if installation meets requirements Transition to support more difficult No thorough investigation of how the new infrastructure will coexist with the current infrastructure Issues arise when move into a production environment Thorough testing including the DR / Business Continuity environments before going into production

Questions