Future technologies for storage networks

Shravan PargalDirector, Compellent Consulting

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Agenda• Storage applications• Application requirements• Available technology solutions• Who is winning today?• What will determine the winning storage

technology of tomorrow?

And, NO object storage in this talk!

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Storage applications• Data base applications

• What are they used for in a business?

• Email• Is it critical to a business?

• File and print sharing• Document archiving• “Backup”

Audience question – what % of storage today is email storage?

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Application categories• Business processing:

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

• Customer relationship management (CRM)

• Online transaction processing (OLTP)

• Batch • Decision support:

• Data warehousing/data mart

• Data analysis/data mining

• Collaborative: • Email • Workgroup

• Application development • IT infrastructure:

• File and print • Networking • Proxy caching • Security • Systems management

• Web infrastructure: • Web serving • Streaming media

• Technical -Scientific/engineering (compute only)

Source IDC: 2002

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Storage market

Source IDC: 2002

Technical3%

Other3%

Business Processing

25%

IT Infrastructure

24%

Decision support

19%

Application development

10%

Collaborative10%

Web Infrastructure

6%

Application requirements

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Application requirements…

• Focus of Databases• What is the end user application?

• Order entry• Data mining• OLTP

• All require efficient block I/O• Benchmarked using transactions per

second

Requirements depend on the type of data in the database and the method of

access.

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…More requirements• Latency

• How long are you willing to wait at the ATM machine?

• Availability• What happens if the ATM is unable to connect to

its database?• What happens if a patient’s allergy record is

unavailable during surgery?

• Scalability• How much storage do you have today, and how

much will it be in 3 or 6 months?• Does the existing storage solution scale?

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FinallyDoes the user or administrator of the

application know the answer to the following:

• What is the data throughput required? • MB/s

• How important are transactions per second metrics? • Input/Outputs per second

Storage architectureoptions

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Architecture Options• Networked Storage – NAS and SAN

• NAS• Very flexible on front end protocol options (FC, iSCSI, InfiniBand

available today)• Currently only FC on the backend

• SAN• FC• IP

» iSCSI» iFCP» FCIP

• InfiniBand

• Direct attached storage• SCSI• ATA

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Technology Options• Storage Virtualization

• In-band• Out-of-band

• Why is this interesting?• Why is it difficult to do?• What are the problems with storage

virtualization?

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Network Attached Storage (NAS)

NAS Filer

Application Server

Clients

EthernetLAN

Storage Server

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Storage Area Network (SAN)

Servers StorageClients

Fibre ChannelSAN

Win 2K

Unix

Novell

Tape

Disk

Disk

EthernetLAN

Disk

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iSCSI, iFCP and FCIP Protocol Stacks

IP IP IP

TCP TCP

New Serial SCSI FCP FC-4

TCP

FC Lower Layers

FCP FC-4

iSCSI iFCP FCIP

Standard SCSI Command Set

Operating System

Applications

Copyright © 2001, Storage Networking Industry Association

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Direct attached drives (DAS)

IDE or SCSI

Internal disk drive(s)

Useful link: http://www.pcmech.com/hdindex.htm

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Who is winning today• Direct Attached Storage - 66.4 % of all

installed storage in 2001

• Network Attached Storage – 7.4 % of all installed storage in 2001

• Storage Area Networks – 26.1 % of all installed storage in 2001

Source IDC: 2002

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Installed Storage Revenue

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Installed Storage Data

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Storage Consolidation

LAN

NTServers

Tape Drive

RAID

Tape Drive

RAID

Tape Drive

RAID

NTServers

RAID(Email)

TapeLibrary

Mission-Critical RAID(Oracle, ERP DB)

SAN

Switch Switch

SwitchSwitch

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Interconnect Technologies

Knowing that the strengths of a technology don’t guarantee its success, here are some nice technologies …

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Fibre Channel• Low Latency• Immunity from congestion• In-order delivery• Guaranteed delivery• 2 Gigabit per second pipe• Dominant server to storage connection

What percentage of the 2 Gb/s bandwidth is used?

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IP• TCP provides in-order delivery• Most ethernet switches can now provide

some level of immunity from congestion –particularly in a LAN environment

• Higher layer protocols provide delivery guarantees

• 1 Gigabit per second bandwidth• Dominant client to server connection

What percentage of the bandwidth is used?

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Reality check for IP Storage• Fibre Channel

• Will not disappear any time soon• Market will continue to grow and expand

• IP will provide a way to connect FC islands• Today with FCIP, iFCP and iSCSI

• iSCSI is slowly maturing• Plug Fests to test standard compliance• Final specification just completed - February 2003

iSCSI provides end-to-end native IP Storage

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Future Network

Servers StorageClients

SAN

Win 2K

Unix

Novell

Tape

Disk

Disk

LAN

Disk

Single management domain

There is a convergence of network and data administration functions

Trumps

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Hidden agendas• Who is backing the technology?

• FC – FC switch and adapter incumbents• Brocade, EMC, Emulex, QLogic, HDS, IBM,

Sun, HP• iFCP – Nishan and others• FCIP – Cisco, Brocade and others• iSCSI – Cisco, IBM, EMC and others

Fibre Channel incumbents stand to lose as new IP based technologies gain acceptance

The new players need IP based technologies to enter the storage space

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Tomorrow’s winners

• What is going to decide who the winners are?• Open systems compliant• Resilient• Flexible deployment options• Affordable as the solution scales• Enables server consolidation

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Conclusions• Better

• More features – what is the baseline feature-set requirement?

• Faster• More IOPs - Not more MB/s

• Cheaper• Commodity pricing – like ethernet

• Easy to use – Simplify!

The best technologies don’t always triumph over other contenders – remember VHS v.s.

Betamax

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Questions?

Shravan Pargal

Director, Compellent ConsultingCompellent Technologies Inc.

Shravan.Pargal@compellent.com612-850-5351

www.compellent.com