We at Champion Legal utilise the services of an Information Technology company Digital Armour to assist us with some of the more complex aspects of managing our IT. I have asked their Managing Director, Maria Padisetti, to do a short article on managing data and to try to demystify some of the terms.
Data is the lifeblood of any business. Data storage solutions are a priority of a SME and nowadays eat up a large part of their budgets because the protection and availability of vital data can spell the success or failure of a business.
In the ever changing business climate where terrorism and industrial espionage are an every day security threat a backup and disaster recovery plan are essential to an organization’s survival.
When you talk to an IT specialist, they talk about DAS, NAS and SAN technologies for data storage. That’s a lot of jargon for a SME looking for a solution to solve their problem!
These are the most common storage methods: direct attached storage (DAS), network attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SAN). Each company needs to determine which method will meet their business needs. Having the right technology to suit your specific environment will help you cut your budget whilst still servicing the users.
Several factors to consider are:
- Capacity – how much data do you need to store now and what is your expected increase during the next five years?
- Performance – how many different people will need simultaneous access to the data?
- Scalability – is the solution able to expand to meet future needs?
- Availability and reliability – how important is the data to your business survival?
- Security – what are your backup and recovery requirements?
- Budget – how much money can you spend?
DAS (direct attached storage)
DAS is the typical storage method most companies use where the hard drives are located in the host computer or directly connected to a single server with RAID arrays or tape libraries.
All data is accessed through the server. DAS is simple to deploy and relatively inexpensive. The biggest problem with this arrangement is the server is a single point of failure and a potential bottleneck. If the server fails, the data is unavailable and if a large number of people simultaneously access the data, the server bandwidth may be insufficient to handle the load. The advantages of DAS are ease of management, lower initial cost and it is easier to deploy. However, scalability is extremely limited.
NAS (Network Attached Storage)
NAS is a special purpose device consisting of hard disks and management software. This equipment is 100% dedicated to serving files over a network. NAS is a simple cost effective solution for providing fast data access to a large number of simultaneous network users. Smaller companies find NAS an easy to install plug and play solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
Important features such as RAID and hot swappable drives are standard components in the lower priced NAS systems. Mid-range systems provide data replication and mirroring to prevent data from becoming unavailable due to drive failure. NAS is an attractive investment because it can provide several terabytes of storage in high density form factors. This feature allows high scalability. Multiple NAS systems can also be centrally managed further conserving time and resources.
NAS uses TCP/IP for its communication protocol and can support all of the standard file transfer protocols as well so it can work in a mixed operating system environment without problems because it stores the files in their native format.
SAN (Storage Area Networks)
SAN (Storage Area Networks)
SAN is a dedicated high performance storage network that transfers data between servers and storage devices. It is a completely separate network connected to the servers through a fiber channel. Fiber Channel is an extremely reliable cable that supports gigabit data transfer. Other storage devices such as NAS, DAS, RAID arrays or tape libraries are connected to servers using standard Ethernet cable.
Unlike NAS or DAS that are optimized for sharing at the file level, SAN can move large blocks of data very quickly. This is extremely effective for large database, imaging and transaction processing. SANs distributed architecture provides better performance than any other technology available today by balancing network loads and allowing extremely high numbers of users to access the data simultaneously without creating bottlenecks.
SANs are the best way to ensure predictable performance and 24x7 data availability and reliability. SANs have built in failover and fault tolerance features to ensure maximum uptime. They are extremely scalable and it is possible to pool unused capacity and transfer it to applications that need it.
SAN and NAS are extremely compatible technologies and more companies are “upgrading” from NAS to SAN. This marriage optimizes both file level and block level data transfer. SAN can also be deployed in a cluster environment.
The disadvantages to SAN are high cost, complex management and a lack of standardization which creates interoperability issues, specifically, a business can be “locked into” a specific vendor’s equipment and software. When SAN standards are finally developed so businesses do not end up chained to a specific vendor, the implementation rate will most likely increase.
Summary
Summary
The data storage industry is in a constant state of change. The best data storage solution for your company depends on what your data storage needs are and how much you can afford to spend. Storage needs are expected to increase rapidly in the future and selecting a scalable solution is the best strategy. Since DAS can be integrated into a NAS implementation and NAS can be merged with SAN, you can start small and expand as needed.
You can contact Digital Armour on 02 9420 0961 if you would like further information.
