Hosted by Minimizing the Impact of Storage on Your Network W. Curtis Preston President The Storage Group

Hosted by Networked Storage vs. Network Administrators Increased Traffic Network-based backups NFS & CIFS shares from NAS filers Management difficulties Proprietary networks being managed by non- network personnel Proprietary networks being managed by network personnel

Hosted by Networked Storage vs. Network Administrators Security implications One server’s data can be accessed via other servers New connections can be made remotely Bad information and little security training

Hosted by Storage for Network Admins Fibre Channel = Serial implementation of SCSI that can be networked via FC equipment iSCSI = Serial implementation of SCSI that can be networked via IP/Ethernet equipment SAN = Storage connected via Fibre Channel or iSCSI network (blocks) NAS = Storage connected via IP and NFS or CIFS (file sharing)

Hosted by Storage for Network Admins HBA =~ NIC WWN =~ MAC Address Zoning =~ VLANS Soft zoning =~ Server w/o firewall Hard zoning =~ Server behind firewall WWN-based zoning = Zone members specified by WWN Port-based zoning = Zone members specified by port

Hosted by Good news: LAN-free, Client-free and Server-free backup LAN-free backups (blue) Shared tape library Backup traffic off the LAN Client-free backups (red) Shared disk array Backs up one client’s data through another Server-free backups (green) Direct disk-to-tape data transfer

Hosted by Good news: Disk-to-Disk Backups Really inexpensive disk arrays based on ATA/IDE Addressable via Fibre Channel, SCSI, NFS, or CIFS JBOD and RAID configurations (Use their RAID controller or a software volume manager) As low as $3,000/TB for off-shelf units!

Hosted by What to do with them? Connect array to backup servers via Fibre Channel & SANs, or GbE & NFS/CIFS Back up to disk first using backup or replication software If backups, Duplicate disk backups to tape If replication, make second backup to tape Except in disaster, restores come from disk

Hosted by Why would you do that? Increase ease and integrity of backups, especially incremental backups Can reduce backup traffic by reducing frequency of full backups Can reduce backup traffic even more using synthetic full backups Can also be used as target for HSM, again reducing network traffic

Hosted by Mixed News: What about iSCSI What is iSCSI? Ethernet NIC with iSCSI drivers (Hopefully TOE) Standard Ethernet switch SCSI over IP iSCSI is here. A number of disk vendors releasing products There’s a lot of interest for middle-tier storage apps

Hosted by Mixed News: What about iSCSI? Storage devices everywhere and anywhere?!?! Should implement via dedicated LANs, just as with NAS Must consider security implications of plain text blocks Consider encryption

Hosted by Scary News: Storage Security SCSI/FC not built for security Little authentication Storage people often not security conscious or security trained Soft/hard zoning misunderstood

Hosted by Scary News: Storage Security WWN used for auth., but WWN can be changed Soft zoning allows non- members to communicate Management interfaces open to backbone and use plain text protocols NAS filers on backbone

Hosted by Security Questions for your Storage Administrator Are we using port-based zoning? Are we using hard zoning? Are our NAS or iSCSI systems on a separate, firewalled, non-routable LAN? Can I reach the storage device management interfaces from my desktop without going through a firewall?

Hosted by Summary LAN/Client/Server-free backups can reduce traffic Disk-to-disk backups can reduce traffic iSCSI is coming, but should be on a separate LAN Learn all you can about storage security and use it

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Hosted by Thank you! W. Curtis Preston