Optimal Storage Architecture and Design for Disaster Avoidance KCCMG Fall 2003 Rob Peglar Chief Architect, XIOtech Corporation

Some Really (Not So) Fun Storage Data Number of digital photographs taken each day, worldwide –6 million –100 KB average; 600 GB/day, 4.2 TB/week or 210 TB/year –accounts for 1/10,000th of new data created in 2002 –2000 PB or 2.0 EB. Source: UC-Berkeley # of drives shipped by Seagate Corp. 1/1/2002-3/31/2002 –15 30 GB = 450 PB. Source: Seagate 82% of 104 respondents say they believe disk-based systems will be preferable to and cheaper than tape-based systems by Source: SNW Online, May IT spending increase (overall) - minus 4-5%. Source: Aberdeen

Strategies for Disaster Avoidance/Recovery Have a plan and TEST IT regularly Consider data, communications, facilities, people Primary mitigation: duplicate infrastructure Primary mitigation: cross-training of people Minor disasters versus major disasters Classify your applications –People/safety critical –Business/legal-critical What you are really fighting is time

Strategies for Resilient Infrastructure Using Networked Storage Why networked storage? –Reduce touch-points and human error –Opportunity for storage clustering –Why not networked storage? You have networked computing! Best practice uses diskless servers Replicate files with server-based techniques Replicate volumes with storage-based techniques Replicate arrays and facilities with clustering and WANs Infrastructure is primary –think inside-out, not outside-in

Strategies for Backup/Restore Legal/Regulatory and Archiving Requirements It’s all about restore, not backup Time is the dimension which you must optimize –Mirrored Disk – immediate restore/zero downtime –Secondary Disk – fast restore (36-72 GB/hr/drive) –Tertiary tape – slow restore (12-24 GB/hr/drive) Raw Cost/TB: disk $9K (7x146 GB drives) Raw Cost/TB: tape $6K (1xLTO drive + 10x100 GB tapes) Cost of Time - $10K/hour (conservatively) Harris Poll – 52 CIOs - $400K/hour (average)

Strategies for Data Replication Why replicate? –It’s a heck of a lot easier than doing backup/restore! Prioritize your data into replication classes Replicate customer & billing data locally and remotely Use synchronous techniques (committed writes) Beware of lossy LANs and low-bandwidth WANs Enterprise disk cost decreases 30% per annum Time (people, access) is getting more expensive Replicate instead of solely relying on backup

Optimal Enterprise Storage Architecture Replication to/from disk as a primary strategy Facilitate storage clustering/multiple paths - HA Physical separation of storage components - DA Perform all I/O operations synchronously Native (Fiber Channel) extension up to 120km WAN (IP) extension up to 800km w/periodic resync Near-instant re-assignment of volumes (virtual disks) Automated scripting of operations

Optimal Enterprise Storage Architecture N-way replication (mirroring) of any volume to any cluster Fabric of clusters, any-to-any subsystem communication Enable LAN-free and server-less backup techniques Reduce server acquisition cost by booting from SAN Allow total array upgrade without server interruption On-the-fly operations (create, expand, copy, mirror, move) Protect your investment in current and future servers

Architecture Summary It’s all about customer outcomes and reducing errors Implementation of customer and supply ‘ecosystem’ Infrastructure automation, labor savings, data warehouse Insist on optimal, open architecture with vendors is exploding – design for it Replication and clustering is cost-effective Get out of silo computing and get into clustered computing Link business initiatives with IT investments

THANK YOU