Nexsan Technologiestag:,2007-09-06:/392011-05-10T00:38:10ZNexsan Corporation is a leading provider of next generation energy efficient disk-based storage systems designed for the long-term storage of digital information. NexsanOur hardware and software systems are ideal for storing and archiving information commonly referred to as "fixed content", since it typically changes little over time. This includes medical images, email, business documents, video images, research data, and digital media of all types. Nexsan’sOur solutions enable organizations to store and access growing amounts of fixed content over longer periods of time, while meeting evolving business and compliance requirements in a "green" environment. More information is available at www.nexsan.com.Movable Type 4.1Nexsan E-Series Offers Up 3 TB Drives Minus the Performance and Rebuild Worriestag:nexsan.dcig.com,2011://39.20542011-05-10T10:00:00Z2011-05-10T10:00:00ZNexsan's introduction of 3 TB SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) into its E-Series™ storage systems made it the first enterprise storage vendor to offer storage arrays with these size HDDs in them. But the stories behind the headline are the QUALITY of HDDs that Nexsan uses in its storage array and the enhancements that Nexsan made to its storage controllers to support them. These underlying features should instead contribute to users having the same or even higher uptime and performance expectations than they had in the past when using Nexsan storage systems.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.comQUALITY of HDDs that Nexsan uses in its storage array and the enhancements that Nexsan made to its storage controllers to support them. These underlying features should instead contribute to users having the same or even higher uptime and performance expectations than they had in the past when using Nexsan storage systems.
The announcement that Nexsan E-Series storage systems support 3 TB SATA HDDs is certainly a welcome relief to those organizations looking to more efficiently store data on the same size or smaller data center footprints. But larger SATA HDDs are being greeted with apprehension by some as concerns about RAID rebuild times mount.
This is of specific concern among managed service providers (MSPs) that may manage hundreds or even thousands of HDDs. Just recently I spoke to an MSP in Florida that needed to alter how it was buying storage arrays because of SATA rebuild times.
It was finding that as much as 10% of its storage system's processor was being consumed by doing rebuilds of failed 1 and 2 SATA HDDs in its RAID sets. To compensate for that loss of productivity it was buying storage arrays with extra processing power and storage capacity. However this change could in effect negate some of the benefits that 3 TB SATA HDDs potentially offer.
In discussing this MSP's concern with Nexsan's CTO, Gary Watson, he cautioned that some organizations have a tendency to buy commodity storage arrays. Then they attempt to make it up for it with features like RAID and redundancy. He says, "That's a losing proposition. Components internal to these storage arrays are apt to fail more quickly so a lot of data center bandwidth is spent on managing and moving data around."
To avoid that scenario, Nexsan first qualifies the 3 TB SATA HDDs that are deployed into its systems (E-Series and others) to mitigate the possibility of downtime. In this way, if it detects that HDDs from a specific vendor or of a specific model are not meeting its reliability or performance standards, it does not use that drive.
This qualification process has helped Nexsan to drive failure rates on its storage arrays to well below a half percent per year. Watson adds, "At .5 % data centers are not going to see any appreciable impact on their data center performance when rebuilds occur, if they see anything at all."
A second step that Nexsan took even before it introduced the 3 TB SATA HDDs was an upgrade in the architecture of the controllers used in the E-Series. Prior generations of HDDs also benefit from these upgrades. However these upgrades were specifically done in anticipation of the higher capacity and higher performing HDDs that Nexsan knew were coming down the pike.
These enhancements include:
A transition in the controller from an internal 64-bit PCI-X architecture to PCI Express (PCIe) GEN 2. This provides each device with its own bandwidth limit and eliminates the sharing of bandwidth between devices. The net result is better access and throughput to E-Series HDDs by applications.
Replacing DDR SDRAM with DDR3 SDRAM. This increases its memory bandwidth by about 2.5x which should result in overall application performance gains.
Re-engineering its ASIC used for RAID 5 and RAID 6 to improve RAID performance and rebuild times
It is this combination of E-Series new controller features, Nexsan's history of only using qualified enterprise drives and its inherent Active Drawer and Vibration Control technologies that should alleviate any user concerns they may have about deploying these new 3 TB drives in Nexsan E-Series. This combination of features should instead free them to capitalize on the higher density and improved performance that the E-Series storage arrays can deliver so they confidently use them in support of a widening range of applications. ]]>
Nexsan Emphasizes Mid-Market Focus with Launch of E-Series Storage Systemstag:nexsan.dcig.com,2011://39.19222011-03-03T11:00:00Z2011-03-03T11:00:00ZMany midsize companies are evolving operations to ensure business agility while at the same time seeking to better manage their IT related costs. This is leading them to re-prioritize selection criteria to focus on storage systems that help achieve these goals. Responding to these demands, Nexsan this week announced its new E-Series line of storage systems that promise efficient, easy-to-use and enterprise-class solutions in order to deliver a different kind of storage experience for these size organizations. Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com
announced its new E-Series line of storage systems that promise efficient, easy-to-use and enterprise-class solutions in order to deliver a different kind of storage experience for these size organizations.
Chief among IT concerns is leveraging storage to achieve higher levels of data center efficiency. However, it is unlikely they will first think of efficiency in the context of either "deduplication" or "thin provisioning." It is more likely they will think in terms of their immediate practical concerns like limited data center space, managing their continuing data growth and reducing overall operational costs.
IT staff who view "storage efficiency" in this context are then probably going to love the new E-series line of storage systems from Nexsan as they reflect Nexsan's heightened focus on delivering enterprise-class, easy-to-use and efficient storage solutions for the mid-market.
Mid-market enterprise IT staff tends to have very different responsibilities than IT staff in large organizations. In the mid-market their roles will span everything from server, network and storage to managing their IT budget, data center and staffing resources. As such they need technology solutions that improve their overall efficiency without requiring them to become either a subject matter expert or a system integrator.
Maximizing their organization's storage efficiency can be a particularly difficult objective to achieve. Aside from the fact there are over 100 midrange storage array models on the market, identifying a storage provider that provides solutions that match that organization's definition of "storage efficiency" can be akin to trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.
This is what should make the new E-Series storage systems from Nexsan particularly appealing to IT staff in the mid-market as it delivers "storage efficiency" in terms they understand.
The E-Series:
Efficiently uses storage space. The context in which Nexsan uses "storage efficiency" is how many disk drives can be fit in the smallest space possible. Mid-market data centers are often space constrained so the ability to put more disk drives in the same or less amount of space to keep up with their continuing data growth is a concept they understand. This is what the new Nexsan E18 and E60 accomplish. The E18 enables midsize enterprises to put up 18 drives in a 2U rack and can expand up to a maximum of 10.8 TBs per chassis while the E60 supports 60 drives in a 4U rack and will eventually expand out to 240 TBs.
Eliminates the need for additional IT staff. The E-series accomplish this in two ways. First, E-series models can generally be installed and operational in under an hour with some midsize enterprises reporting install times of less than 15 minutes. However the second larger concern for most is the ongoing support associated with midrange arrays and specifically the replacement of their failed hard drives.
RAID has for the most part pretty much eliminated the possibility of data loss but a lot of time and effort is still spent on replacing failed hard disk drives (HDDs.) Further, putting so many HDDs in such a compact space can contribute to an increased occurrence of HDD failures due to vibration from other drives.
However Nexsan in part accounts for this with its anti-vibration technology. Its anti-vibration technique is remarkable if no other reason than its simplicity. HDDs are placed in pairs into the E-Series with one drive seated one way and the other drive seated the other. By placing them in this manner, the vibrations of the two drives have the effect of helping to cancel each other out and reducing the frequency of HDD failures.
Putting this many HDDs in a drawer could also lead to overheating. To counter this Nexsan uses its Cool Drive Technology™ that keeps a steady airflow over all of these drives. It accomplishes this with a fan at the front of the drawer that draws air in and two fans that exhaust air out the back.
Even on the occasion when an HDD or fan does fail, Nexsan's Active Drawer Technology™ reduces the risk and effort associated with replacing them. Each chassis has three drawers which can each be independently removed by one person so either a fan or an HDD can be swapped out without downtime which becomes particularly important when you consider the amount of data a 60 drive chassis can hold.
Reduces operational costs. Continuing data growth means more storage and HDDs and more HDDs generally translate into increased power costs driven by keeping the HDDs powered on and keeping them cool. Nexsan's AutoMAID™ technology helps to minimize these concerns.
AutoMAID offers four user definable power saving settings so users can define how they want the E-Series set up so it is at the most power efficient setting for the data set residing on it. These setting are configurable by RAID set and includes options ranging from the lowest level of unloading the drive heads (25% power savings) to its newest and highest level, turning off the drive electronics (an 87% power savings.)
IT staff at mid-market enterprises recognize that for the most part they have neither the time nor the desire to become systems integrators or subject matter experts about their entire computing environment and least of all about their storage systems. They just need practical storage solutions that they understand, are cost-effective and make sense in their data centers. The new E-Series models from Nexsan with their enhanced storage and operational design deliver on those exact objectives. ]]>
One Company's Change in Storage Management Strategy to Support its Virtual Server Deployment Results in $7 Million in Savingstag:nexsan.dcig.com,2011://39.19052011-02-10T14:15:00Z2011-02-10T14:15:00ZThe topic as to what storage management features organizations really need on a storage array continues to be a hotly debated. In the last decade, we have seen a multitude of features propagate on storage arrays including disk striping, thin provisioning, and storage tiering just to name a few. But deciding which of these features are "nice-to-haves" and which ones are really "needed" in a virtual operating environment (VOE) becomes very difficult to make without a close examination of one's environment.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.comreally need on a storage array continues to be a hotly debated. In the last decade, we have seen a multitude of features propagate on storage arrays including disk striping, thin provisioning, and storage tiering just to name a few. But deciding which of these features are "nice-to-haves" and which ones are really "needed" in a virtual operating environment (VOE) becomes very difficult to make without a close examination of one's environment.
There is little argument that something needs to be done in the area of improving storage utilization in today's enterprise environments. Even now in 2011 many organizations still find that up to 70% of their storage capacity on their storage arrays is misallocated or underutilized.
By way of example, a storage architect recently told me that he agreed to a request from his neighbor to do "a little talk" with the storage team at the company at which his neighbor works. It was only after arriving at the company that he discovered the audience for his "little talk" encompassed everyone from the CIO down to the storage administrators.
But in talking with them he found out that this company was on a trajectory to spend $14 million over the next five years on storage. Further, once he understood what storage they intended to buy and how they intended to manage it, he estimated that he could help them save millions of dollars if they considered an alternative storage management strategy.
Needless to say, when he said he could "help them save millions of dollars," that got the CIO's attention and led to him being awarded a consulting gig. By the time he completed the job he ended up saving them nearly $7 million over that same five year period.
But what is important to emphasize here is that his plan for this company involved more than just the company buying storage from an alternative vendor. It called for the company to completely change how it managed its storage infrastructure as well as re-examine what features it needed on its storage arrays.
In this particular case, the company took a two-pronged approach to eliminate its storage misallocation and improve its storage utilization in order to drive down costs. Notably, this approach did not call for it to buy newer storage array with the latest and greatest features. Rather, it was just the opposite.
Instead of purchasing storage arrays that offer features like thin provisioning and storage tiering, it purchased Symantec's Veritas Operations Manager, Storage Foundation and storage resource management software that was installed on all of its servers.
Veritas Storage Foundation was acquired to improve the company's utilization efficiency while Symantec's Veritas CommandCentral Storage was purchased to manage its misallocated storage. All of this company's storage was then brought under the control of Veritas Operations Manager.
The net result of this decision was that the company discovered that up to 80% of its storage capacity was being wasted and could be returned to the free pool. This storage reclamation eliminated the need for it to buy additional tier 1 storage capacity as it now had sufficient storage capacity to meet its needs.
Further, because Storage Foundation offered features like thin provisioning, replication, migration and storage tiering, the company was able to use those features across all of its application servers and did not need to purchase storage arrays that offered these features.
Having now solved this company's immediate problem of a perceived shortage of storage capacity, it freed up time for them to quantify and understand exactly what features the company needed on its storage arrays going forward.
Together they examined today's newest storage array management features (thin provisioning, storage tiering, etc.) and then mapped out which of these features the company really needed to meet its application requirements as opposed to what features it thought it needed.
The end result was that they determined the features that the company really needed on its storage arrays were ones that have come to be historically associated with storage arrays such as their availability, performance and reliability. However it also found it needed built-in management features that integrate with the virtualization hypervisors to reduce management complexity in their emerging virtualized environment.
By establishing these as the primary features that it needed a storage array to offer, the company opted to use Nexsan's SASBeast and SATABeast storage arrays. In this case, it found that Nexsan provided the features that it really needed on a storage array at a much lower price than competitive products.
Establishing exactly what features should be included on a storage array is likely going to be different for every company and every environment. But what should be the same at every company is taking the time to establish exactly what storage management features are needed and where those features are best implemented.
In so doing companies will likely find they can achieve what this company accomplished: they can drive up their storage utilization; drive down wasted capacity that results from misallocation; drive down storage costs; and, in the process, make their storage infrastructure easier to manage. ]]>
The Three Characteristics of an Operationally Efficient Enterprise Midrange Arraytag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2010://39.16552010-07-12T10:00:00Z2010-07-12T10:00:00ZAs the economy continues to sputter, all size organizations remain prudent in their storage buying decisions which is leading them to examine enterprise midrange arrays from multiple storage providers. But to make the right choice requires that organizations look beyond obvious points of comparison such as the enterprise midrange array's price and performance to the features that make it operationally efficient.
Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com Choosing between enterprise midrange arrays is one of the more difficult purchasing decisions that organizations have to make. Just coming up with a short list of products from the many midrange arrays that are available takes some time and effort unless they use some type of Midrange Array Buyer's Guide. (Download a free copy of such a guide at this link.)
Those organizations that make this investment in time and research will often find that enterprise midrange arrays from challengers such as Nexsan provide solutions that are superior to arrays offered by the incumbent. However this does not mean that the decision making process is over as the real battle occurs when it comes time to make a purchase.
As organizations get the final bids, the initial technical and even financial advantages that a solution such as the Nexsan DATABeast offers can be minimized by an incumbent who seeks to maintain its hold on the customer account. So a common tactic of the incumbent is to drop the price of its storage array so it equals or is even below that of the DATABeast.
It is when this situation arises that an organization needs to go the extra mile and look at how operationally efficient each midrange enterprise array is. This step is critical because if an organization is serious about driving costs out of its infrastructure, only by determining how operationally efficient each enterprise midrange array model is will the organization realize the maximum set of cost saving benefits.
This is easier said than done. Terms and phrases like "reliable", "easy to manage", and "easy to maintain" are tossed around all the time. However converting those clichés into tangible savings that are reflected in the bottom line is not so easy.
So while there is no magic formula for accomplishing this, guidelines do exist that organizations can follow so they can identify what features matter and begin to quantify the savings they might realize. Specifically, there are three characteristics that an operationally efficient enterprise midrange array will possess that will contribute to keeping its long term management and maintenance costs to a minimum.
Energy Efficient. No storage vendor is ever going to say that its product wastes energy but there are distinct differences in how efficiently enterprise midrange arrays use energy.
A good example is Nexsan's storage arrays. They already distinguish themselves from many other midrange arrays as they are among the 1/3 of midrange arrays that offer MAID support. However it further separates itself from its peers with its AutoMAID technology. AutoMAID has not one power saving setting but three which it enables it to spin down hard disk drives (HDDs) so Nexsan arrays conserve energy while mitigating the potential impact to applications.
Space Efficient. Enterprise midrange enterprise arrays can scale up to the hundreds of terabytes if not into the petabytes so the possibility exists that a single midrange enterprise array can have hundreds of HDDs within it. But whether the array scales to 20 or 200 HDDs, organizations are looking to minimize the footprint that these HDDs consume in their infrastructure without compromising the HDD's cooling, longevity or serviceability features.
Nexsan designs all of its arrays so that the maximum number of HDDs can be installed on a single shelf without compromising their stability, the ability of the system to cool them or the ability for technicians to service and replace HDDs within each array.
Cost Efficient. When making a buying decision, it is easy to just look at the upfront purchase price. However there are other costs that are all part of the total cost of owning and managing the midrange enterprise array.
Energy consumption and time spent managing the servicing of the components of the array (hardware and software upgrades as well as replacing failed or failing HDDs) are costs that surface over time and can add significantly to the cost and risk associated with day-to-day management of the array.
Nexsan with its MAID technology helps to minimize the day-to-day energy costs. Further, its use of enterprise quality SATA drives and the availability of Active-Active controllers for its midrange enterprise arrays contribute to minimizing the ongoing costs associated with managing its arrays.
The global economic situation is forcing organizations to look for vendors that provide more cost-effective storage solutions. What they are finding is solutions that are both more economical and feature rich. But when they go to pull the trigger to buy these new storage solutions, incumbents drop their prices in order to compete and maintain their presence in the account.
When this occurs, organizations need to switch their focus from the capital expenditure (since the upfront cost may now be approximately the same) to look at the ongoing operational cost associated with managing these arrays over the long haul. As they do, they will find that storage solutions from challengers such as Nexsan offer more than just competitive prices and superior technical features but also possess the features that make them more operationally efficient over time.
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Nexsan DATABeast Proves that There can be Storage Change that Lowers Organizational Risktag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2010://39.15562010-06-22T10:00:00Z2010-06-22T10:00:00ZSelecting a storage system from someone other than the incumbent historically has been a decision that most IT managers are reluctant to make. A 2008 Forrester Research report highlights this reticence as it found that over 80% of organizations bought all of their storage from only one storage provider. But times change and new storage systems such as the Nexsan DATABeast are demonstrating that IT managers can make a change in their storage system provider.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com
report highlights this reticence as it found that over 80% of organizations bought all of their storage from only one storage provider. But times change and new storage systems such as the Nexsan DATABeast are demonstrating that IT managers can make a change in their storage system provider that delivers more features while lowering both their organization's costs and risks.
As a former storage engineer within a Fortune 500 organization, I know how hard it is to make a decision to change storage providers. Sure, you might not be happy with your current storage provider but, as the proverb goes, "Better the Devil you know than the Devil you don't."
It is for that reason that IT managers are likely NOT to select an alternative storage provider based solely on the price of its storage system. A June 2009 Gartner survey of German firms found that "German organizations gave preference to reputation, technical capability and relationship with the vendor over price as even in difficult times low bid prices were the least preferred strategy in Germany."
While that survey was done in Germany, my sense is that mindset applies equally to IT managers in the US and their counterparts around the world. Cost is an important factor when making a decision but storage is such a critical part of the infrastructure and has so many features and functions that cost alone cannot be the only factor in the decision making process.
Automated storage tiering, Ethernet and FC interfaces, MAID, non-disruptive microcode upgrades, operating system support, replication (asynchronous or synchronous), thin provisioning and total storage capacity are just some of the many hardware and software features that are factored in when making a storage system buying decision. Ignoring or overlooking any of them means that an organization might be unnecessarily and unwittingly exposing itself to risks within its environment.
However that same Gartner survey found that when all of those features are there, organizations will change. "Advanced technology to improve storage utilization was the main attribute that would cause a German organization to switch storage vendors in 2009. This should not come as a surprise, because it is a technology that not only makes it easier to manage storage resources, but also helps to cut storage costs."
Organizations are under more pressure than ever to achieve what I referred to in a previous blog entry as riskless storage efficiency. That is why the IT managers with which Gartner spoke are willing to look outside of the box at new and more innovative solutions.
Incumbent storage providers no longer have a lock on providing the hardware and software features on storage systems that users need. As DCIG recently discovered in its 2010 Midrange Array Buyer's Guide, up and comers such as the Nexsan DATABeast have MORE features and a WIDER breadth of functionality than storage providers that are considered the "incumbents".
Further, in discussions with Nexsan, it tells me that the DATABeast ranking can cost much less than its competitors (sometimes up to half of their MSRP) while providing the same amount of storage capacity as its competitors.
This puts IT managers in a predicament. While they can certainly hide behind the skirts of the incumbent storage vendor, their justifications as to why they are staying with the incumbent storage vendor are bound to ring hollow in their management's ears.
No longer can they point to the incumbent as having more features or being a safer bet which is why their organization should pay more for it. Rather, staying with the incumbent becomes the riskier choice as it costs more and has less features and functionality. Conversely switching to the Nexsan DATABeast becomes the more economical and, maybe more importantly, the less risky choice.
IT managers are all about avoiding risk which is a big reason that a large percentage of them stick with incumbent vendors in good times and bad and especially when it comes time to select a storage system. But the 2010 DCIG Midrange Array Buyer's Guide highlights that a storage system such as the Nexsan DATABeast with its lower costs and hardware and software features is a better solution than what the incumbents offer.
It is for reasons like this that IT managers no longer have to feel beholden to selecting the incumbent solution just because they are comfortable with it and it theoretically represents a less risky choice. DCIG has found that the Nexsan DATABeast with its better features and lower prices is also the safer choice. ]]>
Riskless Storage Efficiency: What It Is and Why IT Managers Need to Deliver on Ittag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2010://39.13662010-04-28T10:00:00Z2010-04-28T10:00:00ZOver the next few years IT managers face entirely new sets of challenges when it comes to managing storage. These challenges go well beyond just buying enough storage capacity to keep up with data growth. Instead IT managers need to come up with entirely new storage management strategies that enable them to more effectively and efficiently manage storage such that they can meet their application requirements while at the same time keeping their costs and risks in check.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com It is no secret that organizations year-over-year manage increasing amounts of data with annual growth rates reaching 40, 60 or even 100% or more. However the data of today and the storage that is needed to support it stands in marked contrast to the past. These differences include:
70 - 90% of the data that organizations now manage is inactive data.
Power is becoming scarce in some parts of the country with one recent survey finding that as many as 64% of respondents could run out of power by 2011
Organizations across the country are becoming more aware of the cost of energy as well as its environmental impact
Downtime to perform system maintenance is becoming a thing of the past as more applications must operate 24x7 driven by today's always-on Internet world
IT budgets and staffing levels are expected to remain flat throughout 2010 so organizations have to find ways to achieve higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness with the same amount of resources and people
Unemployment remains high (9.7% as of end of March 2010) which makes people understandably cautious about taking any risks that might put their job in jeopardy
This is the conundrum that today's IT managers face. They need to identify technologies that put them on a course toward delivering on riskless storage efficiency such that they and their organizations can become even more efficient in storage management without introducing unacceptable levels of risk into the organization.
On the surface, one might almost think that because the percentage of inactive data is so high that it would actually make the IT manager's job easier. They can in theory just deploy storage systems with SATA drives that would solve their storage capacity problems. While this approach might be economical and provides ample storage capacity, it fails to take into account users concerns such as automation, power efficiency, performance and, maybe most importantly, risk.
IT managers do not always know exactly what production data is active, the time periods during the day when it is active or even exactly on which volumes this active data resides. As a result, they end up over architecting their storage infrastructure such that it consists of high performance storage that meets the demands of their most active data even though it is only a fraction of the total amount of data that they manage.
To overcome this, they need to identify new storage technologies that:
Put the right data on the right tier of disk at the right time
Minimize upfront costs and keep costs down over the life of the technology
Efficiently use power without negatively impacting application performance
Leverage automation and policies to reduce manpower requirements
Facilitate their risk free introduction into organizations
The AutoMAID feature found on Nexsan's storage arrays is one such example of a technology that organizations can leverage as they look to start down this path towards achieving riskless storage efficiency.
In the case of AutoMAID, it provides three different power-saving settings for each disk drive in the system and monitors each drive such that it can operate at a power and performance level that is appropriate for the data stored on it. Further, these drives are both monitored and controlled by policies such that it can automatically go to the appropriate power mode or performance level to meet application demands.
Today's data and storage management requirements clearly bear some resemblances to the past. However there are also new, unique characteristics that require new storage system features to meet the new organizational requirement of riskless storage efficiency. In a forthcoming blog, I will take a deeper look at what components are foundational to delivering on this new concept. ]]>
Nexsan Refreshes Dedupe SG to Address Next Gen SME Disk-based Backup Complexitytag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2010://39.12422010-01-27T11:00:00Z2010-01-27T11:00:00ZI have heard it said that you cannot compare the complexity found in small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) to what is found in the "really big" enterprise shops. That is certainly true in some cases but when one starts to examine the complexity associated with backing up, recovering and managing data at the dozens of branch offices that many SMEs support, it equates to any challenge that large enterprises face. However it is this exact complexity that the new features on the Nexsan Dedupe SG 2.0 are designed to address.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com
Dedupe SG 2.0 are designed to address.
As SMEs transition from using tape to disk as a primary backup target in their remote and branch offices, they quickly find out that using disk as a backup target is easier said than done. While it solves their day-to-day backup and recovery problems, new levels of complexity await, especially as it pertains to managing the solution and ensuring that it meets new demands for power, space and cost efficiency. These requirements include:
Appropriately sizing the storage capacity of the backup target at each site
Replicating the backup data to a central data center
Controlling what data is replicated
Scheduling when this replication occurs
Ensuring the solution maintains constant availability
No silver bullet may exist that hits on all of these challenges but the Nexsan Dedupe SG 2.0 comes pretty close to doing so. The Nexsan Dedupe SG 2.0, which leverages version 2.0 of FalconStor's File-interface Deduplication System (FDS) as it deduplication engine, combines the new features found in FDS with its wide arrange of storage models and focus on delivering highly efficient storage systems to better tackle this next generation of disk-based backup challenges.
Since remote and branch offices each contain varying amounts of data to backup, Nexsan offers seven (7) different Dedupe SG models. Each one includes the new FDS 2.0 software though they come with different size storage repositories and optional 10 GbE interfaces.
The smallest unit, the DDSG-4, supports up to 80 TBs of logical data capacity (assuming a 20:1 deduplication factor) and is intended for use in the smallest of remote offices. At the other end of the spectrum, the DDSG-72 can scale up to 1.4 PBs of deduplicated data which puts it in the realm of enterprise solutions.
This range of Nexsan models gives organizations the option to place an appropriately sized appliance in each of their offices. Once in place, they can leverage the new features found in FDS 2.0 to address this aforementioned issues that disk-based backup creates.
For instance, one new feature that FalconStor added to FDS 2.0 was to increase its replication fan-in ratio from 32:1 to 150:1. This gives organizations using the Nexsan Dedupe SG 2.0 the flexibility to deploy appropriately sized SG models at their remote offices as backup targets and then replicate that data back to a larger Dedupe SG 2.0 model (say, the 26, 52, or 72 models) in the home office.
Another new feature that Dedupe SG 2.0 brings to the table is the ability to better control what data is replicated and when. It does this in a few ways. First, the Dedupe SG 2.0 can now globally deduplicate data so only new unique deduplicated chunks of data at remote sites are replicated back to the central site. This minimizes the amount of data sent which in turn decreases the amount of bandwidth that organizations need for replicating data to their remote site.
Second, Dedupe SG 2.0 users can select which files and/or folders that they want to replicate. It is conceivable and quite probable that all of the data backed up at a remote site will not need to be replicated back to a central data center. Using the new policy features found in Dedupe SG 2.0, users can optionally control at a very granular level which data at a remote site get replicated back to the central data center. In so doing, this can further save on network bandwidth requirements and minimize the size of the Dedupe SG 2.0 appliance needed at the main data center.
Third, Dedupe SG 2.0 now includes support for the NetBackup OpenStorage API (OST) protocol. While it is unlikely many remote offices use NetBackup, many do use Backup Exec. Since Symantec earlier this week announced support for OST in Backup Exec 2010, this will eventually make it possible for users to leverage either Backup Exec or NetBackup as the tool to set and manage these replication policies.
A final feature that Dedupe SG 2.0 brings to the table is high availability (HA). While HA is available on any Dedupe SG 2.0 model, one would expect users to select this option and deploy it in conjunction with the models that are located in their central data center to ensure it is constantly available as a target for backup and replication as well as a source for recovery.
The Nexsan Dedupe SG 2.0 continues to bring forward all of the features for which Nexsan's storage systems are historically known for - energy efficiency, space efficiency and high levels of reliability. But now coupled with the powerful new features found in FDS, the Nexsan Dedupe SG 2.0 clearly is well-positioned to address and solve these complex issues that next generation disk-based backup introduces and which many SMEs face. ]]>
COPAN Rumored to be Gone but MAID is Alive and Welltag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2009://39.12082009-12-10T11:00:00Z2009-12-10T11:00:00ZThe rumored closing of COPAN Systems in early December 2009 raised a few alarm bells around the storage industry. However it was not COPAN Systems' demise that was the main cause of concern as its impending doom has been rumored for some time. Rather it is question of whether of not the MAID technology that COPAN largely succeeded in making its signature feature will die along with COPAN. After all, if COPAN cannot make a go of MAID technology in this übergreen corporate environment, who can and under what circumstances?Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com
COPAN Systems in early December 2009 raised a few alarm bells around the storage industry. However it was not COPAN Systems' demise that was the main cause of concern as its impending doom has been rumored for some time. Rather it is question of whether of not the MAID technology that COPAN largely succeeded in making its signature feature will die along with COPAN. After all, if COPAN cannot make a go of MAID technology in this übergreen corporate environment, who can and under what circumstances?
It is still difficult to find a definitive formal statement that confirms COPAN's demise. However its closure has been authoritatively blogged about by Bill Mottram, a managing partner at Veridictus Associates and calls that DCIG put into COPAN during business hours have gone directly to a voice mailbox with no return phone calls. Further, a look at the LinkedIn profiles of COPAN employees shows them listing "December 2009" as their date of last employment.
Still it is somewhat unexpected when COPAN, with its "right place, right time" MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology, declares it quits. After all, organizations are more socially responsible than ever, want an economical means to keep continually growing amounts of archival and backup data on disk and then deduplicate it. Plus going forward organizations will face even more pressure to more efficiently and effectively manage storage in their data centers going forward.
In December 2006, Congress passed Public Law 109-431 that instructed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to prepare and report on the use of energy in data centers now and into the future. The resulting EPA report found that 50% of all data centers will be unable to buy any additional power by 2012because of the lack of new available power.
So one would think that this combination of internal and external forces would push organizations to adopt MAID technology sooner rather than later. Yet here I am writing about COPAN's demise. So what gives with COPAN? Two plausible theories have surfaced.
First, in the Mottram blog, he postulated that COPAN was strong in its implementation of MAID but failed to grow its ecosystem of application partners that could take advantage of MAID. Mottram says, "This made it difficult for end-users to understand how to apply MAID technology in such as way as to help them meet their data center challenges."
Second, despite COPAN's strong implementation of MAID, one of its little known idiosyncrasies was that it only allowed for 25% of the drives in its array to be powered on at any given time. While on the surface this sounds acceptable, this percentage was too low and resulted in unacceptable application wait times as applications waited for powered down drives to spin up.
COPAN for the most part used a first generation iteration of MAID that met the high capacity and low cost definition of Tier 3 data storage solution. In this form, COPAN was more than adequate for long term monthly or yearly full backups, long term archives or where data is known to only require infrequent access.
However, this implementation of MAID is not reflective of how most corporate applications operated. As a result, it was only suited for a small set of applications that could deal with COPAN's "power-up" latency. This left COPAN in a predicament where it worked well in only a very few customer environments which contributed to its collapse.
So does COPAN's failure mean either the end of MAID or negate its value proposition? It does not. But the lesson one needs to take away from COPAN's demise is this: "Saving energy is vital but most organizations cannot sacrifice application performance to achieve this ideal."
Clearly what needed to occur in COPAN's case is that it needed to update its implementation of MAID on its disk libraries in order to meet customer demands. In COPAN's case, it did not so it is gone. However MAID as a technology has evolved and matured such that second generation implementations of MAID in the form of MAID 2.0 now exist.
A prime example of this is the AutoMAID technology available from Nexsan Technologies. In its MAID 2.0 implementation, AutoMAID allows 100% of the drives in a Nexsan storage system to operate at full power. This eliminates the inordinate response time delays caused by the "power up" design inherent in MAID 1.0 implementations.
MAID 2.0 implementations also provide more levels of energy savings than just the "On" or "Off" power settings found in MAID 1.0 implementations. In the case of Nexsan's AutoMAID, it offers three settings:
Heads are unloaded which results in a 15 to 20% savings in energy while still providing sub-second recovery time for the 1st I/O and full speed for all subsequent I/Os.
Heads are unloaded and drives slow to 4000 RPMs which resulting in 35 to 45% savings in energy with 15 second recovery time for the 1st I/O and full speed for all subsequent I/Os.
The disk stops spinning which results in a 60 - 70% savings in energy and 30 - 45 second recovery time for the 1st I/O and full speed for all subsequent I/Os.
Maybe most important to organizations, they can set policies within AutoMAID on the Nexsan systems for specific disks so that disks do not spin down unexpectedly for specific applications. However because of the relatively rapid response times that these different settings within AutoMAID provide and its ability to control when disks spin down and back up, organizations can use it for nearly any application, not just archive and backup.
In fact, about the only instance where organizations may not want to turn on one of the three levels of AutoMAID's energy saving features is a high performance application that runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week which is usually only a small percentage (10% or less) of an organization's total number of applications.
COPAN is rumored to be gone but that does not mean organizations should write-off MAID technology as well. MAID 2.0 is better architected to meet the needs of today's application and business requirements without presenting the same application performance risks that MAID 1.0 presented. By providing policies and differing levels of energy savings such as what Nexsan's AutoMAID provides, organizations can more confidently deploy it even for production applications as it can satisfy those performance needs while still enabling organizations to meet today's and tomorrow's concerns about social responsibility and power conservation. ]]>
End Users Share Their Criteria as to What Constitutes a Highly Efficient Storage Systemtag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2009://39.11862009-11-12T11:00:00Z2009-11-12T11:00:00Z"Efficient" is now a term that is used to by storage providers to describe their disk storage systems. But a recent internal survey conducted by Nexsan Technologies among its end users revealed that the way they view "efficient" storage is not necessarily how either providers or industry pundits define it.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com
Nexsan Technologies among its end users revealed that the way they view "efficient" storage is not necessarily how either providers or industry pundits define it. So to get its arms around how its customers differentiated between "efficient" and "highly efficient" storage systems, Nexsan had further discussions with its customer base to understand the criteria that they used to arrive at their definition.
Nexsan's motivation for conducting a 3rd party independent survey did not initially start with Nexsan trying to define the term "efficient". Instead, it was trying to understand what was prompting its customers to first buy Nexsan storage systems and then why they continued to buy them.
But during the course of the interviews with its customers, a trend began to emerge. Customers frequently referred to Nexsan's storage systems as "efficient" as a reason why they initially bought them and then continued to buy them.
But Nexsan found this description of its storage systems as "efficient" as a nebulous answer since no industry standards or agreed upon definition exists for this term. So Nexsan went back to its customers to document exactly what they meant by the term "highly efficient". It found that its customers defined a storage system as "highly efficient" when it possessed three principle attributes:
Power efficient. A disk storage system has to minimize the amount of energy that it pulls or consumes in two ways for it to be viewed as "power efficient". First, the storage system needs to automatically spin down disk drives that are infrequently used or unused. Second, the storage system itself must be energy efficient. For instance, it should include lower wattage controllers. It also should include components that maximize efficiency such as properly placed fans and fan controls that increase or decrease fan speeds according to the ambient temperature in the storage unit.
Space efficient. Space efficient storage systems have historically been a strength of Nexsan but feedback from its customers helped Nexsan better grasp what their customers meant by "space efficient". The definition of "space efficient" came down to how many hard disk drives (HDDs) a storage system could fit into 1U (1.75"H x 19" W x 36.5" D) of rack space.
The distinction for their customers came when they were looking at 14, 15 or 16 drive systems that in many cases required 3Us of rack space. In their minds, 5 HDDs per 1U were not what they defined as a highly dense or space efficient storage system.
It was only when the storage system supported 10 drives or better in1U of rack space that their customers classified a storage system as "high density" or "space efficient".
Cost efficient. Nexsan's customers were not necessarily looking for the cheapest or most expensive storage system in the market. Instead, they were looking for a storage system that had a price point that reflected a good balance between its hardware (storage capacity, controllers) and software features (RAID, replication, management software, etc.).
Among Nexsan's customers, the storage system did not necessarily need to have a lot of software features on it for them to consider it "cost efficient". In fact, its customers viewed those storage providers that had to add a lot of software to their storage systems to make "efficient" as a negative. Their customers felt that adding a bunch of software onto a box contributed to making the price per TB very expensive and was a cost they passed on down to their customers. This was counter intuitive from the customers' perspective and did not really meet their definition of "cost efficient".
Nebulous definitions of widely used industry standard terms plague many industries and it is no different in the storage industry. However, this recent survey and feedback from Nexsan's customer base gives the storage industry a meaningful and measurable way to define what constitutes a "highly efficient storage system". As these users clearly communicated, it is disingenuous to simply sell them a storage system that includes more shrink wrapped software which the storage provider then uses to justify calling its storage system "efficient".
Users are starting to see through these fuzzy definitions of "efficient" and instead are coming up with their own definitions of what constitutes a "highly efficient storage system". As they do, they are finding that terms like "power", "space" and "cost" are integral to what they define and view as "highly efficient storage" and are finding that storage systems such as the Nexsan SATABeast are well aligned with these definitions. ]]>
Next Generation Deduplication Platform Delivers on Promise of Green IT with Operational Savingstag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2009://39.11482009-10-01T10:00:00Z2009-10-01T10:00:00ZSeptember and October are the traditional months that many midsize businesses start to
forecast what projects they hope to accomplish in the upcoming year and then put together
budgets in support of those plans. Projects currently being given the highest priority are
those that are power efficient, space efficient and cost efficient to meet organizational "Green" initiatives.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com
forecast what projects they hope to accomplish in the upcoming year and then put together budgets in support of those plans. Projects currently being given the highest priority are those that are power efficient, space efficient and cost efficient to meet organizational "Green" initiatives.
While data deduplication is gaining increasing consideration in meeting these challenges, it is next-generation power managed deduplication that is poised to increase overall operational savings for organizations with Intelligent Power Management (IPM), energy-optimized hardware architecture and maximum system density to reduce energy-related system and datacenter costs. A deduplicating disk-based storage system is one such initiative that many organizations are planning on for 2010 and doing their due diligence to select the right deduplicating system.
A January 2008 ESG Research Report, Data Protection Market Trends, that was cited in another ESG brief found that the 364 individuals it surveyed expected 48% of their organization's onsite backup data to be stored on an external disk-based storage system by 2010. While 2010 is just around the corner, anecdotal evidence that DCIG has collected from its conversations with IT end-users and consultants indicate that this estimate may even be a bit conservative.
However what this survey probably did not and could not fully take into account was the growing importance of "Green" initiatives within organizations. While deduplication is a "Green" technology in the sense that it reduces the amount of disk capacity that organizations need, the economic crisis that occurred in late 2008 and that is persisting in 2009 has put an even greater emphasis on minimizing ongoing operational expenses that are a mandate with well-engineered green IT products.
This is supported by a May 2009 Green IT report released by Symantec that was performed by Applied Research. Applied Research found that among the 426 companies it surveyed in North America, 90% of these companies spent 6% or more of their data center budget on electricity with 19% of them spending over half of their data center budgets on electricity.
These are the challenges that businesses are encountering as they look to introduce disk as a backup target into their data centers. Disk-based storage systems can certainly solve corporate backup problems and improve employee productivity. However, unless IT selects a system that integrates next-generation green technologies such Intelligent Power Management across power optimized hardware and high-density packaging that consolidates energy-draining electrical components along with data deduplication - the promise of Green IT will fall short.
Granted, deduplicating backup data helps since it requires less disk capacity and power than storage systems that do not deduplicate data at all. However what organizations also need to factor in when selecting a system is how much power hard disk drives (HDDs) in the storage system consume during off-peak backup hours. Since backups may only run 6, 8 or 12 hours at most, HDDs in these systems only need to be spun up during these peak backup hours.
Power Managed Deduplication that spins HDDs down during periods of reduced system access is one of the key features that the Nexsan DeDupe SG brings to the table and which helps to differentiate it from competitive offerings. It is like some other products in that it offers the FalconStor File-interface Deduplication System (FDS) as its deduplication engine. However the Nexsan DeDupe SG differentiates itself from other systems by leveraging AutoMAID Intelligent Power Management across an energy reducing hardware platform as part of the total deduplication solution.
By activating Nexsan's AutoMAID feature, when HDDs are not actively receiving and deduplicating backup data, the Nexsan DeDupe SG spins these drives down so they consume less power during periods of reduced data access. Not only does this save energy but the design also reduces system wear and tear to significantly extend the life of the HDDs themselves, reducing administrative overhead.
Many organizations are starting to look ahead and budget for 2010 and implementing disk as part of their backup strategy is on the short list of many organizations. The good and bad news is that there are more deduplicating disk-based storage systems than ever before from which to choose.
To make the best choice in leveraging 'Green Storage', products that go beyond deduplication to compound savings with power-managed, high-density hardware in addition to a solid deduplication core address multiple areas in operational cost savings. In addition to system power savings, new products in this area also reduce data center space requirements, cooling, and management overhead.
Selecting systems with a richer feature set in these areas increase the chances for deduplication success, supporting IT in addressing overall operational efficiency. In that respect, the combination of features (high-density energy optimized hardware platform, deduplication and AutoMAID Intelligent Power Management) that are found on the Nexsan DeDupe SG should be spot-on in helping IT managers respond to these executive concerns and delivering the business value that organizations want from their IT departments. ]]>
Nexsan Dedupe SG Gives Resellers Much Needed New Choice in Mid-Market Deduplication Systemstag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2009://39.11022009-08-12T10:00:00Z2009-08-12T10:00:00ZYesterday's announcement of the new Nexsan DeDupe SG solution should particularly appeal to current resellers. As a company, Nexsan already has a solid reputation as a storage system provider, is experiencing steady growth and was on track to do an IPO last year before last fall's stock market decline. But maybe more attractive to resellers, Nexsan sells 100% of its product through the channel.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.com Resellers that are already part of EMC's channel are probably in better shape than those that are not. As an independent hardware provider, Data Domain's product could be more readily resold by any reseller regardless of what other products it offered. Now that EMC has direct control of Data Domain, the future of Data Domain's channel program is hazy at best.
As such, it is only logical to assume that EMC will bend towards favoring current and prospective EMC channel partners in whatever final arrangement is announced. So for Data Domain resellers that are aligned with EMC's competitors, now is the time to explore other available options before EMC cuts them off and they no longer have a deduplication solution to sell to their customers.
In assessing what options are available to them, they should look for some of the same characteristics in a new solution that originally attracted them to Data Domain in the first place. These features include:
Turnkey deployments in customer environments. The appeal of data deduplication systems is they can directly plug these systems directly into their customers' existing networks. The systems should look and act like file servers so setup times are minimal and backup software knows how to manage them.
Mature data deduplication software. Neither you nor your customers are going to want a "new" data deduplication solution that is untested in the field. This prerequisite shortens the list of companies you can work reasonably expect to look at as an alternative to Data Domain.
100% channel focused. Nothing is more frustrating than to go through the entire sales process and get close to closing the deal with a customer than to have the manufacturer of the product by-pass you and sell directly to the customer. Equally frustrating, you do not want a product that you are reselling also available from an online website at a cut rate price.
A single point of contact. A key for any successful reseller is to avoid getting trapped in support issues. Selling a data deduplication solution that includes products from multiple vendors can put you on the spot to support it. To avoid that, you need a solution from a provider that also can meet your support needs.
It is for these four reasons that yesterday's announcement of the new Nexsan DeDupe SG solution should particularly appeal to current resellers. As a company, Nexsan already has a solid reputation as a storage system provider, is experiencing steady growth and was on track to do an IPO last year before last fall's stock market decline. But maybe more attractive to resellers, Nexsan sells 100% of its product through the channel.
The addition of DeDupe SG to Nexsan's storage portfolio should also make Nexsan more interesting from a reseller perspective. Right now the sales cycles for selling deduplication systems is likely much shorter (and potentially more profitable) than production storage systems. As such, resellers can now lead with the DeDupe SG in customer accounts with a higher expectation of success of a sale in a shorter time period.
In terms of bringing the DeDupe SG to market, Nexsan smartly partnered with FalconStor. This negated the need for Nexsan to develop its own data deduplication software while leveraging the data deduplication software that FalconStor sells and has sold for some time. While Nexsan is only including FalconStor's file server version of the software on the current DeDupe SG release, there is nothing to prevent it from bundling other FalconStor software at some point in the future.
Maybe the most important move Nexsan made was to bundle support for the DeDupe SG's hardware and software. So if there is an issue with the appliance, all support calls go first and to Nexsan and then it manages the support of the issue regardless if it is the hardware or the software.
Nexsan also brings some features on the hardware side to the table that helps to differentiate it from being just a "me-too" storage solution on the backend. The "SG" in the "DeDupe SG" stands for "Speed with Green". While other hardware solutions can also arguably deliver speed, the "green" aspect is what makes Nexsan's part of this solution stand out.
High density and its AutoMAID feature are included on all of Nexsan's storage systems. The high density feature keeps data center footprints to a minimum day one without compromising the reliability or integrity of the deduplicated data stored on them.
The AutoMAID feature comes into play since backups occur primarily at night and disk drives may be needed for only 8 hours a day or less. By turning on AutoMAID, drives can be spun down during off hours. This reduces power and cooling costs while extending the life of the disk drives in the Nexsan system.
Data Domain's recent acquisition by EMC has left a void that a number of resellers are anxious to fill in their product portfolios. However rushing into a decision or making the wrong decision is regards to data deduplication is something they cannot afford either.
In that sense, the new co-branded DeDupe SG from Nexsan and FalconStor is clearly a "right time, right place" solution. Nexsan delivers a solution that has all of the characteristics of a "best-of-breed" solution without some of the typical drawbacks that accompany them. By bundling hardware, software and support and configuring the software in such a way that it meets the needs of the mid-market, the Nexsan DeDupe SG should be a logical choice for any reseller to consider on its short list as a data deduplication offering. ]]>
The Hidden Costs of Unreliable Disk Drives; The Dirty Little Secrets of Managing RAID Storagetag:nexsan.dciginc.com,2009://39.8982009-06-05T10:00:00Z2009-06-05T10:00:00ZIt is only after organizations start to deploy storage systems with SATA HDDs that they really start to focus on the reliability of SATA HDDs. While it is unlikely they will lose any data regardless of whose system they deploy, the amount of time that their IT staff spends and resulting operational expense in managing the replacement of failed SATA HDDs can and will vary widely according to which storage system they select. It is only by selecting SATA storage systems that specifically account for the idiosyncrasies of SATA HDDs that organizations can both protect their data and not have to deal with headaches of constantly replacing failed SATA HDDs.Jerome M. Wendthttp://www.dciginc.comthe amount of time that their IT staff spends and resulting operational expense in managing the replacement of failed SATA HDDs can and will vary widely according to which storage system they select. It is only by selecting SATA storage systems that specifically account for the idiosyncrasies of SATA HDDs that organizations can both protect their data and not have to deal with headaches of constantly replacing failed SATA HDDs.
Organizations are storing more data than ever on disk. Archives, backups, DR and video surveillance data along with unstructured data are largely contributing to the explosive growth of data in organizations. Yet one of the dirty little secrets of managing the large disk farms needed to store all of this data is managing the replacement of failed SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) in these disk farms. While current RAID technologies do an adequate job of protecting from data loss in most of these environments, when a SATA HDD fails, it still does require someone to replace it.
Replacing failed SATA HDDs may be no big deal in smaller environments. But when you start to consider how potentially unreliable some SATA HDDs are and the time involved with managing their replacement in large disk farms, the process becomes much more complicated. Here are just some of the steps that I had to follow when I worked at a Fortune 500 data center and had to replace a failed HDD (SATA or otherwise):
Open a trouble ticket in my organization's change control system
Open a trouble ticket with the vendor to replace the disk drive
Determine the urgency of replacing the failed disk drive. (i.e. - was it part of a RAID 1 array on a storage system with no hot spare used by a mission critical application or was it in a RAID 5 group on a storage system with a hot spare used for backup?)
Schedule a time for the HDD replacement. Depending on what applications the failed HDD supported, I might schedule the failed HDD to be replaced as soon as a new one arrives or I might wait until the middle of the night so it can be replaced during normal maintenance hours.
Notify the affected application, server, change control and security teams. They need to be notified so they can monitor for any performance impact to their applications or servers as well as be on the lookout for the technician so he can access the data center floor to replace the failed hard drive and install the new one.
Verify the new drive was successfully installed and close out the open trouble tickets.
While not every organization has to go through all of these steps to replace failed SATA HDDs, regularly replacing failed HDDs becomes a cost and a risk to any company. And let's face it, organizations are using SATA HDDs for more applications than ever before and SATA HDDs are the ones increasingly tapped for these functions.
So while organizations obviously do not want to lose data on their SATA storage systems (and probably will not because the data is protected with RAID), they also do not want to dedicate a full time person to manage the task of replacing failed HDDs in their growing disk farm. Yet storage administrators that manage large disk farms often complain about this so they are thinking more about this issue ahead of time and looking to buy storage systems that mitigate this problem.
Organization should therefore look for storage systems where replacing failed SATA HDD remains an occasional hassle and does not become a full time job. While this should not be considered a complete list, here are some features that organizations should look for in SATA storage systems to ensure high reliability of the SATA HDDs:
Select storage system manufacturers that have a history (5+ years) of working with SATA. Storage system manufacturers who started in the early days of ATA (pre-SATA) know how poorly those ATA drives were manufactured so they built mechanisms into their storage systems to account for those deficiencies. While today's SATA HDDs are much more reliable, they still have their own little idiosyncrasies that these manufacturers are more likely to know about and account for in the design of their storage system.
Manufacturer only uses enterprise SATA HDDs. Enterprise SATA HDDs are measured by different standards than SATA HDDs intended for the desktop. Enterprise SATA HDDs are tested using different workloads, have longer burn-in cycles, are rated for longer mean times between failures and include 5-year warranties. Desktop SATA HDDs have none of these features so they are more prone to failure.
Manufacturer stress tests the HDDs before deploying them in the system. Even enterprise SATA HDDs are not immune to failures so inquire as to how the storage system manufacturer stress tests the HDDs before they put them into the field. So for example, when the storage system is built and tested at the manufacturer's site, the manufacturer should ideally have software built into its storage systems that weeds out faulty drives. One test they can run is to perform random I/Os on individual HDDs and measure the time it takes to perform these tests. Response times that take too long are an indication that the HDD is prone to failure.
Manufacturer can manage HDDs when they are spun down. Since data stored on SATA HDDs is frequently not accessed after it is stored, newer enterprise SATA HDDs have the capability to spin down and go to 'sleep' without powering off However, the storage system needs to recognize and manage this behavior so it does not keep trying to spin the HDD up or incorrectly label it as a failed HDD.
Once organizations know about some of these finer points that SATA storage system manufacturers take (or do not take) to ensure the reliability of the SATA HDDs within their systems, it becomes easier to justify choosing one over another for these types of hardware benefits. For instance, Nexsan Technologies is a prime example of an organization that has a long history of working with SATA HDDs (10+ years) and has taken all of these steps and more to ensure the reliability of SATA HDDs on its many products which include SATABoy and SATABeast. Nexsan's CTO Gary Watson says, "Our customers frequently tell us that their Tier 1 storage systems often have higher HDD failure rates than their Nexsan systems with SATA HDDs."
Most organizations say that when they are contemplating the use of SATA HDDs that their primary concern is their reliability. In truth, most are more initially concerned about the protection and recoverability of their data which is a fear most SATA storage system manufacturers address through the use of RAID. But RAID only addresses concerns about data reliability, not hardware reliability, and as customers can find out after the fact, reliable SATA HDDs have a value that organizations may only appreciate and understand after they purchase an unreliable storage system. ]]>