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Practical application of the SNIA Shared Storage Model
An excellent example of this practical application of the model is provided by the IT staff ofCarlson Companies. Carlson
Companies is one of the largest privately held companies in the United States, with more than 180,000 employees in more than
140 countries. Its IT division, Carlson Shared Services, acts as a service provider to its internal clients and consequently must
support a spectrum of user applications and services.
In formulating a global IT strategy for networking and storage, the Carlson storage architects began with their current
applications and the supporting server/storage infrastructure. Originally, Carlson's business applications were supported on a
combination ofdirect-attached storage arrays and internal storage. As shown in Figure 7, database applications ran on servers
attached to large storage arrays, and other applications ran on servers with internal storage.
Overlaid on the SNIA Shared Storage Model, Carlson Companies' original storage configuration clearly demarcates which
applications access data via records, which via files, and which via device-level block aggregation or host-supported block
aggregation. The first step in determining which applications might be better served by shared storage and which shared storage
technologies are most appropriate for specific upper-layer applications is to diagram the upper-layer applications and their
storage access methods.
By using the Shared Storage Model, the storage architects clarified the relationship between application requirements and storageresources and also revealed the administrative overhead incurred by dedicated storage units. The system required four large
storage frames and six additional arrays to support Carlson's data center applications. Each storage unit required separate
administration as well as maintenance contracts from the supplying vendor. Because storage consolidation is one of the key
benefits of SANs, the Shared Storage Model offered a framework for modifying the components in the block subsystem to
reduce the number of storage devices while still serving Carlson's business applications.
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Figure 7
As shown in Figure 8, analysis of Carlson's former storage deployment led to a proposed shared storage configuration that
leveraged both SAN and NAS technologies to streamline storage administration and enable more efficient use of storage
capacity. This design replaces the four large directattached storage frames with a single SAN-attached storage array supporting
more than 10 terabytes of data. In this example, Oracle and other Carlson custom applications now share a single, highly
available storage resource that is more easily administered and offers more economical maintenance support compared with the
four direct-attached storage frames it replaced. Shared directories and other internal applications have moved from direct-
attached, dedicated storage to large NAS filers. In this instance, NAS was chosen for its cross-platform support and for its ability
to serve remote NAS access for Carlson clients. Infrastructure applications that have no compelling reason to reside on either
NAS or SAN remain on internal storage, as shown on the right side of the diagram.
Figure 8
Remote storage access is also a significant factor for organizations with geographically dispersed sites. In Carlson Companies'
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global IT strategy, safeguarding corporate data generated at remote locations is essential for business continuance. Relying on
each remote office to back up its own data locally offers no guarantee that backups are successfully completed or that data can be
restored in the event of failure. Consequently, Carlson decided to streamline backup operations by bringing remote backup
operations into its central data center. As shown in Figure 9, the Shared Storage Model is used to define four separate remote
office backup scenarios. Remote offices with no local file servers have valuable corporate data on internal drives of laptops and
desk workstations. Typically (and unfortunately) for most enterprise networks, this data is rarely backed up, resulting in loss of
productivity if a laptop or desktop disk drive fails. For these sites, Carlson uses software that enables block change backup,
meaning that only the data that has changed since the last backup is sent to the data center backup facility. This arrangement
reduces the amount of data that must be sent across the wide area network and accomplishes the goal of securing dispersed
corporate data assets. Similarly, remote sites with a local file server can be backed up using block changes, again reducing the
amount of traffic generated over the WAN.
Figure 9
In the remaining two scenarios, a remote office may have a local NAS or SAN installed. For NAS, Carlson is leveraging vendor-
supplied file backup utilities to replicate data from the remote site to the data center NAS equipment. At the data center, theNAS-based data can then be centrally archived to tape. For remote SAN installations, Carlson is using IP storage technology to
transfer locally generated Fibre Channel SAN data to the corporate SAN. In Carlson's case, the data center SAN is built with an
IP SAN core, thereby facilitating IP-based block backup between remote and central SANs.
For Carlson Companies, the SNIA Shared Storage Model offers a coherent framework for analyzing current and future storage
requirements for both the data center and its dispersed remote locations. For storage architects, the Shared Storage Model is a
tool for defining application and storage relationships while enabling drill-down to more detailed storage-specific issues. For
CIOs and IT executives, the model provides a basis for understanding the composition of their storage deployments and seeing
how proposed acquisitions contribute to broader strategic IT goals. Additional information on the SNIA Shared Storage Model is
available in Appendix E as well as the SNIA Web site at www.snia.org.
Designing Storage Area Networks: A Practical Reference for Implementing Fibre Channel and IP SANs, 2nd Edition was writtenby Tom Clark and published by Addison Wesley Professional. Did you find this book helpful? Purchase it directly from the
publisher.
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News
Latest Headlines
Cloud storage
prices drop, but
experts and users
say hidden fees
remain
Nexsan launches
unified storage
architecture with
flash cache
Hard disk drive
shortage takes aimat enterprise SAS,
SATA in 2012
View All News
Storage Channel
Topics
Topics
Data Backup and Data Protection
Data Backup Strategy, Disk Backup, Tape Backup, Data Protection and Backup Services, Disaster Recovery
and Business Continuity
Data Storage Hardware
Tape Storage, Blade Storage, Disk Storage Hardware, Data Center and Server Room Storage, Other Storage
Media
Data Storage Management
Data Archiving, Data Provisioning Tools, Data Migration Tools and Strategies, Storage Capacity Planning and
Performance, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Online Storage Services, Tier Storage
Shared Storage Model: Practical applications http://searchstoragechannel.techtarget.com/feature/SNIA-Shared
2 3/20/2012
8/2/2019 SNIA Shared Storage Model_ Practical Applications
8/12
MSPs/Storage as a Service
Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
NAS Backup, NAS Hardware, NAS Management
Regulatory Compliance Services
Remote Storage Management
Storage Area Network (SAN)
SAN Design and Planning, Storage Area Network (SAN) Management, Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN IP
Storage, Storage Networking Protocols
Storage Service Provider Concerns
Storage Solution Provider Sales and Marketing
Storage Virtualization
Storage Virtualization Planning, Storage SOA
Hot Topics
IBM DR Services FAQ Guide
Expert
Advice
Tips
Scalable NAS initiative at Ancestry.com
demonstrates competing products can coexist
VDI sizing and disk array controller requirements
Tape archiving: Which customers are a good fit?
View All Tips
Ask a Question
Get help from our technical community
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